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The distal demonstrative as discourse marker in Beowulf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2011

RICHARD EPSTEIN
RICHARD EPSTEIN*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Rutgers University, Camden, Armitage Hall, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 311 North Fifth Street, Building no. 036, Camden, NJ 08102-1405, USArepstein@camden.rutgers.edu
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Abstract

The literature on the distal demonstrative se in Old English has mainly concentrated on its use as a marker of definiteness (referent identifiability) and deixis. In this article, I focus instead on demonstrative uses that have received much less attention in previous work. Drawing on data from Beowulf, I argue that the distal demonstrative determiner also serves a variety of discourse-pragmatic functions, such as indicating the relative importance of referents; topic continuity; or chapter boundaries.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 113 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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