Past Habituality in English Discourse; used to and would

Abstract

This paper presents an empirically grounded discourse analysis of the English past habitual expressions, used to and would, in oral narrative and conversation. A text - based examination of these two competing forms in various contexts shows that used to has an episode-initiating function by way of framing a past habitual episode and would is subsequently used for elaboration within the frame. The discourse-Organizational functions of used to and would are found to derive from the different semantic properties of each form; first of all, used to marks independently a now-defunct past habitual event, while the past habitual reading of would depends totally on discourse contexts or frames. Secondly, in denoting past habitual situations, used to tends to characterize the occasion as a whole, whereas the subsequent instances of would refer to separate and specific fractions of the occasion.