2519 What’s More and Whatever
9.1 Introduction
This chapter brings to an end the study of ‘what’ begun in Chapter 2. There,
I examine the rise of hwæt ‘what’ as a marker of shared knowledge in Old
English, tracing it through Middle English and ultimately to the narrative open-
ers of Present- day English. In Chapter 8, what is part of the politeness formula
for what it’s worth. Here, I study the evolution of two further pragmatic mark-
ers containing what – the comment clause what’s more and the very recent
“interjection” whatever.
What’s more is a comment clause of a syntactic type not yet considered,
the subcategory that Quirk et al. ( 1985 : 1112, 1117) identify as resembling
a nominal or free relative clause. The examples they list include what’s
more surprising , what’s more serious , what’s most signifi cant of all , what’s
very strange , and what annoys me , but not the more common what’s more
of Present- day English. This chapter examines the function of this form
(and its variants) in Present- day English ( Section 9.2 ), before turning
to its historical origin and development ( Section 9.3 ). A number of syn-
chronic parallels of what’s more – to cleft and pseudo- cleft constructions,
to sentential relatives, and to adjectivally complemented structures – are
explored as possible diachronic sources before arriving at a plausible sce-
nario ( Section 9.4 ).
“Interjective” whatever is ubiquitous in youth language in the late twen-
tieth and early twenty- fi rst century. It is used, as Sali Tagliamonte suggests
( 2016 : 202), as a linguistic means of shrugging one’s shoulders, to indicate
acquiescence, unwillingness to engage, boredom, lack of interest, or dismis-
siveness ( Section 9.5 ). As whatever does not seem to have the adverbial source
of most single- word pragmatic markers or to follow the paths described in
Section 1.4.1.1 and explored in the studies in Chapters 2 – 4 , alternative sources
are proposed ( Section 9.6 ), including the general extender or whatever and
second- person clauses such as whatever you please/ say. Section 9.7 concludes
that the pragmatic marker whatever might have multiple sources.