Final parentheticals with english questions — Their illocutionary function and grammar

Yourr& rrf Pragmatic8 3 (1979) 40 l--4 12 0 Na1rth4biland Publishing Comptany

ANITA lUI”IWWII

EngIish has utterances consisting of a question foIlowed by a parenthetical in questicn form. Six types of’ such utterances are examined in the main pact otFthis paper and it is argued that the pazei;~&eticaIsfunction to modify or correct the speech act performed in the preceding question. It is suggested that syntactically the parenthetical represents a separate sentence b& that on the discourse level the main question and the paret&eticaI form one unit. Section 2 describes so,me further data which depot gramlmaticafly or lexicahy from the stereotypes discussed in section 1.

In this paper I shall ex#xe an intriguing structure or utterance type - I shall ed by aiparenthetical in not it a sentence type - in Enghsh: a question fo fom, as in Is he going do ytyu thmk [ 11. In p ular I shall be concerned que with (a) the illacutionary function of the parenthetical, (b) the relationship of such utlerances to those in which the order is revemd, do yew think he is going, as well as their relationship to sequences af two separate utterances. As a preliminaqr to the discussion I shaU review the relevant Preparatory rules (henceforth PBS) fm questions: (I) 5 does not know the answer to the questBor1; and (2) s’ believes that H kmws the answer, or, in a weaker version, that there is a

** paper is a revised version of a paper Presented at t-be: 12th intemationd Congress of tinrguists - Vienna, August 1977 - in the Working Group on Speech Acts led by John Se&e. I have tgeatlgrbenefited from discussions I ibald with Rodr,ey I-IuddIeston and Joseph Tag Ii&t before writing it, [If The term ‘parenthetic&’ was extended to fmaI occ’urrences of expressions like I ttilnk by Urmson (1952) and has been current for such ures in the rece,nt literature. (Urmson even mes but I shalI not fohow him in this.) Bohnger (I 957) includes the under t&e generaI term Ysgs’. Quirk ti ul, (19’6% in&de them

401

atso include iamong the PRs what is questions. By asking l4%0 is coming S element stands is not empty, or, more does not repxesemt an answer to this act performed i.81asking it. For polar n;%e.These questions pose a choice d~u~ctiou of the form p or -p; and since one of er. But thlere is perhaps ztweaker be some paucity in each of the disjuncts. Thus tened to kill Bili. ypes and I shall illustrate question. fn alI the exarrtp~esthe parenthetiPaul and usutiy the two together fmn one

an ~bvims connection with the PR that H sactively soften the act perfo d in asking is question ~~~~~~ l&e ‘I have asked yo ou ts know the answer”.

that has any ~ea~~~~ relatimship to (A.1). In t to (A.1) except that the speaker hat; ; it is used to implicate the question aping of two questions: DO you H understands it in this way he fe gove~~g conversation if he 142ef: Grice 1975

A. Mittwoch /Final pmnth@icals with Engiishquestions

403

There are however cases where a question of the form of (A.3a) does not implicate the question rlealized by the complement sentance, i.e. where S may know or suspect that if H knows the answer he (H) is .p..eot at liberty to divulge it arid where H may weuf respond with a simple Y& or Yes, but I cm ‘t tell’you (tie latter if he suspects th%t S was hoping to get the answer to the complement question). A more obvious (example than (A.3a) would be DO YOUI~FZOW whetherJohn hiascancer (put to a doctor) or DO you know whether John idron the selecrim cmvna’ttee. Sucfi questions may, but need not, have nuclear stress on know. The main-clause equivalent of (A.2) is (4) Do you know where he is going which is normally equivalent to (R.2). Again however there are contexts in which they mi&t differ, e.g., Do you know whol is on the selection comtazifdee,OKDoi you know who your examiners ax where S may not even wish to get the answer if he is unfamiliar with the people in H’s speciality.

(1) Is he going do you think (2) Where is he going do you think This parenthetical also functions to tone down ihe preceding question act; it differs from c20 you know inasmuch as it signals that H is not expected to have definite bowledge of the answer but only an opinion - that he is required to produce only a hedged statement. The regzrsed fcbrmsare (3) Do you think (that) he is going (4) Where do :i’ou think he is going f3] (13.3)looks superficialIy like a polar question, i.e., like (3’) Do you think that he is going or don’t you think that he is going where S merely presupposes that it is plausible that H has an opinion on whether p or 7. But it is characteristically used to convey the stronger (3”) Do you think that he is going or do you think that he is not going [3] Note &at irr (A.$) subject auxiliary inversion applies to the main clause, nat to the ckluse that wntahs the WI-?-element in underlying structure (cf: Solinger 1957: 145). Some speakers have afl alternative version with a true, i.e. intend parentheticink

A, Mittwoch / Finulparenthetic& with English questims

405

A third example is provided by ironical questions of the type who do you thzirk you are.

