argument and rhetoric

8/2/2019 Argument and Rhetoric

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Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English


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Topics in English Linguistics

64

Editors

Bernd KortmannElizabeth Closs Traugott

De Gruyter Mouton


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Argument and Rhetoric.

Adverbial Connectorsin the History of English

by

Ursula Lenker

De Gruyter Mouton


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ISBN 978-3-11-020558-9

e-ISBN 978-3-11-021606-6

ISSN 1434-3452

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lenker Ursula.Argument and rhetoric : adverbial connectors in the history of

English / by Ursula Lenker.

p. cm. (Topics in English linguistics ; 64)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-3-11-020558-9 (alk. paper)1. English language Adverbials. 2. English language Con-

nectives. 3. English language History. 4. English language Grammar, Historical. 5. English language Grammar. I. Title.

PE1326.L46 20104251.76dc22

2009051326

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin/New York

Cover image: Brian Stablyk/Photographers Choice RF/Getty ImagesTypesetting: OLD-Media OHG, NeckarsteinachPrinting: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Gttingen

Printed on acid-free paperPrinted in Germany

www.degruyter.com


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Acknowledgements

Adverbs are an oppressed part of speech, and probably bitter about their illtreatment. If they were ever organized the upper class of nouns and verbs hadbetter look out (Landau 1984: 7879). The present book, which was acceptedas a Habilitationsschriftat the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universitt Munich inthe winter term of 2006/2007 (this date basically also marks the end of thefull coverage of literature quoted), tries to remedy the ill treatment of at leastone class of adverbs: adverbial connectors. I am deeply indebted to the men-tors and referees of this thesis, Professor Hans Sauer, Professor Ulrich Detgesand Professor Richard Janney, who provided invaluable information, advice

and encouragement while I was writing this book. I have to thank Dick Jan-ney in particular for drawing my attention to the relevance of (your) littlepointing words, a remark which acted as a catalyst for my ideas on the im-portance of different means of discourse deixis for the subject of adverbialconnectors. I am also very grateful to Hans Sauer and my father, WillibaldLenker, without whose unyielding perseverance this monograph might neverhave been written.

I am very deeply indebted to Helmut Gneuss, who gave me as good a start

in academic research as anyone could wish for: from my early student days, hehas always supported me in my various strands of academic interest (even inelds he would never have researched himself), unfailingly providing a pletho-ra of references and critical comments. I would also like to thank Alfred Bam-mesberger, Manfred Markus, Judith Huber and Friedrich Heberlein for theirvery helpful critical comments on an earlier version of this book, and the serieseditors, Bernd Kortmann and Elizabeth Traugott, for accepting the book forthe Topics in English Linguistics. A number of readers and reviewers of earlierversions of selected chapters, in particular Cynthia Allen, Walter Hofstetter,

Lucia Kornexl, Andreas Mahler, Anneli Meurman-Solin and Elizabeth Trau-gott have substantially improved sections in this book with their pertinent re-marks. At the very beginning of my research on this topic, conversations withOtto Gsell and Klaus Schubert on trains and in the language centre corridor,which seemed casual at the time, were decisive in encouraging me to focus onthe mixed bag of the word class adverb.

In the nal stages of completing and proof-reading the manuscript, StefanieBeckstein, Veronika Bischofberger, Christina Griel, Christine Haunz and, at

Mouton de Gruyter, Wolfgang Konwitschny and Birgit Sievert gave wonderfulsupport. Stef Beckstein made these tedious weeks bearable with her innitepatience and, in particular, her upbeat personality.


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vi Acknowledgements

Only connect, fromHowards End, was the slogan of a telephone companysome years ago and so, above all, I would like to thank all my friends andfamily who helped me to stay connected to a world outside the realm of adver-

bial connectors during all these years. In particular, of course, I have to thankMichael Burghart, who provided so much more than the music.

Munich/Eichsttt, December 2009


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Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

1. The framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1. Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2. Earlier research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3. Aims of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.4. Rhetoric and stylistic aspects: a sample study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.5. Early Modern and Late Modern English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.6. The inventory of adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.7. The text corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101.8. Presentation of corpus ndings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161.9. Outline of the present study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2. Clausal connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.1. Clausal connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222.2. Connectors connects: denitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232.3. Connectors: coordinating conjunctions, subordinating

conjunctions, adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252.4. Connectors and information processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3. The category adverb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.1. Adverbs and adverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333.2. Classication of adverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3.2.1. Circumstance adverbials or adjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . 363.2.2. Stance adverbials or disjuncts

(content/attitudinal and style disjuncts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363.2.3. Adverbial connectors

(linking adverbials or conjuncts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373.3. Semantic categories of adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

3.4. Pure and impure connectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413.5. Adverbial connectors in Present Day English: corpus ndings . 423.5.1. The corpus of theLongman Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42


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3.5.2. Different types of adverbials over the core registers . . . 423.5.3. Syntactic realizations of adverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433.5.4. Positions of adverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3.5.5. Linking adverbials: distribution of semantic categories 443.5.6. Summary: Present Day English corpus ndings . . . . . . 453.6. Adverbial connectors discourse markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

4. Adverbs and conjunctions in earlier metalinguistic thought 49

4.1. Introductory remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494.2. The Greek and Latin tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494.3. lfrics Old English G r a m m a r 51

4.4. Grammatical treatises of the Middle English period . . . . . . . . . 534.5. The prologue to the revision of the Wyclifte Bible . . . . . . . . . . 544.6. Early Modern English dictionaries and grammars . . . . . . . . . . . 56

5. Connectors in Old English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

5.1. Semantic and syntactic polyfunctionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585.2. Circumstance adverbs with connective force (Group B-a):

temporal and spatial adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595.2.1. OE eftagain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605.2.2. OE nu now (Group B-a, Group C) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

5.2.2.1. Temporal nu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615.2.2.2. Text-deictic nu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615.2.2.3. Adverbial connector nu / 625.2.2.4. Adverb/conjunction nu in correlative

constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625.2.2.5. Conjunction (subordinator) nu . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

5.3. Ambiguous adverbs/conjunctions (Group C) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645.3.1. OEa 645.3.2. OEeah, swaeah, (swa)eahhwere

/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4. Position of adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

5.4.1. Nacherstposition post-rst-position . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675.4.2. Present Day German adverbial connectors in

post-rst-position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

5.4.3. Post-rst-position of adverbial connectors in Old English 705.5. Pronominal connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725.5.1. Pronominal connectors in Old English . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72


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5.5.2. Pronominal connectors in the history of the Romancelanguages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

5.5.3. Connectors in Louisiana French and French-based creoles 74

6. Adverbial connectors in the history of English . . . . . . . . . . . 76

6.1. Introductory remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766.2. The diachrony of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions:

general tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766.3. The diachrony of adverbial connectors: general tendencies . . . . 776.4. New adverbial connectors in the sub-periods of English:

methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786.5. The inventory of Present Day English connectors: donor periods 806.6. Middle English: a period of experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

7. Adverbial connectors: morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

7.1. The expansion of the English lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 887.2. Major morphological changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 927.3. Simple adverbs, compounds and derivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

7.3.1. Simple adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 947.3.2. Compounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 947.3.3. Derivations: adverbs in -lice, es and ways/wise . . . . . 95

7.4. Pronominal connectors lexicalized phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 967.5. Pronominal connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

7.5.1. Pronominal connectors in Old English . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987.5.2. Pronominal connectors in the history of English . . . . . . 100

7.6. Lexicalized (prepositional) phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

7.6.1. General tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1027.6.2. Lexicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1037.6.3. Verbal and nominal phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

8. Cognitive source domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

8.1. General tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1068.2. Source domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

8.3. Source domain / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1108.4. Source domain / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1148.4.1. General tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114


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8.4.2. Conversational implicatures: / . . 1148.4.3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1168.4.4. OE solice ME soothly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

8.4.5. MEforsooth(e) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1228.4.6. OE treowlice ME/EModE/PDE truly . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1248.4.7. PDE indeedand in fact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1278.4.8. Regularities in change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1288.4.9. Truth, facts and communicative principles . . . . . . . . . . 128

9. Shifting deictics in the history of English causal connection 131

9.1. Earlier research on causals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

9.2. Causal connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1339.2.1. The relation : vs. 1339.2.2. Present Day English causal connectors: corpus ndings 1349.2.3. Causal connectors: word classes and topology . . . . . . . 1349.2.4. Semantic and pragmatic parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1369.2.5. Information processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

