Handbcher zur

Sprach- und Kommunikations-

wissenschaft
Handbooks of Linguistics
and Communication Science

Manuels de linguistique et
des sciences de communication

Mitbegrndet von
Gerold Ungeheuer

Herausgegeben von / Edited by / Edites par

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Hugo Steger
Herbert Ernst Wiegand

Band 20.2

Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York

2001
Language Typology and
Language Universals
Sprachtypologie und
sprachliche Universalien
La typologie des langues et
les universaux linguistiques
An International Handbook /
Ein internationales Handbuch / Manuel international

Edited by / Herausgegeben von / Edite par

Martin Haspelmath Ekkehard Knig
Wulf Oesterreicher Wolfgang Raible

Volume 2 / 2. Halbband / Tome 2

Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York

2001

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Language typology and language universals : an international handbook /

edited by Martin Haspelmath [et al.] Sprachtypologie und sprachli-
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Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
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I. Typology (Linguistics) Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Universals
(Linguistics) Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title: Sprachtypologie
und sprachliche Universalien. II. Haspelmath, Martin, 1963 III.
Handbcher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft ; Bd. 20.
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Language typology and language universals : an international handbook

Sprachtypologie und sprachliche Universalien / ed. by Martin Haspel-
math . Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter
(Handbcher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft ; Bd. 20)
Vol. 2. (2001)
ISBN 3-11-017154-6

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Contents/Inhalt/Contenu

Volume 2/2. Halbband/Tome 2

X. Syntactic Typology
Syntaktische Typologie
Typologie syntaxique
64. Beatrice Primus, Word order typology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 855
65. Gilbert Lazard, Le marquage differentiel de lobjet . . . . . . . . . . . 873
66. Leonid I. Kulikov, Causatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 886
67. Konstantin I. Kazenin, The passive voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 899
68. Konstantin I. Kazenin, Verbal reflexives and the middle voice . . . . 916
69. Vladimir P. Nedjalkov, Resultative constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
70. Ray Freeze, Existential constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 941
71. Leon Stassen, Predicative possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954
72. Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Adnominal possession . . . . . . . . . . . 960
73. Ekkehard Knig, Internal and external possessors . . . . . . . . . . . . 970
74. Kaoru Horie, Complement clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
75. Leon Stassen, Comparative constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993
76. Vera I. Podlesskaya, Conditional constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 998
77. Peter Siemund, Interrogative constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1010
78. Viktor S. Xrakovskij, Hortative constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1028
79. Laura A. Michaelis, Exclamative constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1038
80. Knud Lambrecht, Dislocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1050
81. Hans Bernhard Drubig, Wolfram Schaffar, Focus constructions . . . 1079
82. Leon Stassen, Noun phrase coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1105
83. Bertil Tikkanen, Converbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1112
84. Andrej A. Kibrik, Reference maintenance in discourse . . . . . . . . . 1123

XI. Lexical typology

Lexikalische Typologie
La typologie lexicale
85. Peter Koch, Lexical typology from a cognitive and linguistic point
of view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1142
86. Cecil H. Brown, Lexical typology from an anthropological point of
view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1178
87. Cliff Goddard, Universal units in the lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1190
88. Niklas Jonsson, Kin terms in grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203
89. Brenda Laca, Derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1214
90. Robert MacLaury, Color terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1227
91. Ewald Lang, Spatial dimension terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1251
1010
Nedjalkov, Igor V. 1995. Converbs in Evenki In:
Knig, Ekkehard & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.).
Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective: Structure
and meaning of adverbial verb forms (adverbial par-
ticiples, gerunds). Berlin, New York: Mouton de
Gruyter, 441464.
Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. 1995. Some typological
parameters of converbs In: Knig, Ekkehard &
Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). Converbs in cross-lin-
guistic perspective: Structure and meaning of ad-
verbial verb forms (adverbial participles, gerunds).
Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 97136.
Palmer, Frank R. 1986. Mood and modality. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Podlesskaya, Vera I. 1995. K tipologii implikativ-
nyx konstrukcij [On a typology of implicative
constructions]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 6: 7784.
Podlesskaya, Vera I. 1997. Syntax and semantics
of resumption: some evidence from Russian condi-
tional conjuncts. Russian Linguistics 21: 125155.
Rjabova, Irina S. 1998 Jazyk dabida [The Dabida
language]. Moscow: Ponovskij i partnery.
Roberts, John R. 1988. Switch-reference in Papuan
languages: a syntactic or extrasyntactic device?
Australian Journal of Linguistics 8.1: 75117.
Svedova, Natalja J. (ed.) 1970. Grammatika
sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka [A
grammar of the modern Russian literary language].
Moscow: Nauka.
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From etymology to pragmatics:
Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic struc-
ture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, Sandra A. & Longacre, Robert E.
Adverbial clauses. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.).
Language typology and syntactic description (Vol-
ume II. Complex constructions). Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 171234.
77. Interrogative constructions
1. Introduction
2. Clause types and associated speech acts
3. Types of interrogative constructions
4. Polar interrogatives
5. Constituent interrogatives
6. Non-canonical uses of interrogative
constructions
7. Special abbreviations
8. References
1. Introduction
To acquire information is very important to
the human species. Apparently, most if not
all languages have developed some particular
X. Syntactic Typology
Traugott, Elizabeth C. & ter Meulen, Alice &
Reilly, Judy Snitzer & Ferguson, Charles A. (eds.)
1986. On conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1986. Conditional mark-
ers. In: Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & ter Meulen,
Alice & Reilly, Judy Snitzer & Ferguson, Charles
A. On conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press. 289307.
Trask, Robert L. 1993. A dictionary of grammatical
terms in linguistics. Routledge: LondonNew
York.
van der Auwera, Johan. 1983. Conditionals and
antecedent possibilities. Journal of Pragmatics 7:
297309.
van der Auwera, Johan. 1997. Conditional perfec-
tion. In: Athanasiadou & Dirven (eds.). 1997,
169190.
Xrakovskij, Victor S. 1994. Uslovnyje konstruk-
cii: vzaimodejstvije kondicionalnyx i temporalnyx
znachenij [Conditional constructions: the inter-
action of conditional and temporal meanings]. Vo-
prosy jazkoznanija 6: 129139.
Xrakovskij, Victor S. (ed.). 1998. Tipologija uslov-
nyx konstrukcij. [Typology of conditional construc-
tions]. St. Petersburg: Nauka.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1997. Conditionals and
counterfactuals: conceptual primitives and linguis-
tic universals. In: Athanasiadou & Dirven (eds.).
1997, 1559.
Ziv, Yael. 1997. Conditionals and restrictives on
generics. In: Athanasiadou & Dirven (eds.). 1997,
223239.
Vera Podlesskaya, Moscow
(Russia)
means dedicated to eliciting information,
henceforth called interrogative constructions
or simply interrogatives. In addition, there is
always the option to eschew interrogatives
and use non-canonical means for obtaining
information.
Depending on the kind of information
sought, we can differentiate essentially three
types of interrogatives across the worlds lan-
guages. They may be used (i) to ask whether
a proposition or its negation is true, (ii) to
inquire which values (if any) instantiate the
variables of an open proposition and (iii) to
query which element of a set of alternatives
makes an open sentence true:
77. Interrogative constructions
(1) (a) Does a platypus lay eggs?
(b) What is a platypus?
(c) Is a platypus a mammal or a bird?
We will refer to these three types as polar
interrogatives, constituent interrogatives and
alternative interrogatives respectively, but it
should be noted that there is a multiplicity
of labels to be found in the literature. Polar
interrogatives have also been called closed
or yes-no interrogatives/questions and the
set of labels used for constituent interroga-
tives includes items such as open, special,
partial, question-word, wh and informa-
tion interrogatives.
Although the existence of interrogative
constructions seems a universal property of
natural languages, languages differ substan-
tially in the strategies they employ for coding
interrogatives. There are seven basic strate-
gies of deriving interrogatives, some of them
being restricted to particular types of inter-
rogatives: (i) intonation, (ii) interrogative
particles, (iii) interrogative tags, (iv) disjunc-
tive constructions (v) the order of constitu-
ents, (vi) verbal inflection and (vii) interroga-
tive words. Some of these strategies can occur
in combination, others may be mutually ex-
clusive.
Interrogative systems are related to many
other subsystems of grammar (relative pro-
nouns, indefinite pronouns, conditionals, etc.)
and interrogative marking may be derived
from or expand into these areas.
2. Clause types and associated
speech acts
There are three basic clause types to be found
in the languages of the world and interroga-
tives are one of them. Besides interrogative
clauses, we find declarative and imperative
clauses and with each of these clause types
a prototypical speech act is associated. The
speech act normally associated with declara-
tives is that of making a statement, with in-
terrogatives that of asking a question and
with imperatives it is the issuing of a com-
mand (directives), as the following English
examples illustrate:
(2) (a) She is a good student. (declarative,
statement)
(b) Is she a good student? (interrogative,
question)
(c) Be a good student! (imperative, direc-
tive)
1011
As is well-known, this conventionalised rela-
tionship between syntactic structure or clause
type and conversational use is by no means
isomorphic and in actual use declaratives
and interrogatives (not so much imperatives,
though) may be associated with various other
