Think in Old and Middle English
Kolbe-Hanna, Daniela
Trier University
D'hoedt, Frauke
KU Leuven
Cuyckens, Hubert
KU Leuven
English comment clauses, i.e. clauses expressing “speaker attitude or stance” (Brinton 2008: 241),
have been the subject of a wealth of research, particularly relating to the grammaticalisation of the
comment clause I think (e.g., Brinton 1996: 212-254, 2008; Stenström 1995; Thompson & Mulac
1991a,b; van Bogaert 2011). The purpose of the present paper is to examine comment clause uses
involving the verbal predicate THINK. The comment clause function/use of I think is illustrated in
examples (2) and (3), ), where think can be paraphrased as “the speaker holding an opinion, judging,
considering” (see OED, think v.2 III) and thus expresses speaker attitude/stance towards the main
proposition. While traditional wisdom has it that this use as a comment clause presupposes semantic
bleaching (see, e.g. Brinton 2008: 49-51) of the “original, lexical” meaning ‘to hold in the mind’, the
distinction is not straightforward. Indeed, the difference between lexical and comment clause usage
of sentence-initial I think as in (1) is discernible at the level of prosody only (see, e.g. Kaltenböck
2008, Dehé & Wichmann 2010). Our claim is thus that think in its comment function is not bleached
to such an extent that it differs substantially in meaning from lexical think in a matrix clause.
(1) I think exercise is really beneficial, to anybody. (Thompson & Mulac 1991: 313)
(2) Exercise is, I think, really beneficial to anybody.
(3) Exercise is really beneficial, to anybody, I think.
Moreover, considering that think in its comment function can be found from as early as Old English
(cf. (4)), it appears that the comment function is a meaning intrinsic to think, both in initial matrix
clause position (see (1) above) and in parenthetical position (4).
(4) Rogcer […] gaderade his folc þan cyngce to unþearfe—he þohte—ac hit wearð heom seolfan
to mycclan hearme. (OED, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)
‘Roger gathered his folk to the king’s detriment—he thought—but it came to be much harm
to himself’. ( stance towards the truth value of the proposition: Roger thought/believed he
was taking actions to the king’s detriment, but the speaker comments that in fact he didn’t)
Our aim is to present a detailed diachronic study of the uses of THINK expressing speaker
stance/opinion and the distribution of these comment uses in the various possible positions in the
sentence (initial, medial, final). From the Leuven English Old to New (LEON) corpus, which comprises
over three million words from Old to Early Modern English, we have extracted all instances of þencan
(and later forms) to investigate this semantic and syntactic development. In this way, we also hope to
provide more insight to the role of semantic bleaching in the grammaticalisation of I think.
Keywords: comment clause, grammaticalization, semantic bleaching
References
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