9.3. OEform, foron, fory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 9.3.1. Forms and functions ofform, foron, fory . . . . . . . 140

9.3.2. Expressions for causal relations in Early and Late WestSaxon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1439.4. Discourse deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

9.4.1. Form: morphological make-up and discourse deixis 1479.4.2. Pronominal connectors in Present Day German . . . . . . 1499.4.3. Deictic elements in English causal connectors . . . . . . . 151

9.5. Causal connectors in the history of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1529.5.1. Causal connectors in English translations of Boethius

De Consolatione Philosophiae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

9.5.2. Causal adverbial connectors in the history of English . . 1549.5.3. Deixis in new adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1579.5.4. MEfor that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589.5.5. Recursivefor Latin nam/enim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1619.5.6. Subordinators:for as much as, since, because . . . . . . . 164

9.6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

10. / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

10.1. : afnities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16810.2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169


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10.2.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16910.2.2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16910.2.3. /: information structure . . . . . . . 171

10.2.4. Subordinators adverbial connectors: mood distinctions 17310.3. Cross-linguistic patterns in the origin of concessive connectors 17310.4. The diachrony of English contrastive/concessive adverbial

connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17510.4.1. General tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17510.4.2. Antithetic/reformulatory adverbial connectors . . . . . . . 17510.4.3. Contrastive/concessive connectors in English:

general tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17810.4.4. Shifting deictics in English contrastive/concessive

connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17810.4.5. Patterns in the origin of English concessive connectors 181

10.5. OEeah PDE though 18410.5.1. Long-term developments: grammaticalization . . . . . . . 18410.5.2. OEeah 18610.5.3. Contrastive adverbial connectors from Middle to

Present Day English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19010.5.3.1. Though 190

10.5.3.2. Yetand still . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19110.5.3.3. H o w e v e r 19410.6. Sentence-nal connectors in Present Day English . . . . . . . . . . . 197

10.6.1. Corpus ndings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19710.6.2. Information structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19810.6.3. Sentence-nal connectors in Present Day German . . . . 19810.6.4. Sentence-nal connectors in the history of English . . . . 200

10.7. Present Day English sentence-nal though . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20010.7.1. Earlier research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

10.7.2. PDG obwohl 20210.7.3. PDE but 20310.7.4. Although and though in theLLC 207

10.7.4.1. Quantitative ndings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20710.7.4.2. Functions of the subordinator (al)though 20810.7.4.3. Functions of sentence-nal though 210

11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

11.1. General tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21411.2. The diachrony of reinforcing adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . 214


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11.2.1. General tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21411.2.2. Also 21511.2.3. New coinages: item,plus, too 219

11.2.4. Iconic principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21911.3. Equative connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22011.4. Summative connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22111.5. Appositive connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22211.6. Enumerative (listing) connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22211.7. Genre-dependency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

12.1. Preliminary considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22712.2. Source domain /: peradventure,perchance,perhaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22812.3. Interrogatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22912.4. The diachrony of transitional connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

12.4.1. Paradigm shift: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23012.4.2. Regularities in semantic change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

13. Perspicuity and the New Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23313.1. Collocations vs. medial position of adverbial connectors . . . . . . 23313.2. Sentence-initial collocations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23413.3. Medial positions of adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23513.4. Corpus ndings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

13.4.1. Present Day English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23713.4.2. Old English to Late Modern English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

13.5. Copia perspicuitas 241

13.5.1. Perspicuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24113.5.2. Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24213.5.3. The Scottish Rhetoricians: The New Rhetoric . . . . . . 24313.5.4. George Campbells The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776) . 243

14. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

1. Corpora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2512. Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251


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3. Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2544. Secondary sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Appendix

Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276A.1. Adverbial connectors: items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276A.2. Alphabetical index of adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Word index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

Subject and name index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Appendices on CD-ROM

Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295B.1. Listing/additive adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295B.2. Summative adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307B.3. Causal/resultive adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308B.4. Contrastive and concessive adverbial connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

B.5. Transitional adverbial connectors interjections . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343C.1. Corpus texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343C.2. Selected corpus texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

C.2.1. Treatises and Homilies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353C.2.2. Translation of Boethius

De Consolatione Philosophiae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358


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List of abbreviations

A AdverbialBT Bosworth & Toller (18821898)ByrM Byrhtferths Enchiridion (ed. Baker & Lapidge 1995)CE- Initial Letters of Corpus Texts from Early Modern EnglishCH Clark Hall 1984CL- Initial Letters of Corpus Texts from Late Modern EnglishCLMET A Corpus of Late Modern EnglishTexts (de Smet 2005)CM- Initial Letters of Corpus Texts from Middle English

CME Corpus of Middle English Prose and VerseCO- Initial Letters of Corpus Texts from Old EnglishConj. ConjunctionDOE Dictionary of Old EnglishDOEC Dictionary of Old English CorpusEETS Early English Text SocietyEMEDD Early Modern English Dictionary DatabaseEModE Early Modern English

EModE1 (15001570), EModE2 (15701640), EModE3(16401710)Eustace Life of St Eustace; ed. Skeat 1900: 190219HC Helsinki CorpusInd. IndicativeLat. LatinLLC London Lund Corpus of Spoken EnglishLModE Late Modern English

LModE1 (17101780), LModE2 (17801850), LModE3

(18501920)LOB LancasterOslo/Bergen Corpus of British EnglishM Merkmal = propertyME Middle English

ME1 (11501250), ME2 (12501350), ME3 (13501420),ME4 (14201500)

MED Middle English DictionaryO Object

OE Old EnglishOE1 ( 850), OE2 (850950), OE3 (9501050),OE4 (10501150)


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xvi List of abbreviations

OED Oxford English DictionaryON Old NorseO. S. Old Series

PDE Present Day EnglishPDG Present Day GermanPP Prepositional PhrasePrs. PersonS SubjectSg. SingularSubj. SubjunctiveV Verb (Predicate)V2 Verb-second

Symbols

ambiguous adverb/conjunction[ ] in Appendix A.1: not attested in the corpus texts


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1. The framework

1.1. Particles

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, one of the rst linguistic ac-counts explicitly addressing what we now call textual organization or cohesion,1John Locke asserts that it is the right use of Particles which is crucial for theclearness and beauty of good style:

These Words, whereby it signies what connection it gives to the several Afrma-

tions and Negations, that it unites in one continued Reasoning or Narration, aregenerally calld Particles: and tis the right use of these, that more particularly con-sists the clearness and beauty of good Stile. And to express well such methodicaland rational Thoughts, he must have words to shew what Connexion, Restriction,

Distinction, Opposition, Emphasis, etc. he gives to each respectivepart of his Discourse (Locke [1690] 1975: 471; emphasis by Locke).

As is evident from this description, Lockes Particles are co-referential withthe linguistic elements we now call clausal connectives.2 Locke highlightsthat he regards these elements not merely as an adornment or frequent supple-

mentary device to uncover textual organization,3 but as indispensable for theunderstanding of an utterance:

To mistake in any of these, is to puzzle, instead of informing, his Hearer: and there-fore it is, that those words, which are not truly, by themselves, the names of any

Ideas, are of such constant and indispensable use in Language (Locke[1690]1975: 471).

The novelty and originality of this view that Particles play a central role inlanguage is made explicit when Locke proceeds by criticizing previous gram-

mars and grammarians for their ill-treatment or even neglect of these linguisticelements:

1 For details on the treatment of connectives in European and English languagescholarship, see Lenker (2003) and below, Chapter 4.

2 The term connective is used as an umbrella term for all kinds of linguistic itemssignalling a linkage of sentences or chunks of discourse. The term connector morespecically refers to paratactic connectives, in particular adverbial connectors.

3 For the repeatedly expressed view of adverbial connectors and so-called discourse

markers as supplementary or even superuous features of language, and for a discus-sion of the overlap between coordinators, subordinators, adverbial connectors anddiscourse particles as well as cases of polyfunctionality, see Chapters 2 and 3.


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2 The framework

This part of Grammar has been, perhaps, as much neglected, as some others over-diligently cultivated. Tis easy for Men to write, one after another, of Cases andGenders, Moods and Tenses, Gerunds and Supines: But though Prepositionsand Conjunctions, etc. are names well known in Grammar, and the Particles con-strained under them carefully ranked into their distinct subdivisions; yet he whowould shew the right use of Particles, and what signicancy and force they have,must take a little more pains, enter into his own Thoughts, and observe nicely theseveral Postures of his Mind in discoursing (Locke [1690] 1975: 471472).

