The diachrony of stance constructions with ‘no’ chance and ‘no’ wonder

This paper starts from the functional and structural similarity of stance constructions with ‘no’ wonder and ‘no’ chance in Present-day English, and sets out to compare their diachronic development. Synchronically, these two ‘no’ + semiotic noun strings take part in the same formal types of grammatical stance construction, i.e. as main clauses, with the propositions in their scope coded as complement clauses, and as stance adverbials, with the propositions in their scope coded as independent clauses. Another similarity is that the clausal patterns show two types of use, i.e. lexical and grammatical use. While grammatical uses of ‘no’ wonder strings convey mirative qualification, those of ‘no’ chance strings express epistemic qualification. Study of corpus data reveals differences in the availability of structural types – within clausal and adverbial patterns – between the two strings studied, as well as in polarity preferences, which follow naturally from the differences observed in their respective diachronic development. While negative polarity triggered the development of grammatical – mirative – meaning in the ‘no’ wonder strings, it did not serve this role in the development of dynamic-epistemic (and later on purely epistemic) meaning in the chance data. This explains why wonder occurs predominantly with negative polarity in Present-day English, while no such preference is observed for chance. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd