71temporal succession. Such a development has been documented for since <
siþþan ‘from the time that’ and now < nu ‘from this time forth,’ where the
causal inference of the original temporal meaning has been conventionalized
(Traugott and König 1991 : 195– 199); see also Section 3.2 on the development
of while. Hwæt þa also conventionalizes a causal inference , semanticizing an
expression of result, consequence, or signifi cance.
The ‘surprise’ use of what derives from the combination of the interrogative
sense of hwæt with the expressive meanings of the interjections eala and la.
The expressive meaning of the interjections (ranging from surprise to distress
to delight) may be transferred to what itself, as eala is lost and lo(o) acquires
more specialized functions in Middle English as an emphatic particle in reli-
gious genres (see Taavitsainen 1997 : 588– 592). At the same time that eala
and lo(o) are either lost or specialized, what comes to be combined with the
interjection ho , a borrowing from Old French. Ho functions not only as an
interjection expressing astonishment, but also as a hunting cry, thus pointing
to its function in Middle English as a means to call or evoke a person, often
combined with exasperation or impatience.
It is possible that the adverbial sense of what (OED: s.v. what , defs.
A 19– 20) ‘why, in what way,’ which is now obsolete, may have contributed
to the ‘surprise’ sense as well (cf. Walkden 2013 : 470). If one asks for
reasons for a situation, a context- induced inference of such a request can
be that one is surprised, impatient, or indignant about the situation, as in
this example:
(26) “ What shulde I more telle hire compleynynge?” (c1386 Chaucer, Legend of good
women 2218 [OED])
‘What should I tell more of her complaining’
Though ostensibly asking for reasons for saying more of Ariadne’s complaints,
the narrator is also expressing impatience at having to do so, or perhaps sur-
prise at his listener’s wanting more. A slight modifi cation of the punctuation
(“What? Shulde I more telle hire compleynynge?”) brings this implicature to
the fore. The development of the ‘surprise’ meaning of hwæt exemplifi es even
more clearly than does the ‘you know’ meaning an increase in subjectivity , for,
as Traugott and König note in another case (1991: 209, 211), the “surprise fac-
tor” is an expression of “speaker attitude to the relationship of elements within
the proposition or of propositions to each other, as well as of the compatibility
of those relations.”
A fi nal interpersonal usage, what a , used “ to express the surprising or strik-
ing nature of the thing(s) or person(s) denoted by the n.” (OED: s.v. what , def.
B III 5a), developed from the adjectival use of what. It fi rst appeared in the
fourteenth century.
2.7 Development of What