1.2. Earlier research

More than 300 years after Lockes attempt to draw attention to the importance of

connectives and to foster their attention with grammarians, we nd that this eld

is still neglected in linguistics.4 In 2003, the compendium on German connectives,

theHandbuch der deutschen Konnektoren, has to state in an almost identical way:

Mit der Wahl dieses Gegenstandsbereiches behandelt das Handbuch Einheiten desdeutschen Wortschatzes [= Konnektoren connectives], die weder in Grammati-ken noch Wrterbchern noch in den texttheoretischen und konversationsanalyti-schen Arbeiten befriedigend beschrieben sind. Wie nicht anders zu erwarten ist,werden in Grammatiken nur die systematischen Eigenschaften der betreffendenEinheiten beschrieben. Dabei stehen dort jedoch traditionell in der Regel semanti-sche Klassenbildungen im Vordergrund (Pasch et al. 2003: xv).

The subject area chosen by the handbook are items of the German vocabulary[= connectors, U. L.] which have neither been satisfactorily described in dictionar-ies, nor in studies on text theory and conversation analysis. As expected, it is onlythe systemic properties of the respective items which are described in grammars.Traditionally, however, these descriptions generally focus on the distinction of vari-ous semantic classes.

This summary testies to a lack of synchronic in-depth studies in the eld of

connectives.5 It is, however, in particular the history of connectives that hasreceived only very little attention. With regard to the history of the Englishlanguage and the establishment of modern English prose, there are only twostudies which explicitly approach this eld diachronically in a wider and sys-tematic perspective:

4 For the rst fuller treatment of connectives in Campbell ([1776] 1963), see below,

Chapter 13.5.4.5 For English, notable exceptions are the very comprehensive studies by Altenberg,in particular Altenberg (1984, 1986).


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Earlier research 3

In a study situated at the interface between literary studies6 and linguistics, Syl-

via Adamson (1999) relates the emergence of new forms of sentential connection

to major changes in literary style and text production in Early Modern England,

namely to the evolution of the plain style as an indicator ofperspicuitas anidea connected with the stylistic ideals of the Royal Society in contrast to earlier,

very different stylistic ideals such as copia (for details, see below, Chapter 13.5).

In the eld of linguistics proper, Bernd Kortmanns study of adverbial subor-dinators (1997), though predominantly concerned with typological and cross-linguistic data (see the material collected in 1997b), also gives a short outlineof the history of adverbial subordinators, one of the most important groups ofconnectives in English. The results of Kortmanns study of the history of sub-ordinators will here be used as a contrastive plane for the comparison with the

ndings for adverbial connectors.7In addition to these more general accounts, there is a small number of stud-

ies examining individual items, concepts and relations in the eld, such asJucker 1997 (well), Enkvist & Wrvik 1987 (OEa; and many further studieson OEa such as, e. g., Kim 1992), Brinton 1996 (on various pragmatic mark-ers), Lenker 2000 (OE solice, witodlice), Lenker 2003, 2007a (forsooth),Markus 2000 (ME wherefore, therefore, etc.), sterman 1997 (there-com-pounds), Rissanen 1999a (rather), Schleburg 2002 (OE swa), Stanley 2000 (OEhwt), Traugott 1997 (after all), Traugott and Dasher 2002 (indeed, in fact) andFischer 2007 (instead; indeed, in fact, solice and witodlice).

The semantic relation analysed most thoroughly is that of concessives whichfeatures prominently in studies of the semantic-pragmatic approach to gram-maticalization (see Knig and Traugott 1982; Knig 1985a, 1985b, 1988; Barth-Weingarten and Couper-Kuhlen 2002). In addition to the still central study on co-hesion in Present Day English by Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are a numberof studies on Present Day English discourse markers, which refer to the historyof some of the adverbial connectors in question (e. g., Schiffrin 1987; Lenk 1998).

With the exception of Halliday and Hasans systematic analysis of conjunctiveelements in Present Day English (1976: 226273), these studies concentrate onsingle connectives or patterns of language change, such as grammaticalization,and do thus not endeavour to provide a comprehensive treatment of connectives.

A more integrated view of clausal connection in the history of English isoffered in most of the papers presented at the workshop Clausal Connection in

6 We also nd some relevant information on connectives scattered over more generalworks on the evolution and establishment of English prose (see, for instance, Muel-

ler 1984, McIntosh 1998 and Robinson 1998).7 The present study is very much indebted to Kortmanns study and was set off by myreview of his book. For the details of the comparison, see in particular Chapter 6.


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4 The framework

the History of English at the 13thInternational Conference on English Historical Linguistics at Vienna in 2003. This workshop was initiated because the con-venors Anneli Meurman-Solin and Ursula Lenker regarded it as a drawback that

the typologies of clause-combining devices in English as well as other Europeanlanguages are widely discussed in recent literature (Devriendt, Goossens, andvan der Auwera 1996; Kortmann 1997; van der Auwera 1998), but have chieybeen construed by using secondary sources such as dictionaries and grammars(for this grammar-cum-dictionary-method, see, e. g., Kortmann 1997: 53).Most of the workshop papers are therefore corpus-based studies of various con-nectives in the history of English, focusing on subordinators (while, lest, since,albeit) or specic semantic domains, such as concessives or conditionals (seeLenker and Meurman-Solin 2007). There is as yet, however, no comprehensive,

corpus-based treatment of adverbial connectors in the history of English.

1.3. Aims of the study

The present study tries to ll at least a segment of this large gap in historical(English) linguistics by corpus-based analyses of the development of a particularword class in connector function namely adverbial connectors, which are alsocalled conjuncts (Quirk et al. 1985) or linking adverbials (Biber et al. 1999).8

The focus of the study therefore rests on the inventory and use of linguistic ele-ments which explicitly mark textual cohesion on a level higher than the phrase.9Even more specically, the focus is on connectives which signal textual organi-zation on a more global level in discourse, i. e. a level higher than the sentence.10

In Lehmanns universal typology of clause linkage (Lehmann 1988), ad-verbial connectors belong together with subordinators and coordinators (i. e.coordinating and subordinating conjunctions) to the little integrated, explicitmarkers of clausal connection (in contrast to embedded constructions, rela-tive connectives, non-nite verb forms, absolute constructions, etc.).11 While

8 For the terminology employed in various grammars, see below, Chapter 3.9 Some of these items can also mark relations on the level of the phrase; these are

only included, however, if they are polyfunctional and if they can also function onthe higher level of textual organization.

10 This position at the interface between the sentence and the text (paragraph) maybe one of the reasons why they are a neglected subject in linguistics. Theories ofsyntax, such as all kinds of generativist approaches and also many functional per-spectives, ignore them because they are above the level of the core sentence.

11 Most of these other strategies fullling a connective function, such as linking bynon-nite constructions (present participles, innitives etc.) extra-textual links andnon-linguistic structuring devices, which are not in the focus of this study, do not play


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Aims of the study 5

the distinction between coordinators, subordinators and adverbial connectorsis rather clear-cut for Modern English,12 it has to be stressed here right at thebeginning of this study that there was no such clear distinction in Old English,

which predominantly uses so-called ambiguous adverbs/conjunctions (fordetails, see below, Chapter 5).This rst of all means that the whole system of clausal connection has been

re-structured in the history of English. While other, in particular typologicallyrelated, languages such as German, show much more stability in the morpho-logical make-up and use of subordinating conjunctions and adverbial connectors,English has only very few remnants of the older Germanic system present inOld English. The Old English inventory mainly consisted of polyfunctional itemscomprising an explicitly deictic element. In addition to forms comprising swa so

(cf. swaeah or swaeahhwere although; nevertheless), we very frequentlynd morphologically complex connectors comprising a pronominal element,such as OEform,foron orfory for, because; therefore (


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6 The framework

in the manifold forms in Early Middle English (ME 1/2). The innovations inthese periods, however, still show symptomatic regular, pronominal patterns,comprising the new demonstratives this and that(cf. additive, reinforcing over

that / over this or resultivefor that / this). Early Middle English thus emerges asa period of experiment and transition, and hence as the rst decisive period forthe re-structuring of the system of adverbial connectors in the history of Eng-lish. This re-structuring also led to the loss of polyfunctionality in connectivesand a distinction between coordinators and subordinators, which will, as oneexemplary case, be followed in the development of the system of causal con-nectives in the history of English in Chapter 9 (i. e. the development ofbecause,since and as in certain positional variants and contexts); the other sections ofthe book focus primarily on adverbial connectors.

