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"what with"

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:06 pm
by linguoboy
So what's with the "what with NP" construction? Is this simply an idiom or can we do better than that?

Examples culled from the wilds of the Internet:

"What with the population crunch and all, we're just reproducing ourselves[.]"

"What with the fire code I can't buy anything even if I have the money for it."

"The other solution is messy, what with the square root in it."

Obligatory Shakespeare citation:

"And such a flood of greatness fell on you,
What with our help, what with the absent king,
What with the injuries of a wanton time,
The seeming sufferances that you had borne,
And the contrarious winds that held the king
So long in his unlucky Irish wars
That all in England did repute him dead[.]"

Re: "what with"

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:28 pm
by zompist
I don't know where it came from, but I can take the citation back two centuries, to Wyclif (1380):

Many..ben dede bi Þe weie, what wiÞ traueile & cold..& enemyes & ofte raunsonyd.

Though the OED does say that 'what used to be able to precede other prepositions:

[1340 Hampole Pr. Consc. 7100] What for sorow, and what thurgh smoke And what thurgh cald, and what thurgh hete.. Þai salle ay grete.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:34 pm
by Viktor77
zompist wrote:I don't know where it came from, but I can take the citation back two centuries, to Wyclif (1380):

Many..ben dede bi Þe weie, what wiÞ traueile & cold..& enemyes & ofte raunsonyd.

Though the OED does say that 'what used to be able to precede other prepositions:

[1340 Hampole Pr. Consc. 7100] What for sorow, and what thurgh smoke And what thurgh cald, and what thurgh hete.. Þai salle ay grete.
Are "What in the world" and "What in God's name" examples of surviving usage?

Re: "what with"

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:37 pm
by Melteor
^^"Give him what-for," might be an ossified use.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:47 pm
by Xephyr
zompist wrote:I don't know where it came from, but I can take the citation back two centuries, to Wyclif (1380):

Many..ben dede bi Þe weie, what wiÞ traueile & cold..& enemyes & ofte raunsonyd.

Though the OED does say that 'what used to be able to precede other prepositions:

[1340 Hampole Pr. Consc. 7100] What for sorow, and what thurgh smoke And what thurgh cald, and what thurgh hete.. Þai salle ay grete.
Since it's basically functioning as a topic marker, it might come from the use of hwæt as an attention-grabber, like in Beowulf?

Re: "what with"

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:11 pm
by zompist
Viktor77 wrote:
zompist wrote:Though the OED does say that 'what used to be able to precede other prepositions:

[1340 Hampole Pr. Consc. 7100] What for sorow, and what thurgh smoke And what thurgh cald, and what thurgh hete.. Þai salle ay grete.
Are "What in the world" and "What in God's name" examples of surviving usage?
No. Those are just ordinary uses of "what".

What is going on? :> What in God's name is going on?

"What" is doing the same work in both sentences-- it's the subject.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 9:25 am
by Magb
Wiktionary also lists "now" as an old meaning: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hw%C3%A6t. Could "what with" be an instance of that meaning, i.e. "now with"?

Re: "what with"

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:18 pm
by Nortaneous
most cases of 'what with', you can drop 'what' and it still works fine

Re: "what with"

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 7:02 pm
by Melteor
"No, thanks"::"No thanks"
What, with"::"What with"

Re: "what with"

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 9:15 pm
by zompist
Nortaneous wrote:most cases of 'what with', you can drop 'what' and it still works fine
Not really. "What with" means "on account of", "owing to". In addition, pragmatically, there's a sense that the condition noted is negative or difficult:

What with the recession and Facebook tanking, the IPO is going to have to be delayed.

Compare:

?What with having a handsome boyfriend and a bunch of new grammars, Linguoboy is pretty happy.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:27 pm
by Vuvuzela
zompist wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:most cases of 'what with', you can drop 'what' and it still works fine
Not really. "What with" means "on account of", "owing to". In addition, pragmatically, there's a sense that the condition noted is negative or difficult:

What with the recession and Facebook tanking, the IPO is going to have to be delayed.

Compare:

?What with having a handsome boyfriend and a bunch of new grammars, Linguoboy is pretty happy.
What about?:
?What with having his masculinity called into question, Torco feels a bit sad.

Compared with:

What with the recent upsurge in pinnata sales, I reckon we'll actually end up with a greater profit than anticipated this quarter.

Although the second one also seems just a tad off. It seems to me that "what with" carries a connotation that the subordinate clause provides necessary justification for the main clause. Thus, in your examples, the IPO delay needs explanation, while Linguoboy's contentedness does not.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:01 pm
by clawgrip
zompist wrote:?What with having a handsome boyfriend and a bunch of new grammars, Linguoboy is pretty happy.
Vuvuzela wrote:?What with having his masculinity called into question, Torco feels a bit sad.
These sound awkward to me, but normal if the clauses are reversed:

Linguoboy is pretty happy, what with having a handsome boyfriend and a bunch of new grammars.
Torco [is feeling] a bit sad, what with having his masculinity called into question.


Though I feel like "what with" maybe requires at least two conditions though, so the second one sounds a little weird still. It would work if it had something like "and everything" tacked onto the end, though.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:13 pm
by Nortaneous
what with foo and all

also:
with the population crunch and all, we're just reproducing ourselves
?with the fire code I can't buy anything even if I have the money for it
(different?)The other solution is messy, with the square root in it.
so i guess i was wrong earlier, sort of?