(1) is he going did you say (2) ?Where’she going did you say Note the past tense in these examples, This parenthetical is used in situations whare S is asking H to repeat something he (@) has said before. The situation may be one in which S has not heard properly or pretends he hasn’t; his question follows immediately upon Ifs utterance, This is the typical echo question, signalled primarily by its 8characteristic intonaticn. The parenthetical does not affect the illocutionary force of such questions [4]. Another possibility is that S has forgotten hformation previously provided by N or fa$ed to take it in properly in t&e first place. Such questions may have normal or echo intonation, The question is separated from the statement to which it refers by intervening dialogue; it may in fact refer to a statement made by N in a previous conversation. And it can be a. paraphrase of the original utterance. !n this situat!on the parenthetical fulnctions as; a kind of apology for s’s forgetfulness or inattentiveness. Ona might indeed supplement G&e’s conversational maxims with (a) Listen to what the other person has to say, and (b) Store it in your memory. The function I have described is not captured by either of the simple main clause equivalents of (C. 1): (3) (a) Did you say whether he was going (b) Did you say that he was going For both of these correspond to a logical di,sjunction in which one of the disjuncts U whether / that p or you asserts that H did not say anything at all: E&/M yo did olot say whether / that p. Hut in uttering (C. 1) in the function described S presupposes thzlt H has already said something, that he has already provided the information Ip or “ip, as the case may be) which S is asking him to repeat. Hence (61.1]ris equivalent to the non-polar (alternative) disjunctive question. (3) (c) Did you say Ihewas going or did you say he w’asnot going which corresponds to the non-tautologous

disjunction: Either you s&d that p or

f4f As an echo qttestiew (Cl) is more likely to foiiovr a question than a statement. (C.2)may follow a statement or a question. After a statement it has nuckar stress on the WH-word; after a question its aucleau stress will usually echo that of the question (~5 Quirk et al. 1972: 408ff.j.

verb (C.3c) is not equiva.3b) may root be all that that aIb utterarxe of (Cl) with

*Ji.a, with the ~~~~~~tio~, that if H t that often an utterams of (C.1) like (A3a) be used to would trfeaawhether you have

~tt~~~~~~ sf (C X) in this sense

t fun~t~o~~as il paren

A. Mittwch / Final penthetiwb

(CSB) (C.Sc) (A.6) (B.6) (C.68) (C.6b)

with EnglsShquestions

401

Is he going? Did you s~1R.y so? Is he going? What did you say? (Request for repetition) Where’s he going? Do JEWknow? Where% he going? Whaltdc,you think? Where’s he going? Did :you say? Where’s he going? What did you say? (Request for repetition)

These sequences are:, I suggest., pragmatically equivalent to the corresponding utterances with fual parentheticals. In both the illocutionary function of the second clause is essentially to correct in some way the speech act performed by uttertig the first. Notice that in (4.5) and (A.6) we have zero pronom~~ization (sometimes called null anaphora). English has no pronoun referring anaphorically to an interrogative sentence. I have written, (CSa) and (C.da) in the same form but one may feel these to be less than My grammatical. The alternative is to repeat the previous utterance as an indirect question, ix. to substitute (C.3a) or (C.4a) for the second question. owever sequences like (C.5a) and (C.&J do occur; in fact they represent those readings of (C.1) and (C.2) which cannot be uttered as one tone-group (B.5) and (C.~C).,(B.63 and ((L6b) presuppose that H thinks something (has an opinion) or has said something (has already prolvideld the information required). The interrogative pronoun wlturt is not, of course, anaphoric; but as it stands j’or the answer-set to the preceding question one ma!y 2%~that the second questicln as a whole bears an anaphoric relation to the first [S] . The pronoun SO in (C.5bj) is anaphoric:; but nt stands not for the preceding question but for the affirmattve answer to that question, I.e., for (alti YQUa_~) Ltaf he i$. From a formal lingutitic point of view questiorxi parentheticah differ from out intervening pause and such sequences in two respects. They are uttered acks an object. There has (usually) as one tone group; and the parenthetical v been much discus&n on the syntactic relationship een the parentheti:al and the sentence it is attached to (c-6 in particular Ross 1973; Jackendoff 1942). My own view is closest to that of Lakoff (1974). L&off suggests that underlyllg such structures there are, in fact 5two separa e sentences, e.g. (a) 1s Ir2goi@ (b) JDOyou think &at he is going? .h, %malgarnation rule’, akin to a generalized transformation, chornskyadjoias the second sentence minus its complement to the first.. 1 would like phowever, to question an assumption whiclz this proposal shares with earlier proposals, narnel-,~that il. i3 necessary to postulate ,(isyntactic relationship between the two parts at all, in other words that they constitute one sentence. This assumption seems to rest on a further tacit assumption, vi?. that one intonational unit Can[5 1 Since the answer-s& to ithe promding questioraconsist;: of only two members a better pauld bfe possible if English had a 1 interrogative pronoun atio phrase than (B.f), etc. ‘which of the: two”. ILatinwtr~rrz,which me