1.4. Rhetoric and stylistic aspects: a sample study

The following introductory example of an (unfortunately rather small) experi-ment conducted by Mauranen (1993: 159168) shows that a study of adverbialconnectors cannot be conned to morphological, semantic and syntactic analy-ses. Mauranen presented the following text (Text 1) to a group of English nativespeakers with professional linguistic training. All of the participants worked

as English lecturers at universities or as lectors or revisers for technological re-search reports and were selected because they were considered to be extremelysensitive to language and textual organization.

The subjects were rst invited to read the text and were then, in a secondstep, placed in groups of two and three and asked to come to a group decisionon the following issues: whether the text was correct as it stood, and, secondlyand, more specically, if they felt that connectives should be added in any ofthe sentences.

Text 1 (Mauranen 1993: 164)In a recent study on 5- to 6-year-old children, Astington conrmed that they seea strong link between promising something and actually doing it: To promisemeans you do it. This link is much stronger for children than for adults, whichleads children to assert that an unfullled promise was not a promise, but a lie.For young children promising is not simply a speech act but something that includesexecution of the promised action as well.

It seems likely that children of 5 years or so understand that the use of the wordpromise entails commitment, but this understanding may be based on a simple rule

If you have said I promise then you must do what you said you would. Althoughthe use of the wordpromise may often be a sufcient condition for becoming com-mitted, it is certainly not a necessary condition. It is seldom used in everyday ex-


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Rhetoric and stylistic aspects: a sample study 7

changes between adults, who tend to say I will meet you at 6 oclock, Ill returnyour book tomorrow, and so forth. The commitment, although informal, is binding.

What distinguishes a commitment ( I will return your book) from a statement of

intention (I will stay in tonight) or a prediction of a future event (I will get wet) isthe knowledge that someone else is relying on one to carry out the commitment andthe knowledge that the other person is aware that one has made a commitment. Theinteresting question is whether young children can recognize commitment withoutthe help of the wordpromise. Our aim in this study was to investigate whether child-ren of between 5 and 10 years are aware of reliance as the essential and necessarycondition for commitment.

After having read and discussed Text 1, the groups unanimously concluded thatthe text was good as it stood. They reported that they felt it was clear, easy

to read and that it required no additions (Mauranen 1993: 166). They alsoagreed that no connectives needed to be added at all.

In a second phase, however, the groups were shown the authentic version ofthe text, which had been altered by Mauranen for the rst test phase. For Text1, Mauranen had deleted connectives which were dispensable, i. e. which arenot crucial for the grammatical correctness of the text because they are peri-pheral to the sentence structure and act on a level higher than the local phrase,marking textual cohesion globally. The authentic text (Text 2) with the restoredconnectors reads as follows:

Text 2 (Mauranen 1993: 164)

In a recent study on 5- to 6-year-old children, Astington conrmed that they see astrong link between promising something and actually doing it: To promise meansyou do it. However, this link is much stronger for children than for adults, whichleads children to assert that an unfullled promise was not a promise in the rstplace, but, rather, a lie. In other words, for young children promising is not simplya speech act but something that includes execution of the promised action as well.

It seems likely, then, that children of 5 years or so understand that the use of the

wordpromise entails commitment, but this understanding may be based on a sim-ple rule, such as If you have said I promise then you must do what you said youwould. Although the use of the wordpromise may often be a sufcient conditionfor becoming committed, it is certainly not a necessary condition. Indeed, it isseldom used in everyday exchanges between adults, who tend to say I will meetyou at 6 oclock, Ill return your book tomorrow, and so forth. The commitment,although informal, is nonetheless binding.

What distinguishes a commitment ( I will return your book) from a statement ofintention (I will stay in tonight) or a prediction of a future event (I will get wet) is

the knowledge that someone else is relying on one to carry out the commitmentand, furthermore, the knowledge that the other person is aware that one has madea commitment. The interesting question is, therefore, whether young children can


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8 The framework

recognize commitment without the help of the word promise. Our aim in this studywas to investigate whether children of between 5 and 10 years are aware of relianceas the essential and necessary condition for commitment.

The linguistic elements which had been removed in Text 1 are underlined herefor reasons of transparency. They are spread over the whole text with a ratioof about one deletion per sentence. No deletions were undertaken in the rstand the last sentence of the text, as these sentences set the frame for the textualcohesion of the passage and therefore do not show any employment of connec-tives on the level above the sentence.

After having read the original version with all the connectives restored (Text2), Mauranens subjects were asked to comment on the text again and evaluateit. The immediate reaction of the subjects was that they felt a dramatic differ-ence between the two versions.15 More specically, the emphasis was seen tohave changed, and the text was said to be not only easier to read, but also tobe more logical and more convincing. It was also perceived to have moreauthority (Mauranen 1993: 167168).

The fact that the test groups registered a dramatic difference between thetwo versions of the text with the connectives having an overall effect of mak-ing Text 2 more authoritative, logical and convincing shows that a studyof the history of connectives in English must certainly not be conned to their

etymology, morphology and semantics, but has to be situated at the interfacebetween syntax, semantics, pragmatics, text linguistics and rhetoric. The cen-tral role or even indispensability of these connectives in the construction ofa text, as highlighted by Locke, is corroborated by Mauranens experiment,which also shows that it is necessary to view the employment of these items inthe wider perspective of the evolution of an English prose style. Yet, the prefer-ence of certain means of textual organization and the employment of linkingadverbs as connectives is certainly not the only crucial driving force in thedevelopments of adverbial connectors in the history of English. In Present DayEnglish, for example, an author may choose among the adverbials therefore,thus and hence for marking the semantic relation , and their use indeedexhibits some variability by author: most academic texts show a clear prefer-ence for either thus or therefore, usually using one item at least twice as oftenas the other (Biber et al. 1999: 889). This choice, however, is merely a choice inthe lexical material employed. In both cases, the authors do not choose to markthe organization of the text by coordinating or subordinating conjunctions (because, since, as orfor), but by adverbial connectors. Although some changes

15 For the importance of stylistic considerations, see also Lehmann (1988: 210213).For an early discussion, see Campbell (1776: 384415) and below, Chapter 13.5.4.


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Early Modern and Late Modern English 9

and choices in the use of adverbial connectors may indeed be due to stylisticpredilections of a period or of individual authors (see below, Chapter 13), themore crucial changes in the history of English connectors thus seem to have

been triggered by the typological and structural changes which set English also in this respect apart from other Germanic languages.

1.5. Early Modern and Late Modern English

After the period of experiment and variation in early Middle English, there aretwo further periods which are decisive for shaping the system and the use ofadverbial connectors in English. In Early Modern English (EModE 1/2), when

English develops into an Ausbausprache gradually being used as a nationallanguage also in the written medium, a number of new connectors are formed.In contrast to those coined in the Early Middle English period, however, theseare not replaced again, but for the most part remain in the language until Pres-ent Day English (see Chapter 6.5).

The English of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Late ModernEnglish 2 and 3; 17801850 and 18501920) then sees crucial changes in (a)the preference of adverbial connectors over coordinating conjunctions and theircollocations, and (b) the sentence position of adverbial connectors (see Chapter

13.113.3). Instead of sentence-initial position very often in collocation with aconjunction such as andor butor a connective such asfor, adverbial connec-tors become increasingly used in medial position. This medial position, how-ever, is virtually only found in the written medium and is attested in less than 2.5per cent of instances in the spoken medium (see Biber at al. 1999: 891): it thussets the English of the written medium apart from that of the spoken medium(see Chapter 13.4). In spoken interaction, however, we also nd a new positionfor adverbial connectors: adverbial connectors such as howeverand, in particu-

lar, though are increasingly placed at the very end of a sentence from the middleof the twentieth century onwards. The motivating forces and consequences ofthe sentence-nal positioning of adverbial connectors will be exemplied bya contrastive analysis of the use of PDE although, though, and sentence-nalthough and German obwohl with main clause word order in Chapter 10.5.

1.6. The inventory of adverbial connectors

The present study covers many of the issues suggested by these introductoryexamples. It gives an as complete as possible account of the single-word orlexicalized linguistic items which have been used as adverbial connectors in the


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10 The framework

history of English. Furthermore, it describes their employment as well as theirmeaning and their text structuring and information processing functions in rela-tion to other coordinators, such as coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.

