YES and NO
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE
Thu Apr 6 14:51:23 UTC 2006
Dear all,
here a little bit of brain storming, nothing more. Alex' wonderful
presentation of the Oceanic data as well as Michael's remarks on East
Caucasian remind me of a talk Theo Vennemann (Munich) once gave at our
University. He talked abot the yes/no patterns in Europe dwelling upon
the question whether the distribution of languages with yes/no-'words'
(e.g. German) and those with positive/negative sentential echoes ('(s)he
did/n't, it is/n't etc. with many variants) (e.g. Celtic with impacts on
Old English etc.) is more than just coincidental. I do not want to go
into the details here, but Theo's talk has raised the question whether
a) yes/no-strategies are a universal of language at all, whether b) the
lexicalization of yes/no-words has common pathways in the languages of
the world. Naturally, the discussion did not come to any defnite
conclusion, still it made me thinking of the following:
For methodological reasons, we should clearly distinguish between what
Alex has called vocal gestures and yes/no-words or yes/no-constructions.
Vocal gestures seem to be sound symbolic in nature, and it would be
highly interesting to collect a larger typological sample of vocal
yes/no-gestures to see whether they share common features (both for
their semantics and their 'form'). For instance, I do not think that it
is just coincidental that in Alex examples, [ô] has a falling contour
tone (> 'yes'), whereas [óòó] ends with a final rise (> 'no'). This
correlates with the general observation that a falling prosodic pattern
is frequently associated with the expression of certainty, whereas a
final rising pattern indicates uncertainty etc. (compare German [jà]
'yes' (certain) vs. [já] 'is it really so? I doubt / am amazed, wonder'
(uncertain). The natural outcome of 'uncertainty' in a communicative
situation seems to be some kind of (graded) 'negation' (e.g. S1: I will
go! S2: Do you? (I don't think so) > 'no') [by the way, this observation
correponds to the well-known relationship between negation and
interrogation]. This way, a vocal gesture indicatiing 'no' can at least
in parts be derived from its 'positive' counterpart. On the other hand,
the expression of 'no' does not seem to be an obligatory technique to
negate the utterance of a speaker. We can also do without, compare: S1:
I will go to the market. S2: You stay here! Here, negation emerges from
the use of more or less antonymic expressions. A vocal gesture may then
support and strengthen this antonymic expression, leading to some kind
of negative assertion. Interestingliy enough, such vocal gestures seem
to have their own formal patterns, as can be seen for instance from the
paralinguistic usage of clicks (see WALS, map 142). For instance, some
German speakers know the use of the dento-alveolar click in the sense of
'no' only if it is reduplicated, whereas it expresses amazement when
spoken out more than two times. Likewise in German, we have the
combination ['m-'m] (' = glottal stop with nasalization) to indicate
'no', but the simple form ['m] does not work at all. The same holds for
German ['ä/n-'ä/n] (/n = slight nazalization). I am left with the
impression that vocal gestures have their proper patterns which may be
both universal and particularized in nature.
I do not know whether the same holds for vocal gestures expressing
'yes'. In German, we have a form ['`m´m`m] ('m with high-low-high) which
indicates some kind of 'yes' (and which clearly goes against what I have
said above for the opposition [ô] vs. [óòó]), but that's another issue).
Else, we sometimes see the combination of a laryngeal + vowel (often a
back vowel), e.g. [ho] in Udi (East Caucasian) or Georgian. There are
-as far as I can see - no such constraints on simple vs. reduplicated etc.
