The Use of Again in 19th-Century English versus Present-Day English

The central claim of this paper is that the use of the adverb again has changed between 19th-century English and present-day English. In particular, restitutive uses were more easily and generally available in the 19th century than they are now. This diachronic change provides evidence for a lexical parameter governing the behavior of adverbs at the syntax/semantics interface. The parameter relates surface form to possible interpretations and thus introduces an interesting notion of visibility into linguistic theory.