Question about answers

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Dear Nick,
in 2006, we had a similar thread on Lingtyp (Subject: (1) "YES and NO"; 
(2) "answers and tags"). There, you might perhaps find some answers to 
your questions....
Best wishes and Happy New Year,
Wolfgang

Am 02.01.2010 17:42, schrieb Nick Enfield:
> 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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*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze *

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