Subjektivt och intersubjektivt nog : Om grammatikalisering och bruk i ljuset av Paul Sinebrychoffs brevväxling kring 1900

"Nog" is a common clausal adverbial or modal particle in Swedish. The word had historically a meaning of ‘enough’, but has developed into an epistemic marker of subjective certainty which can also be used intersubjectively, for example, to ask for the hearer’s consent. In this article we investigate how the particle was used around the turn of the last century in correspondence between the Finland-Swedish art collector Paul Sinebrychoff and various people in Sweden from whom he bought art pieces. Our study shows that there are no referential uses (corresponding to ‘enough’) in the material, even though we can still find them today (as we show in examples from dramatic dialogue from the 1990s in the corpus Svensk Dramadialog). We have mainly found subjective modal uses, and we see that there are slightly more intersubjective uses in the Finland-Swedish letters. However, we claim that this is not likely to be due to a difference in the varieties; rather, this is the result of the participation framework. It is the Finland-Swedish art collector who is seeking agreement, concessions and services from his addressees, and this outward orientation shades into the functions of nog in his letter writing.