65
2.6 Later History of Exclamatory Whatkissed them or shown their love for them have often lost them, and in (19e), he
counsels Troilus to tell himself that Criseyde will certainly return, and to treat
this as accepted and common knowledge.
The common- knowledge use and the contextual- implication use ( hwæt þa )
are referred to briefl y in the MED (s.v. what , interj.): “emphatically introduc-
ing a statement in a narrative: lo; ~ tho ” (def. 2a) or “emphatically introducing
a factual statement, a pronouncement, an explanation, etc.: now, truly.” The
dictionary provides only scant examples, mostly from Old English:
(20) a. What! þay brayen & bleden, bi bonkkez þay de ʒ en. (c1400 (?c1390) Gawain
(Nero A.10 1163 [MED])
‘What, they bray and bleed, by hillsides they die’
b. Hwæt! we nu iherdon hwylc wunder he ætywde his leorningcnihtes. (c1175
(?OE) Bod.Hom. (Bod 343) 110/ 5 [MED])
‘What we now hear which wonder he showed his disciples’
c. Hwæt þa ðe biscop wearð unbliðe for þam blodes gyte (c1175 (OE) Bod.
Hom.Evang. (Bod 343) 16/ 22 [MED])
‘What then the bishop became unhappy because of the bloodshed’
All evidence suggests, therefore, that both uses become obsolete in early
Middle English.
Despite its decline in Middle English, the ‘you know’ sense of what has
made a second appearance in y’know what? , guess what? in Present- day
English as a turntaking and attention- getting device common in children’s
discourse (Östman 1981 : 52– 54) but also used in adults’ discourse to open
narratives (Stubbs 1983 : 23). Like the hwæt which begins OE poems, these
what expressions are “attention- getting” (Crystal and Davy 1975 : 93; Östman
1981 : 25, 53; Beeching 2016 : 101); they “put the hearer on notice as to what
stance he is to adopt toward what he is about to hear” and all mean ‘something
new coming’ (Bolinger 1976 – 1977: 7). They may thus serve as a turn- taking
device (Östman 1981 : 24, 40, 52; Schiffrin 1987 : 285). We may understand
the attention- getting function as a subcategory of the general function of you
know in soliciting the addressee’s cooperation and his or her reception of the
information to be conveyed.^30
The typical use of exclamatory what in the post- OE period is as a marker of
‘surprise,’ often adjoined to a question (i.e., “as an exclamation of surprise or
astonishment (sometimes mixed with indignation); usually followed by a ques-
tion” [OED: s.v. what , def. B 2a] or “as an exclamation associated with a ques-
tion, and expressing real or rhetorical surprise, distress, or indignation: what is
this, what” [MED: s.v. what , interj., def. 1b]). This use of what is common in
30 The use of what , sometimes with eh , as a sentence tag (OED: s.v. what , def. A 4c) may also
be a development from the ‘you know’ sense. As the American heritage dictionary (s.v. what ,
interj., def. 2) observes, this form is used “to solicit agreement.”