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]).