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Discourse Particles: Syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and historical aspects
Edited by Xabier Artiagoitia, Arantzazu Elordieta and Sergio Monforte
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 276] 2022
► pp. 41–64

Chapter 2
A particle-like use of hwæþer Wisdom’s questions in Boethius

| University of Konstanz
| University of Konstanz

The paper investigates unembedded hwæþer questions in Old English (OE). We argue that they represent an intermediate stage in the development of hwæþer ‘which of the two’ to modern English whether. Syntactically, we find a range of quasi-subordinating uses of hwæþer in questions that all have in common that the speaker expresses a pedagogical question. Pedagogical questions are questions the speaker knows the answer to, but is urging the addressee to consider while drawing their own conclusions. In the OE Boethius, hwæþer can convey this use-conditional pragmatic flavour for polar questions. It thus comes close in function to other use-conditional particles.

Keywords: pedagogical question, domain of choice, wh-pronoun, Old English, reanalysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data sources and evidence base
    • 2.1The Old English Boethius
    • 2.2Range of syntactic uses
    • 2.3More observations on unembedded hwæþer-questions
    • 2.4The pragmatics of unembedded hwæþer-questions
  • 3.Old English hwæþer: The state of the art
    • 3.1The standard syntactic story
    • 3.2Synchronic problems with the standard syntactic story
    • 3.3Diachronic problems with the standard syntactic story
  • 4.The stages and uses of hwæþer-questions
    • 4.1Gothic
      • Stage 1:
    • 4.2Embedded sentences of type 2
    • 4.3Reanalysis
    • 4.4Varieties of actualization: Type 2 and type 5 examples
    • 4.5Irregularities resolved? Hwæþer-questions with partial wh-movement
    • 4.6Type 3: Unembedded hwæþer-questions
  • 5.Summary and outlook
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.276.02eck
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