'I wonder if and I would be grateful if': The Rise of New Conventional Indirect Directives in Late Modern English

The most common indirect directives in Present-Day English are the “whimperatives” can/could/would you DO X?, which arise after 1900. Late Modern English also sees the appearance of a large number of other (semi-)conventionalized indirect directives, including I was hoping, I would appreciate it if, I must ask you to, Would you mind?, Do you happen to?, Do you have the time to?, and many others. These are classified by Leech (2014) as “internal pragmatic modifiers” including “deliberative openings”, “appreciative openings”, “hedged performatives”, “negative bias”, “happenstance indicators”, and “temporal availability queries”. Wierzbicka (2006) proposes a diachronic scale beginning with imperatives and performatives, then “whimperatives”, “suggestive” constructions (e.g. I suggest/advise/recommend, you might like to/consider), and thought constructions (I wonder if). The stages place progressively less pressure on the hearer.

Using a variety of corpora, this paper examines the rise of the different indirect directive types and finds little evidence for Wierzbicka’s scale: suggestive, deliberative and appreciative forms all arise early, with the other types arising in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Case studies of I wonder if (a deliberative opening) and I would be grateful if (an appreciative opening) are provided. The paper speculates on why the nineteenth century is a particularly intense period for the rise of internal pragmatic modifiers.

Zoom link: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/63106809173