speech acts (cf. Huddleston 1994 for a good
summary). For instance, we frequently find
declaratives used as questions and interroga-
tives in the function of directives:
(3) (a) He has come today? (declarative,
question)
(b) Could you pass the salt? (interroga-
tive, directive)
In addition to the three clause types discussed
so far, we find that some languages (English,
German, etc.) have yet another clause type
exclamative clauses (J Art. 79) which,
however, is not universal. The speech act
prototypically associated with exclamative
clauses is that of an evaluation:
(4) How good a student she is!
3. Types of interrogative constructions
Common to all types of interrogatives is that
the speaker uses them to elicit information
from the addressee. Depending on the kind
of information requested, we can distinguish
between polar interrogatives, constituent in-
terrogatives and alternative interrogatives.
The expected answer in the case of polar
interrogatives is either yes or no. The
speaker asks the addressee about the truth
value of the proposition expressed by the re-
levant interrogative clause. Polar interroga-
tives may have either positive or negative
polarity. In the unbiased case, the speaker
has no expectations with respect to the an-
swer, as in the following example:
(5) Is 761 a prime number?
In many cases, however, the speakers expec-
tations are biased in favour of either a posi-
tive or a negative answer. As a rule, positive
polar interrogatives carry negative condu-
civeness whereas positive conduciveness is as-
sociated with negative polar interrogatives:
(6) (a) Have I ever let you down?
(b) Cant you stay a little longer?
With constituent interrogatives we find an in-
terrogative word (who, what, when, etc.) in
the position of the unknown information,
which also specifies the kind of information
1012
queried. The speaker expects the addressee to
supply adequate information for these vari-
ables. Constituent interrogatives can be used
to query persons, things, times, locations, cir-
cumstances, etc. There are interrogatives with
one or with multiple interrogative words:
(7) (a) Who opened the door?
(b) Who did what to whom?
According to Hamblin (1973), a constituent
interrogative such as Who came? denotes the
set of propositions constituted by the possible
answers to it (John came, Maria came, etc.).
Karttunen (1977) refines Hamblins proposal
by restricting the propositions in the set to
those that are true answers to the question.
This approach easily accommodates constitu-
ent interrogatives with multiple interrogative
words.
The third type of interrogatives to be briefly
discussed are alternative interrogatives. With
these the speaker offers the addressee a list of
possible answers from which he is supposed
to choose the correct one:
(8) Would you like tea or coffee?
Alternative interrogatives are frequently sub-
sumed under polar interrogatives and then
come to be analysed as two (or more) coordi-
nated polar interrogatives which have been
reduced due to ellipsis. Although an analysis
of alternative interrogatives in terms of polar
interrogatives seems possible, it disregards
the fact that they cannot be answered simply
by yes or no, but have to be answered ones. To indicate polar interrogatives by a
by one of the conjuncts given. Interestingly
enough, alternative interrogatives can be used
as polar interrogatives once their typical into-
nation pattern (rise on first and subsequent
conjuncts, fall on last conjunct) is replaced
by normal question intonation (final rise).
Since the differences and similarities between
polar and alternative interrogatives are rela-
tively unimportant from a typological per-
spective, no distinction will be drawn be-
tween these two types of interrogatives in the
following discussion.
The three types of interrogatives intro-
duced in this section can be found as both
main clauses and subclauses, i. e. they can be
either non-embedded or embedded. This arti-
cle concentrates primarily on interrogatives
as main clauses because much of what can be
said about non-embedded interrogatives also
holds for embedded structures. It should be
borne in mind, however, that there are differ-
ences and that, for the marking of embedded
X. Syntactic Typology
interrogatives, languages may select a dif-
ferent subset from the set of strategies avail-
able. English embedded interrogatives, for
instance, do not show the intonation typical
of main clause interrogatives, nor do they
undergo a change in word order (cf. (9)). Em-
bedded polar interrogatives, in contrast to
their non-embedded counterparts, must be
introduced by the conjunctions if or whether.
(9) (a) She wondered if she could trust him.
(b) She wondered who she could trust.
4. Polar interrogatives
The strategies for marking polar interrogatives
in the languages of the world vary within
clearly fixed bounds and comprise the use of
special intonation patterns, interrogative par-
ticles, the addition of tags, disjunctive struc-
tures, a change in the order of constituents
and particular verbal inflection. According
to the empirical study conducted by Ultan
(1978), intonation is by far the most wide-
spread strategy and can be found in nearly
all languages of his sample. As a matter of
fact, most languages and maybe all seem able
to mark polar interrogatives solely by into-
nation (see Geluykens 1988 for a more pessi-
mistic view on the role of intonation). It is
slightly less common to mark polar interrog-
atives with interrogative particles and tags,
although these strategies are still very fre-
quent in comparison to the three remaining
disjunctive construction (x or not x) or a dif-
ferent order of constituents is relatively rare,
and particularly the latter strategy is usually
associated with European languages. Special
verbal inflection is only reported from poly-
synthetic languages, such as Eskimo, where it
does indeed make sense to talk of an inter-
rogative mood. It is usually possible to use
intonation in combination with one of the
other strategies.
4.1. Intonation
The intonation contour most widely em-
ployed for polar interrogatives, and in fact,
interrogatives in general, is a rising one (ca.
95% of the worlds languages according to
Ultans 1978 sample) with the rise usually be-
ing placed towards the end of the contour.
Greenberg (1966: 80) points out that intona-
tional marking of interrogatives is typically
found in clause-final position and accord-
ingly includes this general property of lan-
77. Interrogative constructions
guages into his set of language universals
(8). What is also frequently pointed out is
that the rising intonation typically used for
interrogatives reflects an iconic principle
according to which rising intonation, due to
its openness in terms of pitch or frequency,
is tantamount to uncertainty with regard to
the truth-conditions of the situation de-
scribed and non-termination of the current
turn, whereas the falling intonation usually
used in declaratives signals conviction and
termination.
(10) Italian
(a) Suo marito e` ancora \malato. (state-
ment)
(b) Suo marito e` ancora /malato? (ques-
tion)
Her husband is still ill./?
Given that the marking of polar interroga-
tives with a rising intonation is such a perva-
sive tendency in the languages of the world,
it should not come entirely unexpected to
also find some variation within this para-
meter itself. In his sample, Ultan (1978) finds
at least four strategies of placing the rise
towards the end of the contour (cf. Table
77.1).
Table 77.1: Higher pitch towards end of contour
higher ultima Vietnamese
higher penult Chontal
higher pitch on last stressed
vowel Bashkir
rising toward last stressed
vowel Hebrew
And although the final rise certainly repre-
sents the dominant strategy cross-linguisti-
cally, there are also languages that mark
polar interrogatives with a higher pitch
towards the beginning of the contour (cf. Ta-
ble 77.2). In fact, what seems relevant typo-
logically is whether a language places the
higher pitch on the left edge or on the right
edge of the contour. The actual realisation of
either setting can, in all likelihood, be pre-
dicted from the phonological rules relevant
for a particular language.
Table 77.2: Higher pitch towards beginning of
contour
higher initial syllable Western Desert
higher stressed vowels Finnish
1013
Apart from these relatively clear intonational
patterns, Ultan (1978: 220) also lists some
more complex examples, notably the ones of
Aramaic and Hausa, which employ a higher
ultima followed by a falling extra-high ultima
falling to mid, and the interrogative pattern
of Guaran, which has higher stressed vow-
els at any point within the contour.
Even more interesting, however, are those
languages which do not use rising intonation
for interrogatives and falling intonation for
declaratives, but seem to be doing it exactly
the other way round. In Chitimacha, appar-
ently, interrogative intonation has a falling
contour whereas declarative intonation has
a rising contour. And with Fanti (Kwa) and
Grebo (Niger-Congo), we have two addi-
tional languages which deviate in a similar
manner.
4.2. Interrogative particles
Interrogative particles are expressions like
French est-ce que, Polish czy, Finnish k,
Mandarin ma, Slavic li, Turkish mi (cf. Bazin
1984), Bengali ki, etc. and are, after intona-
tion, the most widely employed device for
marking polar interrogatives. They can also
be found with constituent interrogatives, but
are clearly preferred with polar interrogatives.
Ultan (1978: 226 f.) argues that for some lan-
guages it would be more reasonable to talk
of interrogative affixes or clitics because there
these expressions are added to words, usually
predicates. Interrogative particles, like inter-
rogative intonation, can be analysed as oper-
ators which take a declarative as input and
turn it into an interrogative.
(11) Japanese (Hinds 1984: 158)
(a) yamada-san wa ginkoo de
yamada-Mr. top bank at
hataraite-imasu.
working
Mr. Yamada works at the bank.
(b) yamada-san wa ginkoo de
yamada-Mr. top bank at
hataraite-imasu ka?
working ip
Does Mr. Yamada work at the bank?
Languages may have more than one interrog-
ative particle. In Korean, for instance, which
has grammaticalised several levels of formal-
ity (honorification), we find that different
particles are used at different levels, namely
pnikka (formal), eyo (polite), e (intimate),
nunya (plain). The position indicated by X
1014
in (12) below can be taken up by one of
these expressions.
(12) Korean (Chang 1996: 84)
Kui-nun cal cwumwusi-X
he-top well sleep-ip
Does he sleep well?
The position of interrogative particles varies
from language to language although it tends
to be relatively fixed for any particular lan-
guage. Dominant positions for interrogative
particles to occur in are the beginning or end
of a clause with the clause-final position be-
ing slightly preferred (as e. g. in the Japanese
example above). An example of a language
that places interrogative particles at the be-
ginning of a clause would be Yiddish (cf.
(13)).
(13) Yiddish (Sadock & Zwicky 1985: 181)
Ci hot Mojse gekojft a hunt?
ip has Moses bought a dog
Did Moses buy a dog?
Additional languages with clause-initial in-
terrogative particles include Welsh (an), In-
donesian (apa) and Hebrew (haim). It is
customary to include into the group of lan-
guages with clause-initial particles also those
in which the interrogative particle follows the
first constituent of the clause (i. e. where the
particle is enclitic to it). One such language is
Russian (cf. (14)). Here the formation of a
polar interrogative involves the preposing of
the constituent that is the focus of the ques-
tion to clause-initial position plus the inser-
tion of the particle li immediately behind it.
(14) Russian (Comrie 1984: 20)
ital li ty e`tu knigu?
C ticles are one of the major sources of condi-
read ip you this book
Have you read this book?
If some other constituent is the focus of the
question, it can be placed into clause-initial
position in a similar manner, again followed
by li:
(15) Russian (Comrie 1984: 20)
(a) Ty li cital e`tu knigu?
(b) E`tu li knigu ty cital?
The situation in Latin is quite comparable to
the one found in Russian (cf. Sadock &
Zwicky 1985: 182):
(16) Est-ne puer bonus?
Is the boy good?
(17) Puer-ne bonus est?
Is it the boy who is good?
X. Syntactic Typology
(18) Bonus-ne puer est?
Is it good that the boy is?
Similar facts are also reported from Ute (and
also Finnish), where the interrogative particle
-aa is always enclitic to the first constituent:
(19) Ute (Givon 1984: 219 f.)
(a) mama-ci-aa u wuu uka-puga?
woman-subj-ip that.subj work-rem
Did the woman work?
(b) kuu aw-aa paga-kway-kya?
yesterday-ip leave-go-ant
Did (she) leave yesterday?
The position that an interrogative particle
occupies in a certain language also allows it
to make some predictions with respect to the
word order type of that languages. As ob-
served by Greenberg (1966: 81) as well as
Ultan (1978: 227 f.), initial particles tend to
correlate with verb initial languages whereas
final particles are most common with verb
final languages. However, this generalisation
is not without exceptions and what makes it
even more complicated to formulate clear
correlations is that various languages have
more than one interrogative particle, which
are usually restricted to either clause-initial
or clause-final position. There seem to be no
preferences for the position of interrogative
particles in SVO languages. Thai and Yoruba,
for instance, have final particles whereas the
particle in Lithuanian is initial, but all belong
to the basic type SVO.
Finally, a brief remark on the relation be-
tween interrogative particles and other do-
mains of grammar seems in order. Traugott
(1985: 291) points out that interrogative par-
tional markers. This is clearly visible in Rus-
sian, where the marker of the conditional
protasis (esli) has been derived from the cop-
ula (est) and the interrogative particle (li).
Similar observations can be made in Hua (a
Papuan language), as the following example
demonstrates:
(20) Hua (Haiman 1978: 570571)
E -si -ve baigu -e
come 3sg.fut ip will stay 1sg
If he comes, I will stay.
The close relationship between conditionals
and polar interrogatives is also observable in
languages that grammaticalised their condi-
tional marker from a different domain or
where the etymology of this marker is un-
known. In German it is possible to mark the
77. Interrogative constructions
protasis by the constituent order typical of
polar interrogatives while dispensing with
the actual conditional marker (cf. (21)).
Viewed against this background, the inver-
sion of subject and verb found in certain
English conditionals finds a simple explana-
tion.
(21) German (Sadock & Zwicky 1985:
183)
Ist das Buch rot, so mu es mir geh-
ren.
If the book is red, it must belong to
me.
4.3. Interrogative tags
Another strategy for marking polar interrog-
atives are the so-called interrogative tags, as
exemplified in (22) below.
(22) (a) He has gone to Tokyo, hasnt he?
(b) She did not do that, did she?
In many languages, these tags are clearly re-
