Relative What
A few months ago Braden asked in a comment about the history of what as a relative pronoun. (For my previous posts on relative pronouns, see here.) The history of relative pronouns in English is rather complicated, and the system as a whole is still in flux, partly because modern English essentially has two overlapping systems of relativization.
In Old English, there were a few different ways to create a relative pronoun, as this site explains. One way was to use the indeclinable particle þe, another was to use a form of the demonstrative pronoun (roughly equivalent to modern English that/those), and another was to use a demonstrative or personal pronoun followed by þe. Our modern relative that grew out of the use of demonstrative pronouns, though unlike the Old English demonstratives, that does not decline for gender, number, and case.
In the late Old English and Middle English periods, writers and speakers began to use interrogative pronouns as relative pronouns by analogy with French and Latin. It first appeared in texts that were translations from Latin around 1000 AD, but within a couple of centuries it had apparently been naturalized. Other interrogatives became pressed into service as relatives during this time, including who, which, where, when, why, and how. All of these are still in common use in Standard English except for what.
It’s important to note that what is still used as a nominal relative, which means that it does not modify another noun phrase but stands in for a noun phrase and a relative simultaneously, as in We fear what we don’t understand. This could be rephrased as We fear that which we don’t understand or We fear the things that we don’t understand, revealing the nominal and the relative.
But while all the other interrogatives have continued as relatives in Standard English, what as a simple relative pronoun is nonstandard today. Simple relative what is found in the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, but at some point in the last three or four centuries it fell out of use in the standard dialect. Unfortunately, I’m not really sure when this happened; the Oxford English Dictionary has citations up through 1740 and then one from 1920 that appears to be dialogue from a novel. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage
As for why simple relative what died out in Standard English, I really have no idea. Jonathan Hope noted that it’s rather unusual of Standard English to allow other interrogatives as relatives but not this one.1Jonathan Hope, “Rats, Bats, Sparrows and Dogs: Biology, Linguistics and the Nature of Standard English,” in The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800, ed. Laura Wright (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2000). In some ways, relative what would make more sense than relative which, since what is historically part of the same paradigm as who; what comes from the neuter form of the interrogative or indefinite pronoun in Old English, while who comes from the combined masculine/feminine form, as shown here. And as I said in this post, whose was originally the genitive form for both who and what, so allowing simple relative what would make for a rather tidy paradigm.
Perhaps that’s the problem. Hope and other have argued that standardized languages—or perhaps speakers of standardized languages—tend to resist tidy paradigms. Irregularities creep in and are preserved, and they can be surprisingly resistant to change. Maybe someone reading this has a fuller explanation of just how this particular little wrinkle came to be.
Notes
| ↑1 | Jonathan Hope, “Rats, Bats, Sparrows and Dogs: Biology, Linguistics and the Nature of Standard English,” in The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800, ed. Laura Wright (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2000). |
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Stan
Very interesting post, Jonathon. Earlier this year, while browsing Twitter for complaints about the grammaticality of the phrase “Who to follow”, I came across relative what in a tweet that said: “It is the objective-dative case what must be used…” Contextual irony aside, I found (and find) the usage charming.
Jonathon
Thanks, Stan. I’m glad you enjoyed it. And thanks for sharing that great example.
Warsaw Will
I think relative ‘what’ is fairly ‘standard’ in Cockney dialect, perhaps the best known example being from ‘She was poor but she was honest’, a traditional Music Hall song:
It’s the same the whole world over
It’s the poor what gets the blame
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure
Ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame?
This has now become a popular saying among users of standard British English, but reversed:
‘It’s the rich wot [sic] gets the pleasure, and the poor wot gets the blame.’
Some Londoners drop the aitch, hence the ‘wot’
This is sometimes used in newspaper headlines and articles. Often only the first half is used, as here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2005/oct/30/toryleader.economicpolicy. It was also the title of an episode of the TV series ‘Doctor at large’.
Jonathon
Thanks for the examples, Warsaw Will. I’m sure I’ve heard it before in Cockney speech and possibly other British dialects, but I’m not familiar enough with them to know where it is and isn’t used.
Alex
Relative “what” always reminds me of a Terry Pratchett book where he talks about the interrogation techniques of troll police officers– “We know it was you what done it.”
Jonathon
From the comments here and on Twitter, it seems that relative “what” is far more common in the UK and Ireland. It seems to be pretty rare here in the States.
Philip
Didn’t Popeye say “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam; I’m Popeye the sailorman”?
Jonathon
Yes, he did, but the “what” in that case is a nominal relative (meaning “that which”), not the simple relative that I was talking about in this post.
John Cowan
Geoff Pullum’s paper “The Truth about English Grammar: Rarely Pure and Never Simple” argues that there is simply no pattern to which wh- words can be used in which constructions: not only is what disallowed in plain relative clauses, but also how and while (all three of which are fine as nominal relatives). Furthermore, the use of whose with a non-human referent is fine in restrictive relative clauses (“Oil any door whose hinges squeak”) but doubtful in non-restrictive ones (“?I oiled the red door, whose hinges squeaked”). Several more irregularities are listed in the paper.