Somewhat (was: another silly phonology question)

At 3:23 am +0000 3/12/00, Keith Alasdair Mylchreest wrote:
>On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 02:35:34PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>> Keith Alasdair Mylchreest wrote:
>>
>> > In the English East Midlands we used to say /'s@m@t/ for "something",
>>where
>> > does that come from?
>>
>> "Somewhat"
>
>Good try, but I'm sceptical.
Pity - because it happens to be true.

> /s@m@t/ is a pronoun not an adjective, e.g.
'what' is a _pronoun_ (Ok - it can an adjective as well = 'which') - it is
the neuter equivalent of 'who'.

In earlier English, including early modern English, 'somewhat' was not
infrequently used as a _pronoun_ = something.

[...]
>
>I'd never say *"it's got somewhat in it".
You may not, but Shakespeare might well have done, see below.

>Whatever it's final element
>/s@m@t/ is used of things exactly as "someone" is used for persons.
At 1:08 am -0500 3/12/00, John Cowan wrote:
[....]
>Absolutely.  Check the definition of "somewhat [pronoun]" at
>www.m-w.com, the Merriam-Webster *American* dictionary: it defines
>it as "something", just what you report.
So does Chambers English Dictionary, and so does any decent English dictionary.

>Possibly this is because it appears in Shakespeare, Pericles II.i:
>
>        Thanks, fortune, yet, that, after all my crosses,
>        Thou givest me somewhat to repair myself,
...and by others, and it continued to be used in English dialect until
recent times.  "Summ'at" was certainly still used in Sussex when I was
young and I was fully aware that it was the local pronunciation of
'somewhat'.

It's a perfectly logical formation, being in line with:
somewhere
somehow
somewhen (still, I'm glad to say, very much alive in Sussex)

...and the archaic:
somewhither
somewhence
somewhy
(All attested)

The thing the puzzles me is why 'somewho' (= some one) has AFAIK been attested.

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
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