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The Fuck Is Going On? The Grammaticalization Of Taboo Words In English, Laura E. Munger
The Fuck Is Going On? The Grammaticalization Of Taboo Words In English, Laura E. Munger
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This study examines the grammaticalization of the verb “fuck” to the periphrastic interrogative “the fuck”. I use various forms of data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Corpus of Historical American English to analyze (1) the evolution of “fuck” from a concrete lexical verb to an item diversified in meaning and part of speech, (2) the development of the phrase “what the X” from “what the devil”, and (3) the specific grammaticalization of “the fuck” as an interrogative. These processes are then discussed in terms of specific principles of grammaticalization which they illustrate.