lated to interrogative particles both in mean-
ing and in distribution. Bengali ki, for in-
stance, is used as interrogative particle and as
part of the interrogative tag.
(23) Bengali (Saha 1984: 131132)
(a) beral pakhita dhorechilo, noy ki?
cat bird.sg caught not-is ip
The cat caught the bird, didnt it?
(b) ki beral pakhita dhorechilo?
ip cat bird.sg caught
Did the cat catch the bird?
When tags are added to a sentence to mark
it as a question, it usually receives the intona-
tion pattern typical of polar interrogatives in
that language. Still, there is a great number
of differences between these two devices
which shall be discussed in the following par-
agraphs.
In contrast to interrogative particles, for
which the clause-initial position is no less
likely than the clause-final position, inter-
rogative tags are in the great majority of
cases appended to a (declarative) clause. Out
of the 32 languages in Ultans (1978) sample,
for which tags are clearly attested, there is
only one example of a language with an un-
ambiguous initial tag Hebrew halo and
even here we find another tag which is bound
to clause-final position. Another difference
from interrogative particles is that tags are
formally not particles, but occur as either
(content) words (24), phrases (25) or clauses
(26). There are negative tags as well as posi-
1015
tive tags, with the negative tags frequently
either including or being formally alike to the
negative marker of that language (cf. French
nest-ce pas and Khasi ? eem). Positive tags
usually involve a copula or existential predi-
cate (Rotuman ne ( predicative particle),
Thai chay may is it), interjections (English
eh) and words related to the predicate true
(Russian pravda true).
(24) Russian
Ty ego slysal, pravda?
You heard him, didnt you?
(25) German
Er ist sehr reich, nicht wahr?
He is very rich, isnt he?
(26) John would not do that, would he?
The most important difference, however, is
that polar interrogatives based on tags are
always biased with respect to the answer ex-
pected (cf. Hudson 1975: 22 ff.). As a rule of
thumb, negative tags presuppose a positive
answer, whereas positive tags bias expecta-
tions towards a negative answer (cf. (22)).
Considered on a more detailed level, how-
ever, the situation observed in single lan-
guages like English and also cross-linguisti-
cally is much more complicated. Ultan (1978)
observes that the answer induced by a tag
question depends to a greater extent on the
polarity of the declarative sentence used for
forming the question and less so on the po-
larity of the tag (cf. Table 77.3). Although a
majority of languages in his sample awaits a
positive answer to a question formed by com-
bining a positive declarative with a negative
tag (reversed polarity tag), the next most fre-
quent constellation is a positive declarative
and a positive tag (constant polarity tag) in-
ducing again a positive response, and only
then do we find negative declarative, positive
tag and negative answer. Languages that al-
low all three parameters being set to a nega-
tive value seem very rare.
Table 77.3: Tags and polarity
declarative tag response number of
languages
P N P 10 (5?)
P P P 5 (1?)
N P N 2 (1?)
N N N 1
1016
4.4. Disjunction
In some languages it can be observed that the
disjunctive structures normally used for alter-
native interrogatives have become a possible
device for posing polar interrogatives. Ap-
parently, this has happened in Mandarin
Chinese where the disjunction of an affirma-
tive clause and its negative counterpart, the
so-called A-not-A construction, has been
grammaticalised and is now a common way
of forming such interrogatives (cf. (27)). The
disjunction is usually not overtly expressed,
i. e. the disjunctive morpheme haishi is miss-
ing in most of the cases.
(27) Mandarin (Li & Thompson 1984: 53)
ta za`i jia bu za`i jia?
3sg at home neg at home
Is s/he at home?
The complete formula exemplified in (27) is,
however, rarely encountered in ordinary con-
versation and normally one of the reduced
versions given in (28) is used. In other words,
identical material may be omitted.
(28) (a) ta za`i bu za`i jia?
(b) ta za`i jia bu za`i?
Although the A-not-A construction is a per-
fectly adequate instrument for asking ques-
tions that are not biased with respect to their
answer, i. e. that do not carry positive or
negative conduciveness, the very same struc-
ture also finds application in the formation
of interrogative tags, which, as illustrated in
the previous section, do express expectations
towards either a positive or a negative an-
swer.
(29) Mandarin (Li & Thompson 1984: 54)
zhang-san xhuan he jiu, du`
Zhang-san like drink wine right
bu du`?
neg right
Zhang-san likes to drink wine,
right?
(30) Mandarin
n mngtian lai ka`n wo, hao about the proposition in question (cf. 6.):
you tomorrow come see me good
bu hao?
neg good
You come to see me tomorrow,
O. K.?
(31) Mandarin
n fu`qin hen lao, sh` bu sh`? One of the strategies of marking polar inter-
you father very old be neg be
Your father is very old, right?
X. Syntactic Typology
Given that essentially the same construction
is used to mark polar interrogatives that are
either biased or unbiased with respect to the
answer expected, how is it possible to arrive
at the contextually relevant interpretation of
the A-not-A construction? In many cases, of
course, the context will provide the necessary
clues, but there are also clues within the rele-
vant clauses themselves. First, the set of A-
not-A structures used as tags is extremely
limited and highly lexicalised. Apart from the
examples cited in (29)(31), there is only ke
bu key possible and xng bu xng okay that
occur with significant frequency. Even more
important is the fact that A-not-A tags are
always added to complete propositions/
clauses, whereas in the case of unbiased polar
interrogatives, the A-not-A structure picks
up part of the proposition, usually the predi-
cator.
(32) Mandarin
n hu` bu hu` da-z`?
you know.how neg know-how hit-word
Can you type?
Another interesting question concerns the
differences in meaning and use between A-
not-A interrogatives in Mandarin and those
involving the interrogative particle ma. Evi-
dently, in many contexts the two strategies
can be interchanged:
(33) Mandarin (Li & Thompson 1984: 57)
n he bu he pjiu?
you drink neg drink beer
Will you drink beer?
(34) Mandarin
n he pjiu ma?
you drink beer ip
Will you drink beer?
In other contexts, however, only one of the
two strategies can be employed to yield a
fully acceptable interrogative clause. In the
following example, the A-not-A construction
would not be appropriate because the context
does not allow the speaker to be neutral
(35) Mandarin
?? n shengb`ng bu shengb`ng?
you sick neg sick
Are you sick?
4.5. Order of constituents
rogatives that languages across the world are
not particularly likely to manifest is a change
77. Interrogative constructions
in the order of their basic constituents (inver-
sion). Speaking from a typological perspec-
tive, the constituent most likely to be affected
by inversion is the finite verb. The verb may
even be the only constituent for which this
kind of reordering is possible. Provided a lan-
guage allows inversion in order to mark po-
lar interrogatives, what usually happens is
that the finite verb is put into clause-initial
position (cf. (36)).
(36) (a) John is a policeman.
(b) Is John a policeman?
Thus, inversion of the verb-fronting type can
only occur in languages whose basic word
order type is either SVO or SOV; it is ruled
out for VSO-languages. In addition, inver-
