<i>Anyway</i> in Irish English

Abstract The development of the pragmatic marker anyway in Irish English is of relatively recent date. From an original adverb of manner there developed a pragmatic meaning when the element shifted to the right periphery (or became exposed there through deletion of an element to the right of it). A transition period occurred during which varying interpretations of anyway were possible, facilitating the rise of anyway as a pragmatic marker. Later it appeared in the prosodically more prominent left periphery where anyway can only have a pragmatic interpretation. The main theoretical insight of this study is that the discourse function arose from the ambiguous interpretation of unqualified anyway . Importantly, a prosodic distinction arose between the two functions of anyway with the discourse use showing considerably less stress on the final syllable [–weɪ] than the syntactic use.