Ever say "Hi?"

[Arnold Zwicky]

barbara need:
 >Question for the original poster. Was the punctuation significant?
 >That is, were you asking about the use of _hi_ with a rising
 >intonation? Or were you asking about the use of _hi_ with any
 intonation? I certainly use _hi_ as a greeting and I can imagine
 >using the rising intonation if I am not certain if I know the person
 >I am addressing, or if I think I might be interrupting.

  >>We do hear people saying "Hello?" But personally I've never heard
  >>anybody saying "Hi?" Do you? Odd?

well, the rising (question) intonation can be used on practically
any expression to indicate unsureness.  but there are two more
specialized uses of "hello" that shoji might have been asking
about, and neither of these extends to "hi".

the first has the ordinary question intonation, but is used as
a reclamatory prompt - to elicit a repetition of something the
hearer didn't quite process or couldn't accept at face value.
  A: I just bought some perfness.
  B: Hello?
  A: Um, some perfume.
B's prompt here could be elaborated in various ways:
  Hello?  What did you say?
  Hello?  You did *what*?
"hi?" or "hey?" or any other greeting won't do here.

the second has an intonation we don't have a standard punctuation mark
for, a rise to extra-high with a fall only to mid. "hello^" is
intended as a "wake-up call" to the addressee.
  A: Why doesn't someone campaign for gay marriage?
  B: Hello^  Where have *you* been during the last decade?
i don't think "hi^" would work here.  "hey^" maybe.  certainly
"good morning^".

there are also non-greeting uses of "hello", with ordinary (statement)
falling intonation (or exclamatory intonation, with a full fall from
extra-high), that can't be replaced by "hi".  so, cop shines
flashlight on couple in back seat of car parked in deserted spot,
and says:
  Hello! What do we have here?
"hello" is functioning as a pure discourse opener here.  "hi" just
wouldn't work here at all; it's a real greeting (opening a discourse
*and* establishing some relationship to the addressee(s)).

it might be worth asking why someone should have expected that "hi"
would work the same way as "hello".  i think this expectation follows
from assuming that "hi" and "hello" are somehow the same thing,
differing only in formality.  now it might be possible for words to be
related like this - "yes" and "yeah" come pretty close (while "ok" and
"sure" have uses different from them) - but there's considerable
pressure for words to diverge in their uses, simply from the fact that
they're phonologically different and that each is learned in
context. (even expressions that are, modulo formality, otherwise
interchangeable can be nonsubstitutable in fixed expressions.  if
asked, "Do you wanna stay, yes or no?", i can answer "Yeah."  but
you can't ask me, "Do you wanna stay, yeah or no?")

in any case, "hi" is pretty much just a greeting, all the time.
"hello" is a greeting+, with a variety of other conventionalized uses.

(it's not hard to see how these other uses developed from the greeting
use.  but the conventionalizations affected only certain words - as is
usually the case, the most frequent words with some primary use.  what
interests me about the history is not so much how "hello" picked up
specialized uses, which is no great puzzle, but how "hi" diverged from
"hey", used to attract attention or express surprise, and came
entirely into the orbit of "hello".)

actually, i'd expect expressions that organize face-to-face
interaction, like greetings, to differ in their uses in many subtle
ways.  we get *so much* contextual information about them, after all.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), now pondering "yes"/"yeah"
  and "goodbye"/"so long"