This article examines the imperative of say as a pragmatic marker in English and Dutch. Present-day say and zeg ‘say’ are contrasted on the basis of comparable corpus data. This comparison, together with additional diachronic data, serves as input for a study of the typical developments of the imperative of say as a pragmatic marker. Further-more, on the basis of a wider range of European and other languages, the article explores the possibility of the developments in English and Dutch being an areal phenomenon.
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=JGL The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 25 (3), pp 247-287 2013, © 2013 Cambridge University Press.
