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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 25:1 (2024) ► pp.104–136

The rise of what-general extenders in English

ORCID logo | University of British Columbia
General extenders (ges) are elements such as and so forth occurring at the right periphery. On the referential level, they implicate a set, but they also serve a range of discourse-pragmatic functions, such as hedging and interpersonal relations. Some sociolinguistic studies have seen the development of ges as synchronic grammaticalization involving phonetic reduction, decategorialization, semantic bleaching and pragmatic enrichment, but other studies have found no evidence of ongoing grammaticalization. Historical studies of ges are few. This paper sets out to fill this gap by studying the rise of disjunctive, adjunctive and bare ges formed with what – (or/and) what you will, or what, or/and what else, (or) whatever, (or/and) what not and (or/and) what have you. Despite their apparent similarity, these are shown to have quite different sources and histories. Their development conforms to some of the recognized parameters of grammaticalization but is more fruitfully understood from a constructionist approach.
Keywords: Early Modern English, general extenders, grammaticalization, Late Modern English, schematization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Characteristics of general extenders
  • 3.Development of general extenders
    • 3.1Grammaticalization
    • 3.2 Contra grammaticalization
  • 4.Diachronic work on general extenders
  • 5.Histories of what-general extenders
    • 5.1Diachronic corpora and methodology
    • 5.2History of (or/and) what you will
    • 5.3History of or what
    • 5.4History of or/and what else
    • 5.5History of or what(so)ever
    • 5.6History of (or/and) what not
    • 5.7History of what have you
    • 5.8Summary
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Grammaticalization revisited
    • 6.2Constructionist approach
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Corpora and tools
  • References
Published online: 5 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20009.bri
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coca = The Corpus of Contemporary American English. 2008–. Mark Davies (compiler). Available online at: [URL]
coha = The Corpus of Historical American English. 2010–. Mark Davies (compiler). Available online at: [URL]
eebo = Early English Books Online Corpus. 2017. Mark Davies (compiler). Available online at: [URL]
The Globe and Mail (1844–2014). ProQuest Historical Newspapers. See: [URL]
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oed = Oxford English Dictionary. 2000–. (Online. Third edition.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. See: [URL]
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