The approach employed is therefore a decidedly diachronic and functionalone. The study is mainly focussed on single-word adverbs because corpus nd-ings for Present Day English show that it is single adverbs which are predomi-nantly employed in this function (Biber et al. 1999: 887, and Figure 10.26), al-though this adverbial linking function may theoretically be realized not only bysingle adverbs, but also by prepositional phrases, such asfor that reason, in otherwords, or on the contrary. The distinction between prepositional phrases andsingle adverbs, however, is, even in Present Day English, by no means clear-cut;in Present Day American English, for example, the lexicalization of the phrase

after all is indicated in its spelling afterall as one word (see OED, s. v. after; 10.):

(1) Afterall, the movement of people, not vehicles, is what counts. (1976Billings [Montana] Gazette 1 July)

Similarly, in Middle English, the phrase at /on /of lastnally is attested as alast(see MED, s. v. a-last). Even longer phrases such as over and above further-more, a popular reinforcing connector in Early Modern English, could be spelt

as a single word hoverendebuv (see OED, s. v. over and above).Furthermore, since many of todays single word items are univerbated and lexi-calized prepositional (e. g.indeed) or verbal (e. g.albeit, howbeit, notwithstanding)

phrases and since a distinction, especially in periods without a xed orthography,

is not unambiguously possible, lexicalized prepositional phrases were included

in the detailed analysis of this book. Only fully transparent, i. e. non-lexicalized

phrases, such as in other words,for that cause, or the sum is, have been excluded

(for the respective morphological and syntactic criteria, see Chapter 7.4).

1.7. The text corpus

The inventories of adverbial connectors of the respective periods were rstgathered by a search in the relevant dictionaries (OED for the history of Eng-lish; CHandBTfor Old English,MED for Middle English and the EMEDDfor Early Modern English) as well as in the grammars of the earlier periods ofEnglish (Mitchell 1985; Mustanoja 1960; Kerkhof 1982; Franz 1939) and of

Present Day English (Quirk et al. 1985; Biber et al. 1999; Huddleston and Pul-lum 2002; Halliday and Hasan 1976). While it was thus possible to gain a goodoverview over the system of adverbial connectors in Old, Middle, Early Mod-


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The text corpus 11

ern and Present Day English, the Late Modern English Period, i. e. the Englishof the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, remained a neglected period.

The OED, for example, whose rst edition was compiled in the nineteenth

century, often does not have special entries for phrases which were at that timenot yet lexicalized or had only recently been lexicalized, such as after all, aboveall, in all events, at any rate (see OED, s.vv. after, all, event, rate). Generally,the varieties of the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century had until re-cently to be described as the Cinderellas of English historical linguistic study(Jones 1989: 279). Although the general interest in the language of an increas-ingly more distant past and the change of emphasis within historical linguisticsto socio-historical and corpus-based approaches has led to a surge of interest inLate Modern English, the more recent publications on the eld (Bailey 1996;

Romaine 1998; Lass 1999; Grlach 1999; Grlach 2001; Beal 2004) do not treattextual cohesion in any detail. This lack of material on Late Modern English,together with the plan to study not only the inventory, but also the changes inuse and position of adverbial connectors in the history of English, created theneed for a diachronic corpus-based approach, including texts from Late Mod-ern English, which are not covered by theHelsinki Corpus of English Texts.

In order to study not only changes in the inventory, but more generally de-velopments in the use of adverbial connectors (also in contrast to conjunctions)

from Old English to Present Day English, the ndings of the present study arebased on a corpus of texts from all periods of English (see Appendix C.1) and,for the quantitative analyses, on two smaller corpora of selected comparabletexts (see Appendix C.2.1. Treatises and Homilies and C.2.2. Translationsof BoethiusDe Consolatione Philosophiae).

The complete corpus is modelled on theHelsinki Corpus, which comprisestexts from the earliest Old English period until 1710 (see Kyt 1996). For theperiods no longer covered by the Helsinki Corpus, I have compiled a corpusin 70-year sub-periods (equivalent to the periods from ME3 to EModE3 of the

Helsinki Corpus) until 1920 (LModE1 from 1710 to 1780, LModE2 from 1780to 1850, LModE3 from 1850 to 1920). For each of these periods, I extracted5,000-word passages from texts of the Project Gutenberg and theLiteratureOnline (LION) collections.16 In order to provide a comparable text basis, the

16 Most of the Late Modern English texts I had selected are now publicly available inthe CLMET(Corpus of Late Modern English Texts), also modelled on theHelsinkiCorpus in its 70-year sub-periods (see De Smet 2005). In Appendix C.1, I only list

the exact sources of these corpus texts which are not part of the CLMET(thesetexts are marked as Project Gutenberg with text number orLIONin appendix C.1).While the CLMETusually gives the full texts, I, as a rule, took the rst ca. 5,000


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12 The framework

selection of texts was guided by the principles of the Helsinki Corpus withrespect to the length of the passages and, as far as possible, the text types (forthe problems concerning text type comparability, see Kohnen 2004: 81128

and below). The target number was 100,000 words per period; furthermore, therespective corpus texts should comprise as many complete texts (e. g. homilies)by as many different authors as possible.17

For a rst survey of the sub-periods and the design of the corpus, see thefollowing table (for details on the texts, see Appendix C.1):

Period Dates Numberof Texts

Words

OE1 850 1 1860OE2 850950 69 48780OE3 9501050 13 76350OE4 10501150 12 34390ME1 11501250 10 73370ME2 12501350 3 1440ME3 13501420 13 100540ME4 14201500 22 136630EModE1 15001570 13 97310

EModE2 15701640 16 108770EModE3 16401710 20 136040LModE1 17101780 13 102890LModE2 17801850 18 99840LModE3 18501920 18 102410PDE 19201990 49 103900

TOTAL 1,224,520

This table shows that the texts which have come down to us do not allow a de-tailed quantitative analysis on a large scale (for the periods from 1150 to 1700,see the detailed account in Kohnen 2004: 81128). Apart from the general

words from these full texts to create a corpus comparable to the texts chosen for theHelsinki Corpus . Page numbers are thus only given when the passages are not takenfrom the beginning of the respective texts.

17 A selection of text as in the BROWN, LOB, F-LOB and FROWN corpora, whichchoose 2,000 words from the beginnings of texts, would not have been suitable for

the present study because certain kinds of adverbial connectors, i. e. listing or, inparticular summative ones, only occur at certain passages of the text as a whole (inthe middle or the end, respectively).


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The text corpus 13

problems of the lack of documents for the periods OE1, OE4, ME1 and ME2,which are a hazard to all corpus studies,18 the present study is confronted witha more specic problem concerning conjunctions and adverbial connectors.

First of all, only prose texts could be chosen because poetry employs verydifferent means of text structuring (see, e. g., Brinton 1996: 6879 on text struc-turing devices such as ME gan + innitive in Chaucers Troilus & Criseyde).More importantly, Present Day English corpus ndings also demonstrate thatadverbial connectors are extremely rare in narrative texts belonging to theLongman Grammars registers and (Biber et al. 1999: 882; seealso Chapter 3.5). In narrative texts, authors often choose to leave the relation-ships unmarked, since relations such as and may be inferredfrom a chronological sequence. Authors of narrative ction even avoid being

too explicit about the relations because they want to keep readers in suspense.Thus the only adverbials which are frequently used in narrative prose are tem-poral circumstance adverbials (Biber et al. 1999: 822), which in particular inthe categories History, Biography, Travelogue or Diaries of the Helsinki Corpus are used as chronological signposts. In the following passagefrom theDiaries of Samuel Pepys, for example, the majority of sentences startwith a temporal adverbial:

(2) 1516 DECEMBER 1666. Lords day. Lay long, talking with my wifein bed. Then up with great content, and to my chamber to set right apicture or two Lovett having sent me yesterday Santa Claras headvarnished, which is very ne. Andnow my closet is so full stored and sone, as I would never desire to have it better. Dined without any strang-ers with me which I do not like on Sundays. Then after dinner by wa-ter to Westminster to see Mrs. Martin, whom I found up in her chamberand ready to go abroad. I sat there with her and her husband and othersa pretty while; and then away to White-hall and there walked up and

down to the Queens side, and there saw my dear Lady Castlemayne,who continues admirable methinks and I do not hear but that the Kingis the same to her still as ever. Anon to chapel, by the Kings closet,

18 There are almost no texts surviving from the earliest period of English (OE1) andthe late thirteenth century (ME2). The texts collected in OE4 are mainly copies oftexts by authors whom we also nd in OE3 (lfric in COTEMPO, COAELHOM,COAELET3, COAEPREF, COAEPREG for OE3 and COAELET4 for OE4; Wul-fstan with COWULF3 for OE3 and COWULF4 and COINSPOL for OE4). The

rst Middle English period (ME1) has some texts which are copies of Old Englishmanuscripts and should denitely be re-allocated to OE3 or OE4 (in particularCMBODLEY, which is typical of Late Old English).


