LINGUIST List 15.3385

Fri Dec 03 2004

Sum: Parenthetical 'What'

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1. Yordanka Kavalova, Parenthetical 'What'

Message 1: Parenthetical 'What'

Date: 03-Dec-2004
From: Yordanka Kavalova <ucleyik

ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Parenthetical 'What'

Regarding query http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-3362.html#1

Dear all,

Thank you very much to all of you who found the time to email me and share
their views with me. In particular, I would like to thank S Ervin-Tripp, J
Lawler, M Matloff, P Newman, and J Walters.

Most of the people who wrote to me associated parenthetical 'what' with
hesitation, approximation, and accuracy.

It was also pointed to me that parenthetical 'what' may resemble a certain
modern Israeli Hebrew construction, viz. 'ma ze X' as in "yesh la simla
xadash, ma ze yafa". It would be interesting to see what the exact syntax
and function of this construction is and if in any way it corresponds to
the English parenthetical.

Also, parenthetical 'what' was linked to other one-word parenthetical
insertions like 'like'. From what I've seen so far, I think that this
observation is on the right track.

Finally, I was referred to only one article that might be of some help:

Postal, P. (1976), "Linguistic anarchy notes", in J. McCawley, (ed.).
Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 7. New York: Academic Press.

Again, thanks to all of you who emailed me.

Kind regards,
Yordanka

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                      Pragmatics
                      Semantics
                      Syntax
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