Re: "what with"

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:17 am
by Radius Solis
zompist wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:most cases of 'what with', you can drop 'what' and it still works fine
Not really. "What with" means "on account of", "owing to". In addition, pragmatically, there's a sense that the condition noted is negative or difficult:

What with the recession and Facebook tanking, the IPO is going to have to be delayed.

Compare:

?What with having a handsome boyfriend and a bunch of new grammars, Linguoboy is pretty happy.
I don't know about that. Maybe it is more often used with negative conditions, but I can't think it's anything like a hard rule. Your second example where both clauses are positive is fine by me, as is a sentence like "What with all the good weather we've had, it's a surprise the crop isn't further along yet" where only the main clause is negative.

And as far as I can tell both of them, like all of the others in this thread thus far, have basically the same meanings if the "what" is dropped - or at least they can. Dropping it can permit a more typical meaning of "with" to dominate, when shorn of context. But "with" by itself can certainly mean "on account of", "owing to", or "considering". I'd give examples, but the thread is full of them already if you just drop the "what"s. I don't agree with Nort's question-marking his "what"-dropping examples; they're perfectly normal English to me. I'd even guess that we use "with" by itself in this meaning a lot more often than the full "what with", or at any rate that I do.

Actually I made a post pointing this out several days ago, after Xephyr's, in tentative support. Apparently it got eaten by the interwhut. It was to the effect that the "what" is so superfluous in this construction that I cannot identify any function for it, beyond focusing the listener's attention more closely on the clause.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:52 am
by zompist
Well, I don't agree... there's something different about "what with", though it's hard to put a finger on it. It seems more exasperated.

A better paraphrase for "What with..." might be "Having to deal with..."

It's not ungrammatical with positive stuff, but something seems off that way. But there may be a better way of thinking about it.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:05 am
by clawgrip
Radius Solis wrote:It was to the effect that the "what" is so superfluous in this construction that I cannot identify any function for it, beyond focusing the listener's attention more closely on the clause.
zompist wrote:Well, I don't agree... there's something different about "what with", though it's hard to put a finger on it. It seems more exasperated.
I'm going to take a stab here and say that it seems entirely devoid of semantic information, but carries important pragmatic information. Using "with" alone provides an understandable cause or reason for the situation, while the addition of "what" turns it into an appeal for the listener to sympathize with whomever has experienced the situation.

With the recession and Facebook tanking, the IPO is going to have to be delayed.
What with the recession and Facebook tanking, the IPO is going to have to be delayed.

The first sentence seems to be a matter-of-fact statement that simply provides a reason for an event. The second seems to be subtly urging the listener not to be angry with the delay.

With the fire code I can't buy anything even if I have the money for it.
What with the fire code I can't buy anything even if I have the money for it.

In the first sentence, the speaker may be looking for sympathy or simply describing an annoying situation. In the second one the speaker seems to be looking for sympathy, and it carries a sort of "poor me" tone that is missing in the version without "what". The sentences that follow this one: "The reminder says the fire code has been violated. Please respond I need help!!!!" seem to suggest this person really does want people to sympathize and respond.

Maybe someone can counter or add to this, but this seems to be a reasonable explanation.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:08 am
by Salmoneus
zompist wrote:Well, I don't agree... there's something different about "what with", though it's hard to put a finger on it. It seems more exasperated.

A better paraphrase for "What with..." might be "Having to deal with..."

It's not ungrammatical with positive stuff, but something seems off that way. But there may be a better way of thinking about it.
I have no problem with the positive examples at all. However, I think there may be something to Vuvganguja's (sp?) suggestion that the implication is that the thing in question requires justification, or just would otherwise be surprising.

Linguoboy is very happy, what with having a new boyfriend > sounds a bit odd at first, because I want to say "why wouldn't he be happy?". But then I imagine that Linguoboy is notoriously unhappy most of the time, and maybe insert 'at the moment' or 'actually' into the first clause, and it all seems natural to me again.

I would say, however, that I find it more natural to use 'what with' with something more nominal. "What with having a new boyfriend" is grammatical, but a bit unnatural - I would actually say "what with him having a new boyfriend", or possibly maybe "what with his having a new boyfriend". [The latter becomes more likely if I'm adding 'and all' or the like to the end]. This goes along with my other intuition, that normal "with" clauses are inadequate, but become fair equivalents if followed by something like "being as it is".
So "With the bad harvest this year, we barely made a profit" - weird. But "With the bad harvest being what it was this year, we barely made a profit" isn't that far off from "what with the bad harvest this year, we barely made a profit".

Oh, and I reiterate what someone else said about ordering. "what with" expressions are massively more likely following the main clause than preceding it. It sort of carries a "oh, sorry, that needed more explanation, didn't it? Here you go!" feel.

Re: "what with"

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:56 am
by Skomakar'n
I haven't read through everything carefully, so I might be repeating something, but isn't 'what', at least historically, also an interjection in English (first word of Beowulf~)?
meltman wrote:What, with
Like so.

Even if modern usage wouldn't be to shout out 'hwæt!', maybe this could still be the case with this fossilised usage?