9.7 Conclusion 283What’s more is a nominal relative clause- type comment clause. It occurs
sentence initially in written genres and expresses an expansion or elaboration
of the preceding discourse. It also has an (inter)personal dimension in express-
ing speaker emotions (such as surprise, incomprehension, criticism) concern-
ing the following discourse and speaker emphasis (making the material more
salient for the hearer). The lack of an adjective complement in the comment
clause, e.g., what is more surprising/ common/ irksome , etc., the quality of which
must be inferred from context in cases of what’s more , points to the adjective’s
possible presence in the source construction. Moreover, synchronic parallels
of what’s more to a pseudo- cleft construction ( what is more Adj is that ... ) or
to a cleft construction ( it is more Adj that ) as well as to the sentential relative
( which is more Adj) suggest a number of possible syntactic sources for What’s
more. The historical evidence does not support either a cleft or pseudo- cleft
origin, and the sentential relative construction, although contemporaneous
with what’s more , is syntactically and functionally different. The evidence for
postulating a source Adj in the what’s more construction is also problematic.
Despite diffi culties in constructing the source construction, however, we can
understand what’s more as undergoing grammaticalization and acquiring sub-
jective and intersubjective meanings.
The stand- alone pragmatic marker whatever arises in the 1960s (or some-
what before). Its immediate source is indoubtedly a second- person clause of
desire or saying ( whatever you please/ say ) through ellipsis of the second- per-
son subject and verb, which can easily be inferred from context. Such clauses
are used in dialogic exchanges to express the speaker’s lack of interest in
engaging with the interlocutor and his or her willingness to acquiesce to the
interlocutor’s wishes; this is the same context in which we fi nd the pragmatic
marker whatever. The general extender or whatever , though not used in the
kind of exchange in which we fi nd whatever , most likely reinforced the rise of
the pragmatic marker, given its similar meaning of indifference.