Interagire in contesto multilingue e cose così. Il caso dei general extenders

This paper deals with the analysis of general extenders in a specific language contact situation. We will show that general extenders, besides fulfilling a primary referential function (extending the reference of a given expression so as to include other elements similar to a given exemplar), may also have subjective and intersubjective functions, and these functions are particularly prominent in everyday interactions. The analysis of the language contact situation confirms the hypothesis that the various functions of the general extenders conform to the general tendencies found for so-called discourse markers in such situations, whereby discourse markers with intersubjective functions tend to be borrowed from the pragmatically dominant language more easily than discourse markers with more subjective functions.