RT Journal Article
SR Electronic(1)
A1 Blanco-Suárez, Zeltia
A1 Serrano-Losada, Mario
YR 2017
T1 The rise and development of parenthetical needless to say: An assumed evidential strategy
JF Journal of Historical Linguistics
VO 7
IS 1
SP 134
OP 159
DO https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.7.1-2.06bla
PB John Benjamins
SN 2210-2116,
AB The article traces the diachronic development of the assumed evidential needless to say. This parenthetical expression allows the speaker to make certain assertions regarding the obviousness of what s/he is about to say, thus serving as an evidential strategy that marks the information conveyed as being based on inference and/or assumed or general knowledge. Parenthetical needless to say has its roots in the Early Modern English needless to-inf construction (meaning ‘it is unnecessary to do something’), which originally licensed a wide range of infinitives. Over the course of time, however, it became restricted to uses with utterance verbs, eventually giving rise to the grammaticalized evidential expression needless to say. In fact, it is only in Late Modern English that the evidential pragmatic inferences become conventionalized and that the first parenthetical uses of the construction are attested. In Present-day English, parenthetical needless to say occurs primarily at the left periphery with forward scope.,
UL https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jhl.7.1-2.06bla