The Evolution of Pragmatic Markers in English

Laurel J. Brinton is Professor of English Language at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She is co-author of several books, including Lexicalization and Language Change (Cambridge, 2005, with Elizabeth Closs Traugott), The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development (Cambridge, 2008) and The English Language: A Linguistic History 3rd ed. (2016, with Leslie K. Arnovick). She served as co-editor of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics and is currently co-editor of English Language and Linguistics.

• 1. Pragmatic markers: synchronic and diachronic; Part I. From Lexical Item to Pragmatic Marker: 2. Old English hwæt; 3. Middle English whilom; 4. Modern English only and if only; Part II. From Clausal Construction to Pragmatic Marker: 5. Epistemic parentheticals; 6. I / you admit and admittedly; 7. Forms of say: that said and I'm just saying; 8. Two politeness comment clauses: if I may say so and for what it's worth; 9. What is more and whatever; 10. Concluding remarks: pathways of change; Appendix: list of corpora and text collections; References; Index.