Core research questions

RQ0 (overarching thesis): How do English subordinators evolve as an interconnected constructional network through grammaticalisation and constructionalisation, and what mechanisms drive convergence or divergence across semantic, syntactic, morphological, and pragmatic change from Old English to Present-Day English?

Dimension-specific research questions

Semantic development

• RQ1: Which semantic shifts (temporal > causal, paratactic explanation > hypotactic causation) are most common among causal/temporal subordinators, and how do context-induced reinterpretations pattern across periods?

• RQ2: To what extent does semantic bleaching correlate with functional expansion (e.g., causal > concessive drift in since or as)?

Syntactic development

• RQ3: How does the syntactic status of subordinators change from full clause-linkers to fused subordinators, and what role does reanalysis play in hypotaxis emergence?

• RQ4: What is the diachronic relationship between adverbial subordination and complementation in causal constructions?

Morphological development

• RQ5: What morphological erosion patterns characterise subordinator development (e.g., for þan þe → for then → because), and how do phonological fusion and spelling variability track grammaticalisation stages?

• RQ6: How does univerbation (by cause that → because) compete with analytic persistence in the subordinator system?

Pragmatic/discourse development

• RQ7: How do discourse-pragmatic functions (explanation vs. justification, backgrounding vs. foregrounding) drive subordinator selection and semantic extension?

• RQ8: What evidence exists for subjectification/intersubjectification in the pragmatic bleaching of causal subordinators?

Network-level questions

• RQ9: Which subordinators show layering/competition effects (e.g., because vs. since vs. as), and how do frequency hierarchies emerge diachronically?

• RQ10: How do constructional networks constrain individual subordinator trajectories, and what predicts persistence vs. obsolescence?