Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Online First

The Early Modern Dutch writer D.V. Coornhert (1522–1590) was an influential figure in the key religious and linguistic developments of his times. Bringing together these two facets and combining both a linguistic (pragmatics/discourse studies and semantics) and a literary studies (rhetoric) approach, this intra-author variation study examines Coornhert’s use of have-doubling constructions (e.g., have had written) alongside simple perfects (e.g., have written). At the macro-level, we show that have-doubling was restricted to Coornhert’s argumentative and predominantly moral – theological prose. At the micro-level, we then firstly link Coornhert’s have-doubling to the well-studied double perfect of modern German which has been proposed to signal the absence of current relevance and have emphasis functions. Secondly, connecting these observations with the pragmatics of verb – tense variation, this article proposes that have-doubling parallels the historical present in functioning as a stance marker/evaluative device in Coornhert’s moral – theological prose.

This study analyses variation and change in Uruguayan Spanish address between formal (usted) and informal variants (tú, vos). It focusses on address representations in children’s literature written between 1918 and 1973 – foundational texts that helped consolidate national identity. Our study answers the following questions: (a) What were the most frequent pronominal and verbal address forms employed in early Uruguayan children’s literature? (b) What were their pragmatic and stylistic contexts of use? And (c) To what extent did those forms and uses differ from their contemporary counterparts? The second-person pronouns and verbs from eleven children’s books were analysed quantitatively to establish frequencies. We found that early children’s literature presented usted and tú as the urban norm. Vernacular vos was practically absent until the 1940s, and afterwards it was found only in specific constrained contexts. This differs markedly from contemporary literature for children, which favours voseo and reflects orality quite accurately.

General extenders (ges) are elements such as and so forth occurring at the right periphery. On the referential level, they implicate a set, but they also serve a range of discourse-pragmatic functions, such as hedging and interpersonal relations. Some sociolinguistic studies have seen the development of ges as synchronic grammaticalization involving phonetic reduction, decategorialization, semantic bleaching and pragmatic enrichment, but other studies have found no evidence of ongoing grammaticalization. Historical studies of ges are few. This paper sets out to fill this gap by studying the rise of disjunctive, adjunctive and bare ges formed with what – (or/and) what you will, or what, or/and what else, (or) whatever, (or/and) what not and (or/and) what have you. Despite their apparent similarity, these are shown to have quite different sources and histories. Their development conforms to some of the recognized parameters of grammaticalization but is more fruitfully understood from a constructionist approach.

Building on Goldberg’s ( 2006 : 52) observation regarding the existence of “a family of related constructions in English” centred around the verb go, this article explores the history of the construction exemplified in the title (“Don’t go getting into trouble again!”) and its relation to other members of the network of go-constructions. The analysis, conducted using three large corpora, shows that the Go VPing construction emerges from two source constructions (one with an –ing participle following the verb go and the other with an infinitive) which exhibit overlap in terms of certain aspects of their form and meaning. From its earliest attestations in the eighteenth century, the Go VPing construction has grown increasingly more interpersonal, and has become conventionalized as a marker of admonitive mood ( Bybee et al. 1994 : 321) which serves to dissuade or limit the performance of an activity that is apprehended as undesirable and counter-normative.