Discourse marker and modal particle: The functions of utterance-final then in spoken English

This article provides a detailed account of the pragmatic functions of final then in spoken English, based on corpus data from the British component of the International Corpus of English. The analysis shows that two different uses of final then need to be distinguished: a discourse marker then, which is used to link the utterance it accompanies to a preceding utterance that is retrospectively converted into a conditional protasis, and a modal particle then, which links an utterance to a pragmatic, i.e. non-verbalized, pretext and thus to a proposition outside the discourse. The article includes a discussion of the word-class membership and the grammaticalization of final then into a pragmatic marker and provides a descriptive schema that captures the functions of final then as a modal particle.

► This study provides an analysis of the functions of final then in spoken English.
► Two different uses are distinguished: a discourse marker and a modal particle.
► Their difference is based on the nature of the referential unit.
► As a modal particle, then links an utterance to a non-verbalized, implied proposition.
► Final connectors tend to represent the emergence of a new word class in English.