Question about answers

[Paul Hopper]

Interesting observation, Eitan. The juxtaposition of Coptic with Celtic is
striking. (Is Theo Vennemann listening in?) But the use of a pro-verb
seems to be very widespread. Jan Anward's point about Swedish suggests
that yes/no interjections may often be a later layer. I think of English
formulaic responses like "I will", "I do", "I so swear", and the Old High
German "ih forsahhu" in response to "Forsahhistu diavalon?" "Do you
forsake the Devil?" in the Weissenburg Catechism, which may represent the
older state of affairs.

Malay has much of interest here too, but I'll leave that to David.

Paul





On Mon, January 4, 2010 13:44, Eitan Grossman wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Prof. Dr. Paul J. Hopper
Senior Fellow
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Albertstr. 19
D-79104 Freiburg
and
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213