The emergence of <i>last I checked</i> fragments: a story of shifting allegiance

Abstract This paper traces the formal and functional development of evidential extra-clausal fragments of the form ( the ) last I/we + VERB in American English. Using data from the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English , the study shows that these fragments are first attested in the late 19th century as a truncation of specificational structures (e.g. The last thing I remember is …). In the course of the 20th century, however, they exhibit a shift in allegiance by becoming increasingly associated with a temporal adjuncts template (e.g. The last time I checked …). Functionally, these evidential fragments are used as downtoners with additional functions being added in the course of the 20th century, viz. booster function and ironic use. The processes identified for their development are cooptation and subsequent grammaticalization, together with semantic specialization and constructional contamination. More generally, the fragmentary form ( the ) last I/we + VERB is shown to specialize in evidential use, with non-evidential verbs becoming increasingly rare in this string, while the full form remains firmly non-evidential. Fragmentary form thus has become an important marker for evidential (and, by extension, epistemic) function.