ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POINT IS AND RELATED ISSUES IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

Abstract

This study pays attention to the fairly recent development of the construction the point is especially from Late Modern through Present-Day periods in the history of American English. The main clause type (i.e. the point is that …) and the DM type (i.e. the point is, …) have been in rivalry since the mid-nineteenth century when they emerged, though the latter became dominant in the 2000s. The whole grammaticalization process of the point is rendered a variety of meso- and micro-constructions, however, not all of which have equally been entrenched: the determiner-modified the point is construction is no doubt a highly frequent construction, while the development of the first person singular possessive construction, i.e., my point is, can be considered a reflection of syntactic subjectivity.