10 - Reflections and Projections

Summary

Chapter 10 begins with two illustrations of the multifunctionality of general extenders in extracts from American English and Parisian French. Some relevant examples are presented and discussed to show that the structural position of general extenders is not necessarily utterance-final. In English, they can even be part of the subject noun phrase and, in other languages, they are often positioned inside utterances. In a function hitherto undocumented in English, some adjunctive forms are analyzed as associative plurals, used to reference a group of people associated with a particular individual as a focal referent. In a suggested area for further research, a substantial number of extender-type phrases with -else, previously unanalyzed, are illustrated and discussed. Another area where further research is encouraged is the investigation of the role of adjunctive forms in list completion with a much broader perspective than in earlier research.