Contextually determined fixity and flexibility in “thing” sentence matrixes

Abstract

This paper describes the semantics and pragmatics of Thing sentences (TSs) and derives them from the sentence’s lexis and syntax. It describes several rhetorical and discourse management uses of the form and argues that these arise because the TS clause is simultaneously presupposed and focused. It shows that TSs are realized as a set of formal variants appearing to manifest a range of fixity and flexibility: some may be produced either analytically or holistically, others only holistically. Data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and other sources shows that most TSs occur at the informal end of the register spectrum, in registers typically produced under time pressure, which is also where the less flexible variants tend to occur. The paper proposes a source and conditions for the creation of discourse management expressions like TSs and identifies linguistic elements from which they may be constructed and a diachronic trajectory for their origination, development, and extinction.