Enough already!: On directive modal particles in English and Swedish

In non-standard American English, an innovative usage of already has emerged as the result of a translation borrowing from Yiddish. In this usage, already appears to have the properties of a Modal Particle, despite the fact that such a category has been argued to be essentially absent from English. It is shown that already and the Swedish Modal Particle nångång, share all of the relevant properties of a Modal Particle: They are phonetically weak elements, homophonous with lexical adverbial expressions, and strictly limited to the sentence final position. They scope over the entire proposition, are implicational, and only compatible with one particular kind of illocutionary Force, namely directive. Furthermore, they add expressive content, in particular that of impatience, and convey the expectation of immediate compliance on behalf of the hearer.