Pragmatic marker i pray in middle english written monuments

Abstract

The article deals with the variations of predicative pragmatic marker I pray yow / thee. The linguistic material is taken from the texts that were written in XIV-XV centuries by English authors and created in different genres (plays, ballades, visions, confessions, etc.) containing elements of dialogic speech. It has been found that the marker was not a stiff structure during the period under consideration. The variations of the expression were formed as the result of miscellaneous processes that can be seen in its following features: non-fixed composition of the marker, that can be enlarged (by an adverb here I the pray, a modal verb I wold the pray) and can be reduced (by elision of a object pronoun I preye), non-permanent word order depending on the requirement of a rhyme and preferences of the writer (I þe praye, y pray Þe, preye I thee), the representation of the expression in the sentence as both parenthetical clause and main one (followed by a that-subordinate clause). The peculiarities of the location of the marker in the sentence are discussed. If I pray yow/thee is the only one pragmatic marker in the sentence, it is placed at the beginning or at the end of it. The placement of the parenthetical expression inside the receiving sentence is characteristic of the individual style of the author and is not common. If the expression is combined with other markers, predicative and non predicative, there are two variants of their localization in the sentence: «pointwise», when several markers are concentrated at the beginning or at the end of the construction, and «framework», when phatic parts are located in ante- and postposition of the markers receiving sentence.