English Language & Usage Asked on June 13, 2021
"What went we out into this wilderness to find?"
This is the first dialogue of the movie ‘The VVitch’. I can’t understand how this sentence is correct. I asked my teacher, she told me that it is a structurally liberal sentence that is used to create an impact on the reader. I checked many grammar checking websites (like Grammarly, Becorrect, Ginger, &c.) and found this sentence correct. Please help.
Do you mean The Witch? It is set in the 1630s. In English then, subject-verb inversion was grammatical with any verb, not just with auxiliary verbs and modal verbs, as today.
By contrast, in modern English, subject-verb inversion is possible only with auxiliary verbs and modal verbs, not with lexical verbs such as "went". The modern English way to ask the question is "What did we go out into this wilderness to find?". (Yes, you might come across questions with subject-verb inversion, when the speaker is deliberately adopting old-fashioned usage, or is quoting an idiom which arose when this inversion was still grammatical, but that's not what this thread is about.)
(Not sure why the question is tagged [british-english], though. The way this usage differs from modern English is historical, not regional.)
Answered by Rosie F on June 13, 2021
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