The lexical expression of yes/no may have sometimes evolved from vocal
gestures, though I do not know of any language that has for instance
lexicalized (and grammaticalized) the type of paralinguistic clicks
mentioned above. Interestingly enough, yes-words seem to be much more
transparent as for their etymology than no-words. This holds especially
if the yes-word does not stem from a vocal gesture. Sources may be for
instance modal deictic terms ('so', 'thus' etc.), terms related to
'truth'-concepts and so on. No-words are often taken from or derived
from a verbal negator, which makes me think that many no-words reflect
older echoe-techniques mentioned above. But then we arrive at the
question, where verbal negators stem from. In a number of languages, we
can reconstruct a verbal negator for the protolanguage (e.g. IE *ne,
Southern East Caucasian *t:e etc.) which illustrates that verbal
negators often are rather old in form (contrary to yes/no-words, which
are frequently borrowings). But it is difficult to relate such a
reconstructed negator to another meaning (thus claiming that such a
negator has come about via metonymy, metaphorization or the like). One
option would be interrogative words/morphemes (e.g. is Turkish -mI-
(negation and mI = interrogation just coincidental?), see above for
this assumption (I know that people usually derive certain interrogative
markers from a negative construction, but must it be alwas this way?).
Best
Wolfgang
Best,
Wolfgang
Alex Francois schrieb:
> (sorry this is going to be a bit long)
>
> Dear all,
>
> Let me mention here the situation in a few Oceanic languages from
> north Vanuatu & eastern Solomons.
> [See my page http://alex.francois.free.fr/AF-field.htm for a
> list and a map of these languages]
>
> YES and NO work as follows.
> Basically, we get a twofold strategy similar to that mentioned for
> Caucasus languages by Michael Daniel and Stephen Hewitt: that is, the
> equivalent of YES and NO take both the form of a "vocal gesture" (if
> this is the right term) and of lexical material [see below]. There
> are also facial gestures, which I won't describe here, but which of
> course are worth of mention.
>
> * In the affirmative, you generally combine the gesture with the
> sentence repeated,
> something like Did you go there? -- Mmm! I went there. In this
> case, I guess we would say that the equivalent of YES is the
> vocal gesture (although this may be discussed).
>
> * Things are less clearcut for NO, since we get both the gesture
> and a specific single-word sentence used for negative
> statements. Both strategies (gestural and lexical) are used in
> similar contexts for similar purposes [though there are slight
> pragmatic nuances, which I won't detail here].
> When they are combined, which is often the case, the gestural NO
> comes first and the lexical second: see in the Lemerig example
> below "Óòó, niv!". Incidentally, it would be interesting to
> check if this is always the case in other languages (gestural NO
> comes before lexical NO).
> We may compare this twofold NO-sentence with a sequence "Unhun,
> no!" in English, thus suggesting that the equivalent to NO is
> really /niv/; but we might as well point to the English
> sequence "No, I didn't" -- thus suggesting /Óòó/ = NO and /niv/
> = "I didn't" (and I agree with Michael that the latter
> construction can be regarded as one of English 'NO's).
>
> Unless we come up with a stricter definition of what should be
> understood as "equivalents to YES and NO", I see no strong reason for
> deciding which one is the exact equivalent of English NO. So let's
> consider for the moment that both /Óòó/ and /niv/ equally constitute
> equivalents to NO, as they both can form (whether separately or
> combined) a well-formed utterance showing the speaker's disagreement
> with the content of a preceding question / claim / presupposed
> proposition, etc.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Now, if we get back to the Oceanic forms:
>
> 1. The vocal gesture normally takes the form of a vowel with a
> specific pitch contour. [no clicks].
> The vowel is /o/ in 17 languages, and schwa in the two languages
> (Lo-Toga and Hiw) that possess schwa in their vowel inventory.
>
> * YES will be a slightly elongated, though monosyllabic vowel,
> with a falling prosodic contour of the type 4>1* -- this
> roughly sounds the same as the fourth tone of Mandarin Chinese.
> Taking a tonal analogy, one may transcribe this as [ô:].
>
> (*I'm using here intuitively a scale from 1 = extra-low to 5
> = extra-high. Note that none of these languages is tonal.)
