Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: comment clauses, parentheticals, and pragmatic markers
- 2 Semantic and syntactic development of pragmatic markers
- 3 Processes of change
- 4 Comment clauses with say
- 5 I mean
- 6 Comment clauses with see
- 7 If you will and as it were
- 8 Comment clauses with look
- 9 What's more and what else
- 10 Epistemic/evidential parentheticals – I gather and I find
- 11 Concluding remarks
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
7 - If you will and as it were
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: comment clauses, parentheticals, and pragmatic markers
- 2 Semantic and syntactic development of pragmatic markers
- 3 Processes of change
- 4 Comment clauses with say
- 5 I mean
- 6 Comment clauses with see
- 7 If you will and as it were
- 8 Comment clauses with look
- 9 What's more and what else
- 10 Epistemic/evidential parentheticals – I gather and I find
- 11 Concluding remarks
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Language may be regarded as a vast body of water, an ocean if you will, with rivers, streams, rivulets pouring into it (Cohen 2005; emphasis LJB).
Introduction
This chapter examines the development of two comment clauses deriving from adverbial clauses, that is, belonging to Quirk et al.'s (1985) second type of comment clause. Both serve a metalinguistic function, denoting that the speaker views the accompanying expression as imprecise, inappropriate, or unusual in some sense. The chapter begins with an examination of the pragmatic functions of these expressions in Present-day English (§7.2). The histories of these expressions will follow: as it were derives from Old English (§7.4), whereas if you will is of much newer provenance (§7.3). Section 7.6 discusses the semantic and syntactic developments of these comment clauses.
If you will and as it were in Present-day English
Neither as it were nor if you will receive in-depth attention in grammars and dictionaries of contemporary English. The OED (s.v. will v.1, def. BI17) notes that parenthetical if you will is sometimes used “to qualify a word or phrase” and carries the sense ‘if you wish it to be so called, if you choose or prefer to call it so.’ It provides examples dating from Old English to the late nineteenth century. Webster's online (s.v. will) glosses if you will as ‘if you wish to call it that.’ The OED observes that parenthetical as it were (see as adv. [conj. and rel. pron.], def.
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- Information
- The Comment Clause in EnglishSyntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development, pp. 162 - 183Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008