About his friend, how good she is, and this and that: General extenders in native Persian and non-native English discourse

The present study sets out to investigate the structures and functions of general extenders (GEs) in native Persian and non-native English discourse. The data include two corpora of informal conversations collected by the participants themselves (circa 20 h). Both native and non-native corpora show that GEs are in the process of becoming more flexible with regard to their position. The Persian corpus was found to contain two unique GEs (‘væ væ væ’ and ‘væ in væ un’), that seemed to be directly transferred to English by the non-native speaker group (‘and and and’ and ‘and this and that’). The data further shows that, unlike in English, Persian GEs are not used to provide an intensifying effect in soliciting agreement. The non-native English corpus does not feature this function either. The findings also indicate that EFL learners do not tend to use the GE ‘and stuff’ to establish solidarity. Besides, the present study shows how Persian GEs can be used to fulfill the two unique functions of expressing outrage and arousing curiosity. In the former case, which is also found in the non-native English corpus, speakers echo the word they find offensive and add the GE ‘jahærci’, and in the latter case, they lengthen the GE ‘væinâ’. Finally, it is argued that first language norms influence the use of GEs by non-native speakers.

► The structural pattern of a GE in Persian is ‘conjunction + (I don’t know) + (preposition) + noun phrase’.
► Non-native speakers of English mainly follow the pattern ‘conjunction + noun phrase/determiner phrase + (like that)’.
► EFL speakers produced such unique extenders as ‘and and and’ and ‘and this and that’. Such forms were attributed to transfer from Persian.
► Persian GEs can be used to fulfill the two unique functions of expressing outrage and arousing curiosity.
► First language norms influence the use of GEs by non-native speakers.