This is an interesting distinction. I’ll start putting it to use immediately. Thanks!

When I hear, “Is there anything else?”, I think of a nebulous cloud of possibilities. Asked with any urgency, I would probably shrug it off as too difficult to answer clearly and quickly. Conceiving of a set of things and condensing them into a single answer to a single question can be rather difficult.

When I hear, “Is there something else?”, I grasp for the first possibility in the same cloud. Urgency will not affect my ability to come up with a single, suitable answer. There is less difficulty in conceiving of one thing.

So perhaps the distinction is in asking for a plural answer or a singular answer. Then again there seems to be another nuance.

“Are there any other things?” Is this easier to answer? In response to this I start creating a list rather than a set. Still plural, but it doesn’t require a summary.

Perhaps another lens can focus light on this as well. To my mind, “Is there anything else [insert dependent clause here]?” is a pointless question in most contexts. The answer is nearly always “yes”. When trying to provide a service, we can remind ourselves to ask germane questions that have material answers.

On a related note, I’m presently focusing on the differing impacts of various linguistic forms of suggestion, proposition, expectation, permission, request, possibility: “Would you? Could you? You shouldn’t. May I? I can. We’re supposed to. Should we?” There’s a lot there to unpack, a lot of slices and layers. I’d love some help figuring out what to write about first.