Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 17:1 (2016) ► pp.1–25

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Intersubjectivity and the diachronic development of counterfactual almost

 | Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3
Published online: 16 June 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.17.1.01zie
Former studies have attributed little attention to the historical factors surrounding the development of counterfactual meanings in almost, though some refer to evidence of expletive negation found in proximatives crosslinguistically. In this study, the historical development of the adverb will be considered in investigating more recent data from Late Modern English, in which an overwhelming number of counterfactual uses appear with a complement referring to undesirable events, some even hyperbolic in nature. It is hypothesised that the presence of intersubjectivity contributed significantly to the development of counterfactual meanings, in focusing attention on the aversion of, rather than the proximity to, the event described in the complement. Intersubjectivity also explains the evidence of expletive negation in proximatives in other languages though this is not attested in the history of English almost.
References (50)
BNC The British National Corpus. Online version [BYU-BNC]. [URL]
COCA The Corpus of Contemporary American English, 450 million words, 1990–present. Compiled by Mark Davies. [URL]
CLMET(EV) The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (Extended Version). Compiled by Hendrik de Smet. [URL]
Helsinki Corpus: Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, Diachronic Part. Compiled by Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilipiö, Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. Available from The Oxford text Archive. ICAME International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English. [URL]
OED Oxford English Dictionary. 2002. Third edn. (online). [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Akatsuka, Noriko McCawley and Susan Strauss. 2000. “Counterfactual Reasoning and Desirability”. In Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Bernd Kortmann (eds), Cause – Condition – Concession – Contrast: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives, 205–34. Berlin: Mouton de Guyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amaral, Patrícia. 2007. The Meaning of Approximative Adverbs: Evidence from European Portuguese. PhD thesis. Ohio State University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anscombre, Jean-Claude and Oswald Ducrot. 1983. L’Argumentation dans la Langue. Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Atlas, Jay D. 1984. “Comparative Adjectives and Adverbials of Degree: An Introduction to Radically Radical Pragmatics”. Linguistics and Philosophy 71: 347–77. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Logic, Meaning, and Conversation. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beeching, Kate, Liesbeth Degand, Ulrich Detges, Elizabeth C. Traugott and Richard Waltereit. 2009. Summary of the Workshop on Meaning in Diachrony at the Conference on Meaning in Interaction . April. University of the West of England, Bristol.
Biq, Yung-O. 1989. “Metalinguistic Negation in Mandarin”. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 17 (1): 75–94.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boucher, Jerry and Charles E. Osgood. 1969. “The Pollyanna Hypothesis”. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 8 (1): 1–8. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brems, Lieselotte, Lobke Ghesquière and Freek Van de Velde. 2012. “Introduction: Intersections of Intersubjectivity”. English Text Construction 5 (1): 1–6. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ghesquière, Lobke, Lieselotte Brems and Freek Van de Velde. 2012. “Intersubjectivity and Intersubjectification”. English Text Construction 5 (1): 128–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bemd. 1994. “On the Genesis of Aspect in African Languages: The Proximative”. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 201: 35–46.
Heine, Bernd. 2002. “On the Role of Context in Grammaticalization”. In Ilse Wischer and Gabriele Diewald (eds), New Reflections on Grammaticalization, 83–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hitzeman, Janet. 1992. “The Selectional Properties and Entailments of ‘almost’”. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society 281: 225–38.
Horn, Laurence R. 1984. “Towards a New Taxonomy for Pragmatic Inference: Q-based and R-based Implicature”. In Deborah Schiffrin (ed.), Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, 11–42. (GURT 84.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (2001 edition published by CSLI, Stanford.)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “Assertoric Inertia and NPI Licensing”. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society 38 (3), Part II (The Panels), 55–82.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “ Almost Forever”. In Etsuyo Yuasa, Tista Bagchi and Katherine Beals (eds), Pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar: In Honor of Jerry Sadock, 2–21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jayez, Jacques and Lucia Tovena. 2008. “ Presque and Almost: How Argumentation Derives from Comparative Meaning”. In O. Bonami and P. Cabredo Hoffher (eds), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 71, 217–39. Available online at: [URL].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Auxiliation: An Enquiry in to the Nature of Grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuteva, Tania, Bas Aarts, Geri Popova and Anvita Abbi. Forthcoming. “The Grammar of ‘counter-to-fact’”.
Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Charles N. 1976. “A Functional Explanation for an Unexpected Case of Ambiguity (S or ~S)”. In A.M. Devine and Laurence D. Stephens (eds), Linguistic Studies Offered to Joseph Greenberg, Vol. 31, 527–35. Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri & Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Narrog, Heiko. 2012. “Modality and Speech-act Orientation”. In Johan van der Auwera and Jan Nuyts (eds), Grammaticalization and (Inter)subjectification, 21–36. Brussels: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van Belgie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2012. “Notions of (Inter)subjectivity”. English Text Construction 5 (1): 53–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Panther, Klaus-Uwe and Linda Thornburg. 1999. “The Potentiality for Actuality Metonymy in English and Hungarian”. In Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günther Radden (eds), Metonymy in Language and Thought, 333–57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peyraube, Alain. 1979. “ Les ‘approximatifs’ Chinoise: Chàbuduō, jīhū, chàyidiǎnr ”. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 6 (1): 49–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pons Bordería, Salvador and Scott Schwenter. 2005. “Polar Meaning and ‘Expletive’ Negation in Approximative Adverbs. Spanish por poco (no) ”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 6 (2): 262–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Portner, Paul. 2009. Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold M. 1981. “ Almost ”. In Peter Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics, 257–71. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sevi, Aldo. 1998. A Semantics for Almost and Barely. Masters dissertation. Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott. 2002. “Discourse Context and Polysemy: Spanish casi”. In Caroline Wiltshire and Joaquim Camps (eds), Romance Philology and Variation: Selected Papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, 161–75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1989. “On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English”. Language 65 (1): 31–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Revisiting Subjectification and Intersubjectification”. In Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte and Hubert Cuykens (eds), Subjectification, Intersubjectification, and Grammaticalization, 29–70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth. 2012. “Intersubjectification and Clause Periphery”. English Text Construction 5 (1): 7–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Visconti, Jacqueline. 2013. “Facets of Subjectification”. Language Sciences 36 (1): 7–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1986. “Precision in Vagueness”. Journal of Pragmatics 10 (5): 597–614. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhu, De Xi. 1959. “Shūo chàyīdiǎn (‘On chàyīdiǎn’)”. Zhōngguó Yǔwén 871: 435.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ziegeler, Debra. 2000a. “What almost can reveal about counterfactual implicatures”. Journal of Pragmatics 321: 1743–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000b. “The Role of Quantity Implicatures in the Grammaticalisation of would ”. Language Sciences 221: 27–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Running the Gauntlet on the Approximatives Debate: A Response to Recent Challenges”. Journal of Pragmatics 421: 681–704. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Calamities and Counterfactuals: A Historical Review of Polarity Reversal”. Revue Anglophonia 191: [URL].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Hoeksema, Jack
2025. Approximative adverbs in modern and pre-modern languages. In Historical Linguistics 2022 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 369], ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
Scivoletto, Giulio
2025. Rethinking intersubjectification through the evolution of discourse markers in Sicilian. In Semantic-Pragmatic Change from Intersubjective to Textual Meanings [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 353], ► pp. 244 ff. DOI logo
la Roi, Ezra
2024. Polarity reversal constructions and counterfactuals in Ancient Greek. Journal of Historical Linguistics 14:2 ► pp. 335 ff. DOI logo
Núñez-Pertejo, Paloma
2023. Practically impossible: The development of an English approximator. Studia Neophilologica 95:1 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Brinton, Laurel J.
2021. “He loved his father but next to adored his mother”: Nigh(ly), Near, and Next (To) as Downtoners. Journal of English Linguistics 49:1 ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo
Kuo, Yueh Hsin
2021. A constructional account of the loss of the adverse avertive schema in Mandarin Chinese. In Lost in Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 218], ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Peyraube, Alain & Na Song
2019. On a Temporal Preposition in the Baoding Dialect—Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives. In New Perspectives on Aspect and Modality in Chinese Historical Linguistics [Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics, 5], ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Ziegeler, Debra
2015. Calamities and Counterfactuals: A Historical View of Polarity Reversal. Anglophonia 19 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. The Sociopragmatics of Stance [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 329], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. A constructional account of the loss of the adverse avertive schema in Mandarin Chinese. In Lost in Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 218], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue