| Summary: | This article takes a look at what is hypothesised to be a recent phenomenon restricted to some forms of contemporary British English, whereby the restrictive adverb ONLY seems to have become a discourse marker signalling counter-expectation or undesirability. The article paper begins by examining the diachrony of ONLY, to show how such a usage may have emerged within the general framework of grammaticalisation theory, and furthermore demonstrates that ONLY as a mirative DM can be shown to be almost exclusively a British phenomenon. The article goes on to tie it in with two other constructions which are equally posited to be relatively recent in origin and geographically restricted in scope, namely the narrative use of the Present Perfect and hendiadic GO AND + V structures and speculates as to the degree to which these three separate developments may have been mutually reinforced.
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