to the RR that only H’ knows the answer or may know it. Usually they imply that both S and 1Yknow the answer, insofar as it is a matter of knowledge at all. In the first and second function they do occur with think parenthetic&, and what is interesting is that the parenthetical is usually itself ne,gated, in fact, for the second function it n-rust be: (3.7’) Isn”t he go:ing don’t / do you thlink Isn’t that s bit of an imposition don’t you think I can’t contex:~ualize the second example without the negative in the parentheticah ‘IJre negative rkarentheticals, however, function not SC,much to modify the speech act performed in the main part of the utterance as to reinfaree it; they make explicit S’s demand for agreement from 19. We also End (C.7) Isn’t hle going didn’t you say with nuclear stress on isn ‘t in the sense of ‘I think you said that he was going but perhaps 1 got it. wrong and you said that he wasn’t’; and with nuclear stress on going in tie sense: ‘I think you said that he was going but perhaps II am mistaken and you said1nothing of the sort’. The second type consists of syntactically declarative sentences uttered with the intonation of a question. Such utterances can also be regarded as a type of cmducive question. They usually carry an assumption on the part of S that the proposition is true (sometimes that S wants it to be true) but J! is reqired to ~onf’irm ey may also contain an expressive element, especially of suq3rise. In view of this. their me8 character it is not surprising that they occw with either declarative or interrogative parenthetic&: 3) He’s going yoti think We”sgoing do you think Again the p~entheti~~ seems merely to reinforce what is expressed by intonation in the main part of the utterance; and it would make no difference to the: illo-~meaning of the utterance if the t GVO clauseri were reversed. We also find utterances with a falling intonation followed by a negative ;Jarenthetical with rising intonation: He’s going don’t you think The ~lo~~o~~ function of this parenthetical is, I think, identical with thrat of the auxiliary inversion tztg (i&t it) when uttered with a rismg intonation. S !ras given s option and wants it confirmed by H.

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with the second having

pronominahzation (& you emember?). (d) a& (e) correspond to Type k (f) CWI be used as a conducive question with an additional element of surprise and/or protest. Of the remaining examples I find only (i) and, marginally, (j) ac:ceptable. The parentheticals in (g) and (h) contain expressions which in their first person affirmative versions (the answers to the questions) would be performatives. And performatives by their nature cannot be questioned. (One can, course, challenge a person to produce a performative.) (i) differs from (g) in having the parenthetical in progressive aspect. It requires a context in which H has already made a remark from which S thinks he can infer p (the letter is forged).S considers p sufficiantly plausible to ask H whether his (S’s) inference was correct. Notice that in the reversed version, tire you suaesting that the Zetter is forged, S need not considler p plausible. (i) contains an element of both Type B and Type C, but it is suigeneris. I can contextual.& (j) as follows: H has mentioned remarks madle by Iohn (the he of the parenthetical) about Mary. S presupposes that Mary has changed her mind and believes that John has expressed an opinion on why she did so. (i) is i husNa variant of Type C, in spite of the tense and the verb think. (k) strikes me as strange precisely because in its natural interpretation thss presupposition of the question, v&. that she will resign, conflicts with the implic:ation of the parenthetical, that she might not; a speaker generally does not commia himself to the ‘claims’ of others. There is perhaps a weaker interpretation in which it is only the claim of the subject of the parenthetical to be able to identj.fy the t.Lmeaf her resigning that is implicitly called into question by S. In this interpretation (a) may be marginally possible. Of course (k) may also be used ironically, or it may be uttered by a speaker who encodes his message - and changes his pres$uppositions as he goes along. (1) Books like a variant of Type B parentheticals, i.e., as a signal to N that a will do. I find it unacceptable, and, e who share my judgment, me as that which rules out at the reason for its unacceptability is bably in questions (a, WI.& bob& mm )+Expressions like it appears and probabi’y have a deceptive air of objectivity about them; in reality they are spjeaker-orientated, where&s in questions they would have to be hearerorientated [!J] . For those who &are my judgments of these examples the conclusion to be drawn is that the range of possible parenthetic& with questions is fairly limit&. In particular, if we compare them with the variety of parentheticah that can be attached to statements (and co ives) we find that they permit a lnuch LmaIfer number of verbs and are subjec ater restriction on the subjects of’these verbs. Z~ZQ

af

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on qtrestions can be said to be to be less extensively used in they a.re infrequant in some aratory cunditions of the can affect the essefttia~ of his statement - these