Some observations on the evolution of final particles

Much of the work that has been carried out over the last years is based on the assumption that English clause connectives such as but serving as final particles are the result of a gradual process referred to alternatively as grammaticalization or pragmaticalization. In the present paper it is argued that a prerequisite for this development is cooptation, whereby a chunk of grammar, such as a clause, a phrase, an adverb, or a conjunction, is taken out of Sentence Grammar and pressed into service as a thetical (parenthetical) unit. A thetical is an autonomous information unit that is syntactically and prosodically independent of its host, i.e. of the utterance to which it is attached. In a second step, this development may lead to the grammaticalization of the unit concerned. The framework proposed here, expounded in more detail in Kaltenbock et al. (2011) and Heine et al. (2013), differs in a number of ways from alternative approaches. It differs most of all in the claim that cooptation is an instantaneous process. Rather than a gradual grammaticalization, there is an operation whereby the connective is transferred to the plane of Thetical Grammar - an operation that can commonly be observed in spoken discourse. Once a clause connective such as 'but', 'or', or 'and' has been transferred to function as a final particle, the latter signals the right boundary of an utterance. And once the left boundary separating the final particle from its preceding host is eliminated via grammaticalization, the final particle may turn into an integrated appendage of its preceding host constituent.