Last I heard: on the use of evidential last I fragments

This study investigates fragments of the type last I heard/checked based on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which shows a steep increase in frequency for this construction in recent decades. Syntactically, ‘last I fragments’ are disjuncts that are positionally mobile with resp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:English language and linguistics 2024-09, Vol.28 (3), p.589-612
Main Authors: MUSTAFA, OZAN, KALTENBÖCK, GUNTHER
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjuncts
American English
Cocaine
Discourse functions
Ellipsis
Evidentiality
Heroin
Semantics
Syntactic structures
Syntax
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Summary:This study investigates fragments of the type last I heard/checked based on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which shows a steep increase in frequency for this construction in recent decades. Syntactically, ‘last I fragments’ are disjuncts that are positionally mobile with respect to their host clause and their ‘elliptical’ form can be linked to different ‘full’ forms, viz. specificational sentences and temporal adjuncts. Functionally, their underlying evidential meaning gives rise to different, more specific discourse functions depending on contextual use: viz. downtoner, booster and ironic use. A comparison with unreduced (full) forms shows that these fragments are more likely to have evidential meaning, with reduced form thus acting as an important functional signal. Finally, it is argued that their grammatical status is best captured by a constructional account, which identifies them as constructionalizing units, rather than a simple ellipsis account.
ISSN:1360-6743
1469-4379
DOI:10.1017/S1360674324000297