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In:Usage-Based Approaches to Language Change
Edited by Evie Coussé and Ferdinand von Mengden
[Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics 69] 2014
► pp. 117–146

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The motivation for using English suspended dangling participles

A Usage-based development of (Inter)subjectivity

Published online: 10 July 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sfsl.69.05hay
The English dangling participial construction has long been prescriptively discarded as anomalous despite the fact that it serves the useful function of expressing the speaker’s subjective construal. The construction further gives rise to some suspended participial uses with an intersubjective function. Using these observations as a starting point and taking the dangling participial construction as a case, this paper examines how the process of language change is enhanced by the surrounding context of usage, especially in processes such as entrenchment by frequency, pragmatic strengthening, and interaction between speaker and hearer in dialogic context.
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