Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 2:2 (2009) ► pp.209–227
The grammaticalization of you know
From shared knowledge to control over the co-speaker
Published online: 27 October 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.2.2.04vin
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.2.2.04vin
Most accounts of you know as a discourse marker underline shared knowledge as its core value. This study focuses on less standard values of you know where it functions as an introducer of new viewpoints or pieces of information, as a marker of the speakers’ will to impose their viewpoint, or as an emphasizing marker.
We show that the loss of the spatio-temporal anchoring of the sequence and the evolution of its prosodic features are characteristics of those particular uses of you know. This leads us to propose a grammaticalization cline with clearcut stages, where the more argumentative uses of you know correspond to the rightmost stage of the cline <propositional – textual – interpersonal> (Traugott and Dasher 2002).
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Enghels, Renata & Linde Roels
2024. The apparent-time construct as a proxy to spoken conversational data in the 20th century. In Language Change in the 20th Century [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 340], ► pp. 63 ff.
Shan, Yi
Debras, Camille
Debras, Camille
안미경
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.