The Constituent Order of Hwæt-Clauses in Old English Prose

Articles

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The Place of Hwæt and Hwæt þa Among Old English Interjections

Until recently, the status of hwæt in Old English (OE) syntax has seemed quite clear. Since hwæt, as an interrogative pronoun, belongs to the group of secondary interjections--that is, words from other word-classes also used as interjections (Sauer 2009:172)--it can fulfill a number of distinct functions in OE. It can function as one of the wh-words in direct and indirect questions, shown in 1a and 1b, respectively, as a relativizer in free relative clauses (usually within the combination swa hwæt swa 'whatever') as in 1c, as well as an interjection, as in 1d. For years it has generally been assumed that the interjection hwæt is an extra-clausal element, which, by definition, plays "no part in the syntax of the sentence" (Mitchell 1985:§1234).

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Brinton (1996:179-210) treats hwæt in main declarative clauses such as 1d as a pragmatic marker close in function to Modern English (ModE) you know and notes that "[t]he use of pragmatic hwæt appears to be much less frequent in prose than in verse" (p. 192). Since the use of hwæt is a well-known feature of OE poetry (several poems including Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, and Fates of the Apostles begin with it), its relatively low frequency in OE prose is associated with the less oral character of this group of texts.

Regardless of whether hwæt is viewed as an interjection or a pragmatic marker, its status as an extra-clausal element without any discernible influence upon the clause structure had not been questioned until Walkden (2013) suggested an alternative analysis. Walkden argued that hwæt-clauses pattern with subordinate, not with main clauses, as far as the position of the verb is concerned, since the finite verb tends to appear in clause-final or clause-late position, as in 1b,c. In his study, Walkden claimed that hwæt-clauses such as 1d should be analyzed as wh-exclamatives "parallel in interpretation to Modern English How you've changed!" (2013:484-485). Under this analysis, hwæt is not an extra-clausal interjection but a fully-fledged clause constituent.

Interestingly enough, for Walkden (2013), there is no structural or functional difference between clauses with simple hwæt, such as 1d, and clauses introduced by the combination