1. Introduction

1.1 The syntax and semantics of exclamatives

1.2 How-exclamatives

1.3 What a-exclamatives

1.4 Independent wh-exclamatives

1.5 Structure of the work

2. Exclamatives as constructions

2.1 Construction Grammar

2.2 Diachronic Construction Grammar

2.3 Chapter Summary

3. Exclamatives in diachrony

3.1. What a-exclamatives

3.2. How-exclamatives

3.3 Independent wh-exclamatives in diachrony

3.4 Independent Wh-Exclamatives ? A constructional proposal

3.5 Chapter summary

4. Methodology

4.1 Genre

4.2 Data basis

4.3 Operationalization of Independent Wh-Exclamatives

4.4 Corpus search

4.5 Semantic classification: Roget’s Thesaurus of English words and phrases

4.6 Measuring productivity

4.7 Chapter Summary

5. Results: Changes in Productivity

5.1 General overview

5.2 Genre

5.3 Productivity

5.4 Chapter Summary

6. Theoretical implications

6.1 The indexical meaning of Independent Wh-Exclamatives and genre specifics

6.2 The relationship between the slots

6.3 The role of skewed frequencies

6.4 Is there an Abstract Exclamative construction?

6.5 Chapter Summary

7. Conclusion and Outlook

7.1. Summary of the main results

7.2 Outlook

Appendices

Index