>
> * Its negative counterpart takes the form of a longer vowel,
> following a three-syllable pitch contour: a high plateau
> followed by a low one and then a final rise: something like 4+1+3.
> Taking a tonal analogy, one may roughly transcribe this as
> [ó.ò.ó]. In the examples below, It will appear as /Óòó/.
>
>
> 2. As for the lexical equivalent to our NO:
>
> In all the languages of the area, the lexical form 'No' is the
> same form as the negative existential predicate (henceforth
> NegExist) -- Engl. 'There isn't [+Noun]' (or if the subject is
> anaphoric, 'There's none'.)
> Thus compare, for a language called Lemerig (3 speakers, Vanua Lava):
>
> N-pé niv. ~ Niv pé.
> Art-water NegExist. NegExist water
> 'There is no water.'
>
> N-pé pän? -- Óòó, (n-pé) niv.
> Art-water Exist (no) (Art-water)
> NegExist
> 'Is there any water? -- No, there isn't any.'
>
> Näk m-van 'i lé wongon? -- Óòó, niv.
> 2sg Preter1-go Pret2 Locative beach
> (no) NegExist
> 'Did you go to the beach? -- No, I didn't.'
>
> Note the perfect parallels in Bislama (the English-lexifier pidgin
> of Vanuatu), with Nogat [<Eng. no + got 'have not']:
>
> Wora i nogat. ~ (I) nogat wora.
> water Pred NegExist. Pred
> NegExist water
> 'There is no water.'
>
> Wora i gat? -- Óòó, (wora) i nogat.
> water Pred Exist (no) (water)
> Pred NegExist
> 'Is there any water? -- No, there isn't any.'
>
> Yu bin go long sanbij? -- Óòó, (*i)
> nogat.
> 2sg Preter go Locative beach
> (no) (*Pred) NegExist
> 'Did you go to the beach? -- No, I didn't.'
>
> In Solomon Pijin, the form is Nomoa [<Eng. no + more 'not any
> more'].
>
> Almost all of the Oceanic languages on which I have first-hand data
> behave the same. In a way, they illustrate your query, since they have
> a NO form that has its own meaning and syntax, apart from being a
> sentential word.
> However, in almost all these languages, you can't really say that the
> NO word is morphologically complex, since it consists essentially of a
> single morpheme (glossed here NegExist): e.g. Teanu tae, Tanema eia,
> Hiw tego, Mwotlap tateh, Lemerig niv, Vurës odiang, Vera'a gitag,
> Mwesen eneng, Mota tagai, Nume/Dorig/Koro bek, Mwerlap tégé...
>
> In two languages, Olrat and Lakon, the word is morphologically
> analysable as prefixed with a Stative aspect: ga iv /Stative/NegExist/.
>
>
> 3. More interestingly, two languages (other than Bislama and Pijin
> mentioned earlier) show a morphologically complex form for 'No':
>
> * In Araki, 'No = NegExist' is mo ce re, analysable as /mo/
> '3rd.pers. Realis' + /ce/ 'Negation' + /re/ 'Partitive' = 'not
> any'.
>
> [see p.65 of: François, Alexandre. 2002. Araki: A
> disappearing language of Vanuatu. Pacific Linguistics, 522.
> Canberra: Australian National University.]
>
> * In Lo-Toga, 'No' is tate-gë, analysable as /tate/ 'NegExist' +
> /gë/ 'thing' = 'there is nothing'.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Alex.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Alex François
>LACITO - CNRS
>7 rue Guy Môquet
>F - 94801 Villejuif
> FRANCE
>
>email Alexandre.Francois at vjf.cnrs.fr
>
>http://alex.francois.free.fr
>http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr
>
--
#############################
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft (IATS)
[General Linguistics and Language Typology]
Department für Kommunikation und Sprachen / F 13.14
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180 2486 (secretary)
++49-(0)89-2180 5343 (office)
Fax: ++49-(0)89-2180 5345
E-mail: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/index.php
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