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6 - Comment clauses with see

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2009

Laurel J. Brinton
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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Summary

Introduction

Despite being widely mentioned as a pragmatic marker in Present-day English, the comment clauses (as/so) you see and see receive scant treatment in the scholarly literature. Only one book (Erman 1987) contains a full-length treatment of you see in Present-day English, and the history of the form receives brief treatment in Fitzmaurice (2004). This chapter begins with a review of the function of you see-type comment clauses in Present-day English (§6.2). It then turns to the rise of these forms in the history of English, focusing first on (as/so) you see (§6.3) and then on see (§6.4). Section 6.5 discusses the relation of the different forms and accounts for their development syntactically and semantically; a comparison of related forms in Swedish is included (§6.5.1). The chapter ends with a discussion of the grammaticalization of the forms (§6.5.2).

You see, as/so you see, and see in Present-day English

You see

Typical instances of you see in Present-day English are illustrated below from a variety of dialects:

  1. (1) a. That was his tragedy you see, to have failed at so many things, when he might have been the best at this one thing (1986 Kidman, “The Whiteness,” Landfall 40.2 [WC]).

  2. b. He simply does not have the money to drink. Your grandma controls the purse strings now, you see (1986 Cordner, The Mavis Singing: The Story of an Australian Family [ACE]).

  3. c. I found all this uniquely reassuring. Everyone knew his place, you see (1991 Lee, “Once upon a Time in the Park,” Interzone [FLOB]).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Comment Clause in English
Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development
, pp. 133 - 161
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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  • Comment clauses with see
  • Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book: The Comment Clause in English
  • Online publication: 12 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511551789.006
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  • Comment clauses with see
  • Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book: The Comment Clause in English
  • Online publication: 12 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511551789.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Comment clauses with see
  • Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book: The Comment Clause in English
  • Online publication: 12 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511551789.006
Available formats
×