Question about answers

[Eitan Grossman]

Dear Nick,

It seems to me that the very distinction between interjections and
repetition is often not so categorial, and results from a lack of diachronic
information, since repetitions using pro-verbs are a normal source for
"interjections." In Coptic, for example, you have a whole paradigm of
responsives (affirmative and negative) for each tense form, pretty much.
While they synchronically don't have the exact form of finite verbs, they
are clearly identifiable as grammaticalized pro-verbs, rather like what one
finds in Celtic languages. Some examples:

Finite auxiliary           Responsive
mpe- past.neg           mpê
nne-  jussive.neg       nno
sha- prs.aff.              sho

A comprehensive treatment can be found in Ariel Shisha-Halevy (2007) Topics
in Coptic Syntax: Structural Studies in the Bohairic Dialect (pp. 164-177).

As such, the question would be better phrased as "What are the criteria by
which we distinguish this kind of grammaticalized element ('responsive') and
its source construction (pro-verb/repetition)?" at least for this type of
responsive.

Best,
Eitan

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Siva Kalyan
<sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>wrote:

> If you count nods of the head as an "interjection-type answer", I doubt
> you'd find any language that's purely of type B.
>
> Does anyone know of cross-cultural research on gestures expressing
> affirmation or negation? Specifically, whether there's any culture that
> lacks them?
>
> Siva
>
> 2010/1/2 Nick Enfield <Nick.Enfield at mpi.nl>
>
>  Happy new year everyone -
>>
>> Colleagues and I are comparing how polar questions are answered in various
>> languages. There appear to be two basic types of strategy for answering a
>> polar question such as 'Is John working today?': 1. with an 'interjection
>> answer' such as "yes", "no", "of course", or 2. with a 'repetitional answer'
>> (modifiable in various ways) such as "John is working today", "He's
>> working", "He is". This suggests three possible types of system for a
>> language:
>>
>> A. Interjection only: the language has no 'repetitional' type strategy,
>> and it is only possible to answer by saying things like ‘Yes’.
>>
>> B. Repetitional only: the language has no 'interjection' type strategy,
>> and it is only possible to answer by saying things like ‘He is’.
>>
>> C. Mixed. The language makes both strategies available (and the
>> frequencies of use of one or the other alternative may vary across languages
>> of this type)
>>
>> QUESTION. Does anybody know of any claims that there are languages with
>> systems A or B? It does not seem possible that System A exists, since
>> presumably all languages can provide speakers with a way to take the
>> proposition that was coded in the question and simply assert it as a way of
>> answering (i.e., repeat in declarative form for 'yes', or with negation for
>> 'no'). There does, however, seem to be a common view that System B occurs.
>> We have heard it said, for example, that Celtic languages like Welsh have no
>> interjection strategy, but this is clearly not the case for Welsh itself, as
>> shown by Bob Morris Jones in his book 'The Welsh Answering System'. In that
>> book, Jones cites other languages as having repeat-only strategies (Gaelic,
>> Breton) but he is not able to present sufficient data to establish that
>> there is really no way to answer a polar question with an interjection type
>> answer. (Note that under ‘interjection type answer’ we would include items
>> like ‘yep’, ‘uh-huh’, ‘mm’, and nods of the head.)
>>
>> I would much appreciate any references to literature in which it is shown,
>> or claimed, that a language has no means of answering a polar question with
>> an interjection type strategy (functionally equivalent to 'yes' and 'no' in
>> English), meaning that a 'repetitional' answer is the only means for
>> answering a polar question.
>>
>> Many thanks in advance,
>>
>> Nick Enfield
>>
>
>
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