Abstract

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This study reveals how the interrogative why became established as a noun, as used in phrases such as a why or the why(s), adopting a descriptive approach.
Dictionaries and previous studies widely acknowledge why as an interrogative. Further, why is often used as a noun in phrases like the why(s) and (the) wherefore(s) and the how(s) and (the) why(s). Most dictionaries pay little attention to why used as a noun. However, the independently used nouns (i.e. a why and the why(s)) occur frequently in present-day English, as shown by my corpus investigation.
This study includes a quantitative investigation of how a/the why(s) became widespread in contemporary English. In addition, as a qualitative investigation, characteristics of a/the why(s) are revealed through an analysis of their syntactic features, using corpus data. The quantitative results show that why is independently used in the phrases a why, the why and the whys and that each pattern has been frequently used since the 1920s. The qualitative results indicate that the meaning of a/the why(s) reflects the lexical meaning of why and there is a semantic difference between a why and the why(s). Syntactically, the noun forms of other interrogatives are positioned close to a/the why(s).