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14 The framework

and heard a very good Anthemne. Then with Lord Brouncker to Sir W.Coventrys chamber, and there we sat with him and talked. He is wearyof anything to do, he says, in the Navy (CEDIAR3A, p. VII, 409).

There is, to take another example, not a single adverbial connector in the 6070word passage taken from John EvelynsDiary (CEDIAR3B). With respect tothe text type categorization of theHelsinki Corpus, we are furthermore con-fronted with the problem that many texts which are labelled as different cat-egories are in fact predominantly narrative in style. See, for example, the fol-lowing passage from theBook of Margery Kempe (which is categorized as aReligious Treatise in the Helsinki Corpus), in which every single sentencestarts with a temporal adverbial (an then, whan when, so long for such a

long time, sithyn then):19

(3) an sche, hauyng trust of hys a-mendyng & compassyon of hys in-rmyte, wyth scharp wordys of correpcyon promysyd to fulllyn hysentent gyf God wolde grawntyn it. Whan sche cam to hir meditacyon,not forgetyng e frute of hir wombe, sche askyd forgeuenes of hys synne& relesyng of e sekenes at owr Lord had gouyn hym gyf it wer hysplesawns & prote to hys sowle. So longe sche preyid at he was clenedelyueryd of e sekenes and leuyd many gerys aftyr & had a wife &

a childe, blissyd mote God ben, for he weddyd hys wife in Pruce inDewchelonde. Whan tydyngys cam to hys modyr fro ouyr e see athir sone had weddyd, sche was ryth glad & thankyd God wyth al hirhert, supposyng & trustyng he xulde leuyn clene & chast as e lawe ofmatrimony askith. Sithyn, whan God wolde, hys wife had a childe, afayr mayde-child. an he sent tydingys to hys modyr in-to Inglond howgracyowsly God had visityd hym & hys wife (CMKEMPE p. I, 223).

Similarly, long narrative passages in which primarily the coordinator andand temporal adverbials are employed are found in many of the private andofcial letters across all periods; for example, in the following passage from aletter by Margaret Paston to her husband John:

(4) And Jamys Gloys come with his hatte on his hede betwen bothe his men,as he was wont of custome to do. And whanne Gloys was a-yenst Wy-

19 Similarly, in her Revelations of Divine Love also categorized as a Religious

Treatise Julian of Norwich virtually only uses the coordinators and, forandbut(CMJULNOR). Only the following adverbial connectors are employed (tokencounts): therefore (4), wherefore (1),furthermore (1), nevertheless (1).


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The text corpus 15

mondham he seid us, Couere thy heed! and Gloys seid ageyn, So Ishall for the. Andwhanne Gloys was forther passed by e space of iijor iiij strede, Wymondham drew owt his dagger and seid, Shalt ow so,

knave? And erwith Gloys turned hym and drewe owt his dagger And anne Haweys ran into Wymondhams place and feched a spere anda swerd, and toke his maister his swerd. And with e noise of is a-sautand affray my modir and I come owt of e chirche from e sakeryng;and I bad Gloys go in to my moderis place ageyn, and so he dede. Andthanne Wymondham called my moder and me strong hores, and seid ePastons and alle her kyn were (1448, 19 MAY; CMPRIV, p. 223).

These test analyses for the respective periods show that the paucity of adverbial

connectors found for the Present Day English category is also attestedfor the earlier periods of English, mainly in texts labelled History, Bio-graphy, Lives, Fiction, Travelogue, or Diaries. Apart from a few sampletexts (see above, and Appendix C.1), these were not analysed because they onlyuse very few, if any, tokens of adverbial connectors.

This means that a large number of the texts which have survived from theOld and Middle English period (in particular passages from Bible translations,Chronicles and Saints Lives) had to be excluded. Furthermore, texts which

obviously did not t their respective categories were excluded from the quan-titative parts of the present study. Generally, text type consistency and compa-rability is one of the most problematic issues in diachronic corpus linguistics.In his study of English participle and gerund constructions from 1100 to 1700,which had set out to correlate the respective occurrences with text-type pat-terns, Kohnen shows in a detailed analysis of the texts and their contexts that only a certain number of texts of theHelsinki Corpus can be employedfor comparable analyses of patterns according to text types (see Kohnen 2004:81128; as a result, his corpus consists of Chronicles, Religious Treatises,

Homilies, Laws/Documents, Narrative Prose and Private Letters).The main text type chosen for the present analysis are thus argumentative

texts with their focus of attention on what is commonly called academic orscientic language (Biber et al. 1999), i. e. homilies or religious, philosophi-cal, educational, and literary treatises, some of which also allow more detailedquantitative analyses (for the principles of selection, see the introduction toAppendix C.2). This choice of texts causes another well-known problem forthe historical analysis: there are not only few texts of this type extant from ear-lier periods of English, but most of them are translations from Latin or French.For the earliest periods of English, there are thus solely some Prefaces(COPREFCP, COAEPREF, COAEPREG, CMPURVEY, CMCAXPRO) and


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16 The framework

some of the Letters (COAELET3, COAELET4, CMPRIV, CMOFFIC3,CMOFFIC4) which are relatively free from foreign inuence.20

1.8. Presentation of corpus ndings

The ndings of the study are summarized in Appendices A.1 (Adverbial Con-nectors: Items) and A.2 (Alphabetical Index of Adverbial Connectors) andAppendix B (to be found on the accompanying CD-ROM). Appendix A1 pro-vides a synopsis of all the linguistic items which have been used as adverbialconnectors in the history of English in alphabetical order. The data collectedin this appendix have served as the basis for analysing the developments in theinventories of adverbial connectors from Old English to Modern English inChapters 6 to 12.

Appendix B more specically lists the occurrences of adverbial connectorsin the corpus texts. For each semantic category B.1 , B.2 -, B.3 /, B.4 /, B.5 therelevant adverbial connectors are listed alphabetically. The respective entriesfor the individual connectors then give the precise text and the sub-periods inwhich the items occur in adverbial connector function. An idea about quanti-ties, i. e. of the number of the occurrences in the respective text, is signalled by

different fonts: underlining indicates that the item occurs more than ve timesper 5,000 words in the text, bold type shows that it occurs more than 20 times.

This presentation of data records the rst occurrence of the respective itemin a corpus text, but, more importantly, allows insights into the use and fre-quency of the individual adverbial connectors over time as well as in specicsub-periods. It furthermore highlights genre-specic uses of individual con-nectors. To allow a more detailed analysis of their use, the entries also listinformation on attested collocations with coordinators or other adverbial con-nectors (e. g. and furthermore or but yet nevertheless) and on the position of theadverbial connector in the sentence; for each item, initial, post-rst, medial andnal position are recorded (for the relevance of these positions, see Chapters5.5 [post-rst-position], 10.5 [nal position] and 13 [medial position and col-locations]. Since the study will obviously not discuss the developments of all ofthe individual connectors in detail (most of which would merit a monograph),some illustrative examples will show how this appendix is used in the presentstudy and how it could be exploited for further research.

20 All corpus ndings have been cross-checked and supplemented by analyses of themachine-readable corpora, theDictionary of Old English Corpus (DOEC) and theCorpus of Middle English Prose and Verse (CME).


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Presentation of corpus ndings 17

In the section for additive (reinforcing) adverbial connectors (AppendixB.1.2), we see in the entry for overmore furthermore that it was only used intexts of the two later sub-periods of Middle English. It is only found clause-ini-

tially; in one text, it is attested in collocation with the conjunction and, i. e. andovermore.

overmore Additive (Reinforcing)ME3 CMDOCU3, CMAELR3ME4 CMOFFIC4Collocations: and overmore

ME3 CMAELR3

Eftand eftsona also, furthermore, on the other hand, were only used in the

Old and Early Middle English period.eft Additive (Reinforcing) also; furthermore

OE2 COLAECEOE3 COQUADRU, COAELHOM, COBENRUL, COAE LET3,

COAEPREGOE4 COLAW4, COLACNU, COAELET4ME1 CMPERIDI, CMBODLEYME2 CMAYENBI

Collocations: and eft

OE2 COCURAME1 CMPERIDI, CMVESHOM, CMTRINIT,CMLAMBET, CMBODLEY, CMVICES1

ac eftOE2 COCURA

eftsona Additive (Equative Reinforcing) moreover, likewiseME1 CMPERIDI, CMTRINIT

Collocations: and eftsona

ME1 CMPERIDIEftand eftsona are also found in collocations with the coordinator and, butalso with ac but. In two texts COLAECE and CMPERIDI they occurmore than twenty times per 5,000 words, as indicated by the bold font. Boththese texts are medical handbooks (theLaeceboc and a Middle English hand-book entitled Peri Didaxeon) in which sentence-initial eftand eftsona are usedto list alternative medications for specic illnesses:

(5) Eft sona wi gif eo ylca adle cilde eggelic. on geogee; Nim garluces And eft sona gif a wunda toinda. Nim fyrs & cnuca hine. & legeuppa at geswollene (CMPERIDI, p. 89).


