The Development from Interrogative to Interjectional ‘Why’ in English

• 영문명: The Development from Interrogative to Interjectional ‘Why’ in English
• 발행기관: 한국영어학학회
• 저자명: Myung-Kwan Park
• 간행물 정보: 『영어학연구』제29권 2호, 1~15쪽, 전체 15쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2023.05.31

영문 초록

This paper investigates the grammatical development from interrogative to interjectional ‘why’ in English. We suggest that the standing-alone ‘why’ question lacking in Tense underwent a functional shift to interjectional ‘why’ since it was not subject to ordinary but rhetorical ‘why’-questions. There are currently two uses of standing-alone ‘why’ interjection. One is ‘why (bother to say/ask this statement/question)’, which is the speaker’s protest against the speech act itself. The other is ‘why (so)’, with which the speaker evinces surprise at the described situation that the propositional ‘so’ represents. There are two more uses of interjectional ‘why’: pondering and consequence. We show that the former two uses are extended to the meanings of pondering and consequence ‘why’.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Earlier Analyses

3. Towards An Analysis

4. Summary and Conclusion

References

키워드

‘why’ interrogative interjection rhetorical question polarity reversal