45
2.2 Hwæt as an InterjectionIn a more fully argued paper, Walkden ( 2013 ) rejects the “interjection
hypothesis” – the view that hwæt is an extra- clausal element – for fi ve rea-
sons: (a) hwæt must be analyzed as unstressed, (b) no punctuation follows
hwæt in OE manuscripts, (c) Ælfric does not mention hwæt in his contem-
porary grammar, (d) hwæt does not occur exclusively in texts connected to
primary orality and does not always initiate speech, and (e) the clauses follow-
ing hwæt do not show standard declarative word order (to be expected if hwæt
is completely extra- clausal and independent), but exhibit different word- order
patterns (suggesting that hwæt is part of the clausal structure and affects word
order). In fact, he argues, they pattern more like subordinate clauses, an order
which would be expected given their exclamatory nature (2013: 479– 480).
Some of the reasons adduced by Walkden would seem to carry little weight.
First, he does not provide evidence that interjections are always stressed (in
either Old or Present- day English); thus the lack of stress on hwæt may not
argue against its status as an interjection. Second, while Stanley mentions
that exclamatory hwætla is often followed by punctuation and hwæt is not
(2000: 525), the evidence of OE manuscript punctuation is notoriously spo-
radic and unreliable and cannot form the basis of an argument. Third, it is
not clear that Ælfric’s conceptualization of “interjection” is consistent with the
modern view. In his study of Ælfric’s grammar, Sauer ( 2006 , 2009 : 169– 173)
questions how accurate or complete Ælfric’s list of OE interjections is. Some
are given as translations of Latin forms and some are found independently;
of the roughly ten forms Ælfric gives, three ( afæstla , haha/ hehe , hilahi ) are
hapax legomena, one is perhaps a greeting form, not strictly an interjection,
and several are variants of the same form. He concludes that “Ælfric lists many,
but not all of the Old English interjections” (2009: 173). Fourth, although we
would expect to fi nd interjections in primary oral texts^5 and in direct discourse,
pragmatic markers – as I will argue hwæt is best understood as – are not limited
to oral texts. Fifth, in regard to word order, Walkden is likely incorrect in his
initial assumption since, as Mitchell ( 1985 , II: 299– 300n, 958) observes, both
conjunctions and interjections can affect clausal order (see Cichosz forthc.).
Walkden ( 2013 : 473– 474) fi nds rather different word- order patterns in clauses
following hwæt in Bede’s History and in Ælfric’s Lives of saints ; in the former
they pattern like subordinate clauses while in the latter “they seem to follow a
pattern of their own, with the verb much more likely to be later than in other
clauses in general” (474). The differences between Bede and Ælfric are not
explained, but the fact that Walkden uses Ælfric’s Lives of saints for his counts
is a problem since Ælfric uses hwæt þa not hwæt , a form which I argue has a
very different function (see Sections 2.4.1– 3).^6
5 By “texts connected to primary orality,” I assume that Walkden means native OE verse.
6 See Cichosz ’s (forthc.) critique of Walkden ’s failure to distinguish the two forms.