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Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 26:2 (2025) ► pp.288–314

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Anyway in Irish English

The development of a pragmatic marker

ORCiD logo with link | University of Limerick
Published online: 20 December 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.24007.hic
Abstract
The development of the pragmatic marker anyway in Irish English is of relatively recent date. From an original adverb of manner there developed a pragmatic meaning when the element shifted to the right periphery (or became exposed there through deletion of an element to the right of it). A transition period occurred during which varying interpretations of anyway were possible, facilitating the rise of anyway as a pragmatic marker. Later it appeared in the prosodically more prominent left periphery where anyway can only have a pragmatic interpretation. The main theoretical insight of this study is that the discourse function arose from the ambiguous interpretation of unqualified anyway. Importantly, a prosodic distinction arose between the two functions of anyway with the discourse use showing considerably less stress on the final syllable [–weɪ] than the syntactic use.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Anyway: Its precursors in the past
    • 2.1Anyway: The pathway to pragmatic marker
      • 2.1.1Transitional status
      • 2.1.2Possible phonetic reduction
      • 2.1.3Proneness to pragmaticisation
    • 3.The diachrony of anyway
      • Old Bailey corpus
      • Corpus of English dialogues
      • Early Modern English depositions
    • 3.1Attestations of anyway in the historical record of Irish English
    • 3.2The nineteenth century
    • 3.3Anyway in twentieth-century Irish English and the present
    • 3.4Anyway in Irish English: Internal differentiation?
    • 3.5Anyway in the English of Scotland
    • 4.Anyway in present-day Irish English
    • 4.1Shift from lexical to pragmatic meaning
    • 4.2Anyway and whatever: Related pragmatic markers
  • 5.Anyway, a tentative taxonomy
  • 5.1Discourse maintenance and turn-taking anyway
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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