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18 The framework

Furthermore against if the same illness harms a child in its youth.Take garlic And furthermore, if the wounds swell up. Take brambleand pound it and put it on the swelling .

This also shows that a large-scale, strictly quantitative comparison is not sen-sible for the subject in question. The extract from the Laeceboc, for example,which consists of 10,420 words, only uses six different types of connectiveitems: the conjunctions and(2 tokens) and ac (4 tokens), the adverbial connec-tors eac furthermore (5 tokens), onne therefore, then and eah neverthe-less (1 token each) compared to 6 tokens ofand eftand 46 tokens ofeft. Thenumbers are similar for the Peri Didaxeon (22 tokens ofeft sona vs. 13 tokensofandand 2 offoran therefore).

A similar restriction to genres and uneven distribution is, for example, at-tested for the loan item furthermore:

item Additive (Reinforcing)ME3 CMEQUATOME4 CMDOCU4, CMREYNES, CMPRIVEModE1 CELAW1

This reinforcing adverbial connector is as its entry illustrates only attested

in Handbooks, Laws, Statutes and Documents (mainly wills) in the LateMiddle English and Early Modern English sub-periods, often in lists. See, forinstance, the following passage taken from An Act against deceyptfull mak-ing of wollen cloth:

(6) Fyrst That the Wolle whiche shalbe delyvered for or by the Clothier toany persone or persones for brekyng kembyng cardyng or spyernyng ofthe same the delyvere therof shalbe And that the breker or kember todelyver agayn to the seid Clothier Item that the Wever whiche shall

have the wevyng of eny wollen yerne to be webbed into cloth shall wevewerk Item that no maner persone bye eny coloured Wolle or colouredwollen Yerne of eny Carder Spynner or Wever Item that the Walkerand Fuller shall truely walke fulle thikke Item that the Clothier norother persone whatsoever he be after the fest of Midsomer next cuerm-yng shall not put eny cloth to sale Item that the byer of Wollen clothesdenysen or alyen after the byeng therof shall not drawe nor cause to bedrawen in lenght (CELAW1, p. III, 28).

Since texts like these would distort a quantitative investigation based on thewhole of the texts analyzed for this study, only a sub-set of comparative texts


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Presentation of corpus ndings 19

was used for the more detailed analysis concerning collocations and word or-der frequencies in Chapter 13 (for these texts, see Appendix C.2).

Apart from information on genre patterns, the survey in Appendix B also

allows ndings on the popularity of individual adverbial connectors in specicsub-periods. Reinforcing also, which has been attested since the Old Englishperiod (OE eall-swa all so) was not found as an adverbial connector intexts of the Late Modern English period:

also Additive (Reinforcing)OE3 COBYRHTF, COTEMPOOE4 COAELET4ME1 CMTRINIT, CMLAMBET, CMANCR, CMVICES1ME2 CMAYENBI

ME3 CMDOCU3, CMASTRO, CMHORSES, CMPHLEBO,CMCTPROS, CMWYCSER, CMAELR, CMPURVEY,CMOFFIC3

ME4 CMLAW, CMDOCU4, CMREYNES, CMCHAULI,CMROYAL,CMINNOCE, CMAELR4, CMKEMPE, CMHILTON,CMROLLTR, CMPRIV, CMOFFIC4

EModE1 CELAW1, CESCIE1A, CESCIE1B, CEEDUC1A, CEEDUC1B,CEBOETH1, CEPRIV1, CETRI1

EModE2 CELAW2, CEHAND2B, CESCIE2A, CESCIE2B,

CEEDUC2A,CETRI2A

EModE3 CESCIE3B, CEBOETH3, CEPRIV3, CEAUTO3PDE FROWN-D

Interestingly, the OED states that also generally, i. e. also in other functions,was [n]ot common in 16th c.; Shakes., according to Schmidt, has it only 22times (OED, s. v. also, Etymology; for a more detailed analysis of this restric-tion and its causes, see below, Chapter 11).

A further example illustrating the design and, more importantly, the resultsfrom the data analysis provided in Appendix B, is given by the entry for theconcessive/contrastive adverbial connector though, which illustrates the dis-continuous path of this connective (Appendix B.4).

though Contrastive/Concessive (OEeah/ MEeh)OE2 COLAECE, COBOETHOE3 COQUADRUOE4 CODICTS, COINSPOLME1 CMVESHOM, CMBODLEY, CMLAMBET, CMANCR,

CMHALIME3 CMASTROEModE1 CESCIE3A


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20 The framework

eah/eh, second positionOE2 COBOETH, COCURAOE3 COTEMPO, COWULF3, COBENRUL, COAELET3OE4 COLAW4, CODICTS, COINSPOL, COPREFSOME1 CMSAWLES, CMHALI

though, second position in questionsEModE1 CEHAND2A, CEBOETH2

though, medial positionPDE FROWN-D

This entry shows that though as an adverbial connector was used in a widevariety of texts in the Old and Early Middle English periods (OE, ME1). It is

attested as an adverb in later Middle and Early Modern English, but only in alimited number of texts and in very specic contexts (questions). In the corpustexts, a use as an adverbial connector is not recorded in any of the texts fromLate Modern English. By contrast, al(though) has been common as a subordi-nator in all periods of English (see OED, s. v. though, II). This shows that thereis no unidirectional path ofthough from adverb to conjunction (as grammati-calization theories would suggest), but rather a zigzag path from ambiguousadverb/conjunction to conjunction to (a) initially placed conjunction and (b)medially or nally placed adverb (see below, Chapter 10.5). This path is neither

evident from the entry in the OED nor from other meta-linguistic texts, butonly emerges as a result of the analysis of the corpus material.

1.9. Outline of the present study

Chapters 2 to 4 prepare the ground for the ensuing analyses by summarizing themain ndings of previous and contemporary scholarship on clause linkage andthe classication of connectives (Chapter 2), and on the problems of the clas-

sication and hierarchy of the word class adverb (Chapter 3). In this context,Chapter 3.5 summarizes those corpus ndings for contemporary English adver-bial connectors in theLongman Grammarwhich are relevant for their history.In an excursus on earlier meta-linguistic thought, Chapter 4 gives an account ofthe treatment of conjunctions and adverbial connectors and their status until thetimes of Locke and the Scottish Rhetoricians, who, as is mentioned above, arethe rst to explicitly accept adverbial connectors as a separate class.

The main part of the study (Chapters 5 to 13) then provides an in-depth treat-ment of adverbial connectors in the respective historical periods of English.For an understanding of the distinctive developments English has undergonein its history, it is important to lay a foundation by describing the system of


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Outline of the present study 21

clausal connection in Old English (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 the heart of thepresent study summarizes the general patterns in the diachrony of adver-bial connectors and contrasts their long-term developments with the changes in

other connectives, i. e. coordinators and subordinators. The divergent historiesof adverbial connectors and subordinators are then examined in more detail inChapters 7 to 10. Chapter 7 analyses the morphology of adverbial connectors(in particular the innovations coined after the loss of pronominal connectors).Chapter 8 then summarizes the ndings on innovations from the cognitivesource domains and / which have been crucial in the coin-age of English adverbial connectors from Middle English onwards. In a moredetailed investigation, Chapter 8.4 establishes the source domain /for adverbial connectors signalling the relation . Chapters 9 to 12

then concentrate on the individual semantic relations: these investigations be-gin with an analysis of developments in the -relations (, /) because they in contrast to the more supercial changes in therelations and (Chapters 1112) also mirror structuraland typological changes. Chapter 13 then resumes the topic of the inuences ofdifferent schools of rhetoric, in particular the impact of the ideas of John Lockeand the Scottish Rhetoricians.