sion with polar interrogatives is only found
in those languages that also use inversion as a
means for marking constituent interrogatives
(cf. Greenberg 1966: 83, universal 11).
In English, inversion is restricted to auxil-
iaries and modals and do-support is necessary
to convert clauses lacking such operators into
polar interrogatives:
(37) (a) John phoned me yesterday.
(b) Did John phone you yesterday?
There are only seven examples of inverting
languages to be found in Ultans (1978) sam-
ple, and six out of these seven languages
come from Europe (English, Finnish, French,
Hungarian, Rumanian, Russian). They be-
long to just two genetic groups, either Indo-
European or Finno-Ugric. The only non-
European language in this sample to demon-
strate inversion is Malay, a SVO-language
belonging to the Indonesian branch of the
Austronesian family.
In some languages, the combination of
two or more of the strategies for marking
polar interrogatives is not possible. French,
for instance, prohibits the simultaneous use
of inversion and interrogative particle (cf.
(38)).
(38) (a) Allez-vous a Paris?
(b) Est-ce que vous-allez a Paris?
(c) *Est-ce quallez vous a Paris?
Are you going to Paris?
Russian, on the other hand, can invert to
VSO while marking the interrogative with the
particle li. Note, however, that word order in
Russian is relatively free and that the constit-
uent on which the question focus is placed
always comes in initial position.
1017
4.6. Verbal inflection
Although, cross-linguistically speaking, rela-
tively rare in terms of frequency, the strategy
employed by West Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)
and Eskimo languages (Inuit) in general for
the formation of polar interrogatives seems
rather interesting and totally different from
the four strategies we have discussed so far.
What we find here is special verbal morphol-
ogy exclusively dedicated to interrogative
formation so that it makes sense to assume
an interrogative mood for this group of lan-
guages.
(39) West Greenlandic (Sadock 1984: 190)
(a) nerivutit
you ate
(b) nerivit
Did you eat?
Judged against the background that Eskimo
languages are highly inflecting and polysyn-
thetic, such a feature certainly cannot come
entirely unexpected. Another language for
which a verbal strategy of interrogative for-
mation is attested is Blackfoot.
What is also interesting about such lan-
guages are the distributional gaps observable
with interrogative morphology. According to
Sadock (1984: 198), West Greenlandic shows
independent interrogative morphology only
in combination with subjects of the second
and third person. It is not possible to find a
morphological distinction between declara-
tive and interrogative for clauses with first
person subjects.
(40) West Greenlandic
(a) takuvoq
He sees.
(b) takua?
Does he see?
(41) West Greenlandic
(a) takuvutit
You see.
(b) takuit?
Do you see?
(42) West Greenlandic
takuvunga
I see. / Do I see?
Such an imbalance in the system is probably
not entirely unmotivated and may be ex-
plained on the basis of the function interrog-
ative clauses have under normal circum-
stances. Their main function clearly is to
elicit information from the addressee, i. e. to
1018
access the addressees knowledge base. Since
most knowledge relevant to the speaker
about himself is contained in the speakers
knowledge base, the speaker will usually try
to acquire information that does not pertain
to himself. This explains why first person in-
terrogatives are not really needed and can
mostly be dispensed with.
5. Constituent interrogatives
Constituent interrogatives differ from polar
interrogatives both in form and meaning.
They cannot be answered simply by supply-
ing a truth-value. In posing a constituent
interrogative, speakers expect information
that allows them to complete the interpreta-
tion of a proposition. This may be informa-
tion central to the situation described by that
proposition, viz. concerning the participants
and objects involved in it, or more circum-
stantial information relating to the relevant
locational or temporal setting, or to issues
like the manner of execution and the pur-
pose. Natural languages have specific devices
dedicated to the function of eliciting such
substantial information interrogative
words which can be analysed as placehold-
ers or variables in a proposition to be filled
or assigned a value by the answer (cf. (43)).
(43) Who killed the sheriff? Bill killed
the sheriff.
Since there does not seem to exist a language
without constituent interrogatives, it is safe
to conclude that all languages have interrog-
ative words, although languages differ heav-
ily in the number of interrogative words they
posess and in the semantic distinctions they
draw.
Having said this, we have already iden-
tified the main formal feature of constituent
interrogatives across languages: interrogative
words. However, nearly all of the strategies
used for marking clauses as polar interroga-
tives, as discussed in the previous section, can
also be found with constituent interrogatives,
although they play a less important role in
this domain and are often optional. Before
discussing interrogative words in some detail,
let us therefore briefly consider these by now
familiar strategies in the context of constitu-
ent interrogatives.
As far as intonation is concerned, it ap-
pears that this strategy is much less impor-
tant for the characterisation of constituent
interrogatives than polar interrogatives, if it
X. Syntactic Typology
is not even entirely insignificant. Out of 36
languages in Ultans (1978) study for which
intonation as a means for marking polar in-
terrogatives is attested (mostly rising intona-
tion or higher pitch), only 12 (or 33.3%) use
the same or a similar intonational pattern
also for marking constituent interrogatives.
The overall impression that the data give is
that most languages either do not mark
constituent interrogatives by intonation at all
(33.3%) or do so only optionally (33.3%).
Languages that do not distinguish between
declaratives and constituent interrogatives
intonationally include Fula, Japanese and
Tagalog; representatives of languages allow-
ing optional marking of constituent interrog-
atives are Amharic, English and Turkish.
Saying that intonation plays only a minor
role in the marking of constituent interroga-
tives, however, should not be taken to mean
that there is no interesting variation to be
found concerning this parameter across the
worlds languages. By way of exemplifica-
tion, note that the intonation nucleus in Rus-
sian constituent interrogatives, in contrast to
comparable English structures, usually falls
on the interrogative word (cf. Comrie 1984:
24).
(44) Russian
KTO ljubit Tanju?
who loves Tanya
Who loves Tanya?
The parsimonious use of intonation in con-
stituent interrogatives may suggest that natu-
ral languages have a tendency to use gram-
matical marking in the most economical way
possible (at least in this subdomain of gram-
mar). After all, constituent interrogatives are
clearly characterised as interrogatives through
the presence of an interrogative word. How-
ever, the co-occurrence of interrogative par-
ticles with interrogative words in approxi-
mately half of the worlds languages makes
clear that interrogative marking may be em-
ployed redundantly.
(45) Japanese (Kuno 1978: 93)
(a) Taroo wa kita ka?
Taroo top came ip
Did Taroo come?
(b) Taroo wa sono okane o dare ni
ka?
Taroo top the money obj who to
ip
yatta
gave
Who did Taroo give the money to?
77. Interrogative constructions 1019

