Cover not available

In:Outside the Clause: Form and function of extra-clausal constituents
Edited by Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer and Arne Lohmann
[Studies in Language Companion Series 178] 2016
► pp. 157–176

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

From clause to adverb

On the history of maybe

 | University of Santiago de Compostela
 | University of Santiago de Compostela
Published online: 3 October 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.178.06lop
This chapter is concerned with the origin and development of the English epistemic adverb maybe. Using various historical corpora, including the Helsinki Corpus and ARCHER as a baseline, we analyse a range of structures featuring the sequence (it) may be, paying special attention to those which may have contributed, in varying degrees, to the emergence of the adverb maybe. We argue that the development of maybe can be regarded as an instance of grammaticalization, whereby a matrix clause in a complementation structure (it may be (that)…) is downgraded to a parenthetical, thus losing its original clausal morpho-syntactic features, and eventually becoming an adverb. Therefore, the adverbialization of maybe seems to have followed a similar path of development to that of (quasi-)adverbs such as methinks and looks like. We also argue, however, that even though complement-taking-predicate clauses are the ultimate main source of the adverb, via an intermediate parenthetical stage, other constructions (e.g. it may be + phrasal constituent) may have played a role in its development.
References (47)
Sources
ARCHER 3.2 = A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers version 3.2. 1990–1993/2002/2007/2010/2013. Originally compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan at Northern Arizona University and University of Southern California; modified and expanded by subsequent members of a consortium of universities. Current member universities are Bamberg, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Lancaster, Leicester, Manchester, Michigan, Northern Arizona, Santiago de Compostela, Southern California, Trier, Uppsala, Zurich.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
BYU-BNC = Davies, Mark. 2004-. BYU-BNC. (Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press). <[URL]>Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
CED = A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. 2006. Compiled under the supervision of Merja Kytö (Uppsala University) & Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
CEECS = Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler. 1998. Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi & Minna Palander-Collin at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
COCA = Davies, Mark. 2008-. The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 520 million words, 1990-present. <[URL]>Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
COHA = Davies, Mark. 2010. The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810-2009. <[URL]>.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DOEC = The Dictionary of Old English Corpus in electronic form. 2007. Edited by Antonette di Paolo Healey. Toronto: University of Toronto.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
HC = The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. 1991. Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki. Compiled by Matti Rissanen (Project leader), Merja Kytö (Project secretary); Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpiö (Old English); Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen (Middle English); Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (Early Modern English).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
MED = Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn & Robert E. Lewis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. <[URL]>
OBC = Huber, Magnus, Magnus Nissel, Patrick Maiwald & Bianca Widlitzki. 2012. The Old Bailey Corpus. Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. <[URL]>.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
OED = Oxford English Dictionary Online. <[URL]>
PPCEME = Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Lauren Delfs. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
PPCMBE = Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Ariel Diertani. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
PPCME2 = Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
References
Beijering, Karin. 2010. The grammaticalization of Mainland Scandinavian MAYBE. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies 1. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boye, Kasper & Harder, Peter. 2007. Complement-taking predicates. Usage and linguistic structure. Studies in Language 31(3): 569-606. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. 1996. Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. The Comment Clause in English. Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. & Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik, Ghesquière, Lobke & Van de Velde, Freek (eds). 2013. On Mul–tiple Source Constructions in Language Change. Special issue of Studies in Language 37(3).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dehé, Nicole & Kavalova, Yordanka (eds). 2007. Parentheticals [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 106]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger & Tomasello, Michael. 2001. The acquisition of finite complement clauses in English: A corpus-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 1: 97-141.