In all of the chapters, overarching principles of long-term developments

in language change will be addressed along the following key questions: Arethere recurrent patterns of change which affect the individual connectors? Arethere different patterns for the different semantic relations? Do the changes inthe system of adverbial connectors correspond to more general cross-linguisticpatterns in language change, such as principles of iconicity or grammaticaliza-tion clines? Do the changes, more particularly, correspond to general tenden-cies in the typological history of English and the expansion of the English lexi-con? And nally, to what extent are it stylistic or rhetorical preferences whichhave directed the paths of change rather than more deeply-rooted typological

properties of English?


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2. Clausal connection

2.1. Clausal connection

Clausal connection which can basically be dened as a relation of depen-dency or sociation between clauses (Lehmann 1988: 182) is one of the keybuilding blocks of language in use. It is thus a subject which relates not onlyto syntactic, but also to a wide range of semantic, pragmatic and, most im-portantly, textlinguistic phenomena. Traditionally, a rst distinction is drawnbetween asyndetic (or unlinked) and syndetic (or linked) clausal connection.1

Asyndetic connection is not overtly marked (the standard quoted example isCaesars veni, vidi, vici I came, saw, conquered). It is much rarer than syn-detic linkage, usually stylistically marked and used, for instance, for dramaticintensication (Quirk et al. 1985: 918; category I in Raible 1992).

Thus, cross-linguistic accounts base their classication of clause linkage onthe absence or presence of an explicit linking device; see, for instance, Leh-manns criterion isolation vs. linkage (Lehmann 1988: 210213; subsectionexplicitness of linking). In Raibles scheme of the dimension of linkage as

realisation from aggregation to integration (cf. the title of Raible 1992:Junktion Eine Dimension der Sprache und ihre Realisierungsformen zwischenAggregation und Integration), explicit linkers are used in categories II to IV(diagram on the inserted foldout): category II Junktion durch Wiederaufnah-me (eines Teils) des vorhergehenden Satzes (Linkage by resumption of (apart of) the preceding sentence), category III Explizit verknpfte Hauptst-ze (Explicitly linked main clauses) and category IV Verknpfung durchsubordinierende Konjunktionen (Linkage by subordinating conjunctions).Syndetic connection is thus characterized by the use of overt signals, such

as clause-integrated linkage (Thats why; The result was ) or prepositionalphrases (because of). Most frequently, however, connectives such as con-junctions or adverbial connectors are used.2

1 The following summary rests on Quirk et al. 1984: chapters 1315, Altenberg 1984,Biber et al 1999: chapters 10 and 11. For overall conceptions of clausal linkagecomprising all kinds of non-explicit linking options, such as non-nite construc-tions, the ablative absolute, etc., see Lehmann 1988 and Raible 1992.

2 For corpus ndings for Present Day English, see Altenberg 1984 and 1986 (for

causal and contrastive/concessive connection) and Biber 1999: chapter 10.4 (for allkinds of linking adverbials). These studies are summarized and discussed below inChapters 3.5, 9.2.2 and 10.5.


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Connectors connects: denitions 23

2.2. Connectors connects: denitions

The most recent, comprehensive study of connectors in Present Day German by

a project group at theInstitut fr deutsche Sprache at Mannheim, the 800-pageHandbuch der deutschen Konnektoren, denes connectors by the followingve properties (M = Merkmal property; Pasch et al. 2003: 16 and a renedversion on 331334):

M1 x ist nicht ektierbar(x is not inectable)

M2 x vergibt keine Kasusmerkmale an seine syntaktische Umgebung (xdoes not govern case)

M3 die Bedeutung von x ist eine zweistellige Relation (x signals a two-placesemantic relation)

M4 die Argumente der Bedeutung von x sind propositionale Strukturen(the arguments of the meaning of x are propositional structures)

M5 die Relate der Bedeutung von x mssen Satzstrukturen sein knnen(the elements linked by x may be expressed by sentential structures).

Basically, these characteristics of connectors are generally agreed on in theliterature (see, e. g., also Raible 1992: diagram on inserted foldout). Insteadof classications focussing on Present Day English (such as Quirk et al. 1985:chapter 13 or Biber et al. 1999: chapters 10 and 11), these specic criteria werechosen as the basis of the present investigation because the diachronic accountrequires a system which is transferable to earlier periods of the English lan-guage. Since Old English is typologically more similar to Modern Germanthan to Modern English, the criteria of theHandbuch der deutschen Konnektoren provide a solid basis for comparison.

In the following section, I will briey introduce those points of differentia-tion from other parts of speech such as prepositions, disjuncts or modal par-ticles which are essential for an understanding of the diachrony of Englishconnectors.

M1 is a morphological criterion which groups connectors together with otherindeclinable items such as prepositions.3 Connectors may, of course, have theirorigin in case forms, such as in a genitival -es, which is attested in PDE else (< OEelles) or by way of analogy in besides (OE be sidan) and hence (OE heonan);

3 In the Greek and Latin tradition, all indeclinable items were called particles; seethe quote from Locke above, p. 1, and below, Chapter 3.5.


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24 Clausal connection

these forms, however, were petried and are now indeclinable in their uses asconnectors. In earlier stages of English, we regularly also nd pronominal con-nectors, similar to PDG deshalb or demnach therefore. In Old English, these

consist of, for instance, a preposition and the case form (mainly dative or instru-mental) of a demonstrative, such as OEform (< prepositionfor + dative m)or OEforon andfory (< prepositionfor+ instrumentalon ory). Analyzingthese forms, it is important to differentiate full prepositional phrases, such asPDE because of this, from genuine connectors, such as PDE because or therefore.

For this differentiation, M2 is formulated as the syntactic criterion distin-guishing prepositions which govern a particular case from connectors,which do not govern case. This criterion is, however, only rarely applicableto English after the Old English period, when English had given up case (and

gender) distinctions in articles and demonstratives.M3 is a semantic property which differentiates connectors from other sen-

tence adverbials, such as the epistemicprobably,perhaps or stance adverbialssuch as frankly. These also have a scope extending over the whole sentence,but they modify this sentence only and unlike connectors do not relate twoclauses or even larger portions of text (for details on different classes of ad-verbs, see below, Chapter 3). They do thus not qualify as organizers of textualstructure. Connectors have to signal a two-place relation.

M4 and M5 are properties augmenting M3. They contrast connectors, again,from prepositions and also from coordinators on the phrase level. Prepositionsmay also be seen to relate two items, such as tree and house in a sentence likePDE the tree in front of the house, but they do not relate propositions or clauses.

M5 in particular distinguishes prototypical connectors from coordinators,such as andand or. Coordinators are not always connectors in the sense of thepresent study because they may also combine elements on the phrase level, asin Peter and / or Mary (were sitting in front of the house). There are, however,also classications, which propose a gradient of connectors, ranging from co-

ordinators to subordinators. The Comprehensive Grammar(Quirk et al. 1985:923-924) for example, explicitly states that coordinators can link clause con-stituents; such a gradient, however, is not suitable for the present account,which only deals with connection on the clausal or textual level.4 Wheneverthe present study wants to stress this fact of a two-place relation on the levelabove the phrase, the clauses or parts of text connected will be referred to as

4 According to M5 of the Handbuch, the sentences connected have to comprise

a nite verb or have at least to be able to comprise a nite verb. The restriction toclauses containing a nite verb is only applicable to earlier periods of English, butnot to Present Day English, which allows non-nite clauses.


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Connectors 25

connect(s), a term (PDG Konnekt) coined for theHandbuch der deutschenKonnektoren (Pasch et al. 2003).

2.3. Connectors: coordinating conjunctions, subordinating

conjunctions, adverbial connectors

By these ve criteria we can establish three different kinds of connectors, a dif-ferentiation which is also basically agreed on in the literature: coordinating con-junctions (working on the clausal/textual level, not on the phrasal level; see M4and M5), subordinating conjunctions (subordinators), and adverbial con-nectors (Quirk et al. 1985 conjuncts, Biber et al. 1999 linking adverbials).

The present study focuses on adverbial connectors. As the system of ad-verbial connection has changed so dramatically since the Old English period,it is, however, necessary to summarize the main syntactic and text-linguisticproperties of the other types here in some detail. Virtually all of todays ad-verbial connectors are new coinages or have undergone some morphologicaland structural change. One of the natural paths was the transfer from one ofthe other classes of connectors: compare, for example, the use of the PresentDay English subordinators albeitand howbeitas adverbial connectors in theEarly Modern English period. Since Old English is typologically much closer

to Modern German than to Modern English, the following section will exem-plify the relevant issues not only by material taken from Present Day Eng