In contrast, the use of tags in constituent in- Last but not least, it appears worth mention-
terrogatives is not attested and may even be ing that the interrogative mood found in Es-
ruled out entirely. This restriction may find kimo is used in the formation of both polar
an explanation in the fact that tags are interrogatives and constituent interrogatives:
mainly used to ask for confirmation and that
this is incompatible with the meaning of con- (47) West Greenlandic (Sadock 1984: 199)
stituent interrogatives. (a) neri-va-?
eat-int-3sg
As a matter of fact, the compatibility of
the various strategies of interrogative forma- Did he eat?
tion with the two (three) types of interroga- (b) su-mik neri-va-
what-inst eat-int-3sg
tives and also the combinatorial restrictions
of these strategies between themselves has What did he eat?
been an issue of much debate in the relevant 5.1. The position of interrogative words
literature (cf. Baker 1970, Wasik 1982, Cheng
1997). What is clear is that not all combi- According to the position of interrogative
nations are possible; what is much less clear words, languages fall into three types: (i) those
is what the relevant constraints are. For in- that put interrogative words obligatorily in
stance, it seems relatively uncontroversial clause-initial position, (ii) those in which in-
that the use of more than one morphological terrogative words occupy the same position
strategy for the marking of polar interroga- as the constituent questioned, and (iii) those
tives is ruled out. Li & Thompson (1984: 55) languages that allow either of these two posi-
point out that the A-not-A construction of tions. The position of interrogative words has
Mandarin, the interrogative tag of that lan- aroused much interest in generative studies
guage as well as the interrogative particle are (cf. Cheng 1997), where these three types of
mutually exclusive. In addition, these strate- languages are referred to as (i) fronting lan-
gies are not compatible with constituent in- guages, (ii) in-situ languages, and (iii) op-
terrogatives. This latter observation from tional fronting languages. The following data
Mandarin, however, cannot be generalised exemplify these three types:
because the interrogative particle of Japanese (48) Finnish (Sulkala and Karjalainen
does occur in constituent interrogatives (cf. 1992: 12)
(45)). What can probably be said with rea- (a) Maija ottaa omenaa.
sonable certainty is that if a language uses Maija take.3sg apple.par
a particle to mark constituent interrogatives, Maija is taking an apple.
then this language will also allow the use of
(b) Mit Maija ottaa?
this particle in polar interrogatives.
what.par Maija take.3sg
How widespread inversion (i. e. the reor-
What is Maija taking?
dering of the major constituents of a clause)
is in the formation of constituent interroga- (49) Mandarin (Cheng 1997: 5)
tives heavily depends on which constituents (a) Hufei mai-le y-ben-shu
we put into focus. As the subsequent section Hufai buy-asp one-cl-book
will show, placing interrogative words in Hufai bought a book.
clause-initial position is very common, and (b) Hufei mai-le shenme?
from this perspective, inversion is nothing Hufai buy-asp what
unusual. However, if we restrict the scope of What did Hufai buy?
the term inversion to the recordering of
subject and verb, as can be observed in lan- (50) Swahili (Haiman 1985: 245)
guages like English and German, the number (a) A-li-fika lini?
of languages that makes use of this strategy 3sg-past-arrive when
drops heavily and is in all likelihood re- When did s/he arrive?
stricted to selected representatives of Indo- (b) kwa nini chakula ki-me-chelewa?
European (mainly Germanic). As the follow- why food 3sg-perf-late
ing example demonstrates, in English this Why is the food late?
kind of inversion occurs only if a constituent Additional fronting languages include Eng-
other than the subject is questioned. lish, German, Hebrew, Supyire, Yoruba, Za-
(46) (a) Who saw him? potec. Further examples of in-situ languages
(b) Who did he see? are Indonesian, Japanese, Lezgian and Man-
(c) When did he see him? darin whereas Egyptian Arabic, Kannada,
1020
Korean or Palauan belong to the group of
optional fronting languages. Ultan (1978:
229) notes that 73.4% of the languages in his
sample either place interrogative words in
clause-initial position obligatorily or show a
strong tendency to do so (i. e. fronting lan-
guages and optionally fronting languages
taken together) whereas 25% of the lan-
guages investigated locate interrogative
words in the position of the constituents for
which they substitute (i. e. in-situ languages).
The remaining 1.6% are filled by fairly excep-
tional languages like Khasi, where interroga-
tive words are apparently found in clause-
final position, and languages like Gujarati,
which reserve special positions in the clause
for them (preceding the verb phrase in this
case). Interestingly enough, Gujarati behaves
exactly like Hungarian in this respect.
To decide whether a language is strictly in
situ or allows optional fronting of interroga-
tive words is often not easy because what su-
perficially looks like straightforward fronting
may, on closer inspection, prove to be an en-
tirely different construction type. Consider
the case of Scottish Gaelic in (51). In this lan-
guage interrogative words may stay in situ,
but they can also occur in clause-initial posi-
tion. However, fronting is only possible in
relative constructions.
(51) Scottish Gaelic (Macaulay 1992: 173)
(a) Cheannaich Iain de`?
bought Iain what
(b) De` a cheannaich Iain?
what rel bought Iain
What did Iain buy?
Similar problems in the classification of op-
tional fronting languages are reported by
Cheng (1997: 43 ff.). In the three languages
she discusses (Egyptian Arabic, Bahasa Indo-
nesia, Palauan), fronted interrogative words
are clearly related to relative clauses as well
as clefts.
The position of the interrogative word in
