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Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 17:1 (2016) ► pp.26–54

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On the rise of types of clause-final pragmatic markers in English

 | Stanford University
Published online: 16 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.17.1.02tra
Much work on pragmatic markers in the history of English has been devoted to expressions used clause-initially at “left periphery”. By contrast, this study provides an account in broad outlines of the incremental development of pragmatic markers in clause-final “right periphery” position. Particular attention is paid to the rise of comment clauses, question tags, general extenders, and retrospective contrastive markers. Traditional characterizations of pragmatic markers, such as occurrence primarily at left periphery and with prosodic breaks are critiqued.
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