From Adverbial to Discourse Marker of Reformulation: The Case of More correctly A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

English discourse markers of reformulation (DMRs) have not been studied as extensively as their counterparts in French, Italian, and Spanish (Saz Rubio 2007). In particular, limited research has examined DMRs with the structure more + adverb, owing to their infrequency (Silva et al. 2024). This study employs the cooptation hypothesis (Heine 2013) to provide a deeper understanding of how the adverbial more correctly has evolved into a DMR. The development of discourse markers (DMs) in general has notably challenged grammaticalization theory, leading scholars to explore a variety of frameworks that can account for their unique behaviour (see Norde 2009; Furkó 2014; Traugott 2018; Heine et al. 2021b). These frameworks include pragmaticalization, lexicalization, and, most recently, the cooptation hypothesis. By using four large-scale corpora, this study argues that the interplay between cooptation and grammaticalization—not merely grammaticalization on its own—has shaped the emergence of more correctly as a DMR.