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elmer, Willy. 1981. Diachronic Grammar. The History of Old and Middle English Subjectless Constructions. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. 1990. Finite complement clauses in Shakespeare's English, I and II. Studia Neophilologica 62: 3-21; 129-49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga. 1992. Syntax. In The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II: 10661476, Norman Blake (ed.), 207408. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Morphosyntactic Change. Functional and Formal Perspectives. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey, et al. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2007. Spoken parentheticals in English: A taxonomy. In Dehé & Kavalova (eds), 25-52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Processibility. In Corpus Pragmatics. A Handbook, Karin Aijmer & Christoph Rühlemann (eds), 117-140. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther, Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2011. On thetical grammar. Studies in Language 35(4): 848-893. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
López-Couso, María José. 1996. On the history of methinks: From impersonal construction to fossilized expression. Folia Linguistica Historica 30(17): 153-169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Tracing the variation between perhaps and maybe in historical and contemporary corpora. Paper presented at ICAME 36. Trier, 27-31 May.
López-Couso, María José & Méndez-Naya, Belén. 2014a. From clause to pragmatic marker: A study of the development of like-parentheticals in American English. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 15(1): 66-91. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014b. On the origin of clausal parenthetical constructions: Epistemic/evidential parentheticals with seem and impersonal think . In Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 243], Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker & Jukka Tuominen (eds), 189-212. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014c. Epistemic parentheticals with seem: Late Modern English in focus. In The Syntax of Late Modern English, Marianne Hundt (ed.), 291-308. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015a. Evidential/epistemic markers of the type verb + complementizer: Some parallels from English and Romance. In New Directions in Grammaticalization Research [Studies in Language Companion Series 166], Andrew D.M. Smith, Graeme Trousdale & Richard Waltereit (eds), 93-120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015b. On the haps and mishaps of happenstance expressions as a source of epistemic adverbs in English. Paper presented at SHEL-9 . Vancouver, 5–7 June.
Palander-Collin, Minna. 1999. Grammaticalization and Social Embedding: I THINK and METHINKS in Middle and Early Modern English [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 55]. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 1999. Syntax. In The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. III, 1476–1776 Roger Lass (ed.), 187-331. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seoane, Elena. 2012. Early Modern English: Syntax. In Historical Linguistics of English: An International Handbook, Vol. I, Alexander Bergs & Laurel J. Brinton (eds), 621-637. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suzuki, Daisuke. 2014. A historical study of modal adverbs: Evidence from a combination of diachronic corpora. Token: A Journal of English Linguistics 3: 187–210.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. & Mulac, Anthony. 1991. A quantitative perspective on the grammaticalization of epistemic parentheticals in English. In Approaches to Grammaticalization [Typological Studies in Language 19(2)], Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds), 313-329. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1992. Syntax. In The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. I: The beginnings to 1066, Richard M. Hogg (ed.), 168289. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wischer, Ilse. 2000. Grammaticalization versus lexicalization: Methinks there is some confusion. In Pathways of Change. Grammaticalization in English [Studies in Language Companion Series 53], Olga Fischer, Anette Rosenbach & Dieter Stein (eds), 355-370. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Silvennoinen, Olli O.
2025. Going forward as an adverb. English Language and Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 336 ff. DOI logo
Lorenz, David
2023. Could Be it’s Grammaticalization: Usage Patterns of the Epistemic Phrases (it) Could/Might Be. Journal of English Linguistics 51:2 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
Lorenz, David
2023.  Could be, might be, maybe . In Different Slants on Grammaticalization [Studies in Language Companion Series, 232], ► pp. 124 ff. DOI logo
Lorenz, David
2024. Potential grammaticalization of epistemic phrases. Functions of Language 31:3 ► pp. 262 ff. DOI logo
Long, Haiping, Francesco Ursini, Bernd Heine & Yaohua Luo
2022. From separate clause to epistemic adverbial, the neglected source construction and initial-to-medial pathway: Chinese guoran ‘it really happens’. Australian Journal of Linguistics 42:3-4 ► pp. 226 ff. DOI logo
Míguez, Vítor
2021. The diachrony of Galician certamente and seguramente . In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 123 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 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.

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