a given language correlates, to a certain ex-
tent at least, with the basic word order type
of that language. In the sample compiled by
Greenberg (1966: 82) we find the following
distribution:
Table 77.4
position of VSO SVO SOV
interrogative word
initial 6 10 0 those that substitute for the core arguments
in situ 0 3 11
X. Syntactic Typology
The preceding table shows that VSO-lan-
guages locate interrogative words in clause-
initial position, but that they are usually
found in situ in SOV-languages. No such cor-
relation can be established for languages with
the basic word order type SVO. In this set
we find both in-situ languages and those with
initial interrogative words. As long as the
focus is on VSO-languages, apparently, the
expectations that these correlations raise for
additional languages are borne out well by
the data. In the majority of cases, languages
of this word order type seem to have initial
interrogative words. In contrast, it is not dif-
ficult to find counterexamples to the generali-
sation that SOV-languages leave interroga-
tive words in situ. Latin would be a case in
point and the universal that Greenberg bases
on these correlations is therefore formulated
rather cautiously: If a language has domi-
nant order VSO in declarative sentences, it
always puts interrogative words or phrases
first in interrogative word questions; if it has
dominant order SOV in declarative senten-
ces, there is never such an invariant rule.
The position of interrogative words has
also been proposed to correlate with the posi-
tion of interrogative particles in polar inter-
rogatives. Baker (1970: 207), based on Green-
bergs (1966) data, hypothesises that only lan-
guages which locate interrogative particles,
provided they have such particles, in clause-
initial position permit interrogative words in
positions other than those of the constituents
they substitute for. According to Baker, the
position of such particles predicts whether a
language is in situ or not. Cheng (1997: 13 ff.)
takes up Bakers idea, but cites Hopi, Bahasa
Indonesia and Hindi as possible counterex-
amples to his generalisation. According to
her own proposal, all in-situ languages pos-
sess special particles to mark constituent in-
terrogatives, although this marking may be
covert, and all languages with such particles
are in situ.
5.2. Key properties of interrogative words
Although there is probably no language that
lacks interrogative words, languages can vary
greatly in the number of interrogative words
they possess as well as in the kinds of distinc-
tions they draw in that area. Nevertheless,
one typically finds two basic kinds of inter-
rogative words. On the one hand, there are
of a predication (English who, what), and
which inquire about the central participants
77. Interrogative constructions
of the situations denoted by the relevant
clauses. On the other hand, we also find in-
terrogative words that seek circumstantial
information of the situation in question and
which, syntactically speaking, one would have
to analyse as adjuncts (cf. (52a) vs. (52b)).
(52) (a) Who invited him? / Who did he in-
vite?
(b) When / where did he arrive?
A number of parameters cut across the group
of interrogative words in argument positions.
One of the distinctions that virtually all lan-
guages make, and which seems almost uni-
versal, is the one between interrogative words
used to inquire about human referents and
those used for non-human referents, i. e. be-
tween who and what as shown in the exam-
ple below:
(53) Who / what did he see?
The relevant distinction in Russian is between
kto and sto, in Mandarin it is between shei
and shenme, in Georgian vin vs. ra, kuka and
mik in Finnish and kina vs. suna in West
Greenlandic. The few languages that do not
have this distinction, such as Ute, usually
have distinct interrogative words for animate
and non-animate referents instead:
(54) Ute (Givon 1984: 226)
(a) aa wuu uka-xa?
iw.sg.animate work.ant
Who worked? / Which one
worked?
(b) age-ru u cay-kya?
qoru
iw.inanimate break.ant
Which thing broke?
There are only three exceptions to this gener-
alisation found in Ultans (1978) sample,
namely Khasi, Sango and Lithuanian, with
Lithuanian probably being the only clear case
of a language where interrogative words do
not differ according to the human/non-human
(animate/non-animate) parameter. In both
Khasi and Sango we find interrogative words
which clearly have a preferred interpretation.
Another language which, like Lithuanian,
does not distinguish who and what is the
closely related Latvian:
(55) Latvian
Kas tas ir?
Who/what is that?
Another parameter of variation according to
which interrogative words can vary is gender
and number marking. Unfortunately, we have
1021
very little systematic knowledge on this para-
meter and it is not possible to give general
statements or to draw cast-iron statistical con-
clusions. Within the boundaries of Europe we
find, at the one extreme, languages like Eng-
lish, which have neither number nor gender
marking, and at the other extreme languages
like Icelandic, which neatly differentiate be-
tween masculine, feminine and neuter as well
as singular and plural in this domain. Evi-
dently, this parameter correlates with the
amount of inflection generally found in a lan-
guage. The following table shows the inter-
rogative words of Icelandic in the nomi-
native case.
Table 77.5: Interrogative words in Icelandic
Icelandic masculine feminine neuter
singular hver hver hvad
plural hverjir hverjar hver
The interrogatives in (56) exemplify some of
these contrasts (cf. Kress 1982: 108):
(56) Icelandic
(a) Hverjir eru pessir menn?
Who are these men?
(b) Hverjar eru pessar konur?
Who are these women?
(c) Hver eru pessi brn?
Who are these children?
For a language like Finnish, which does not
have grammatical gender, but distinguishes
between human and non-human interroga-
tive words, the distribution in the nominative
looks as follows:
Table 77.6: Interrogative words in Finnish
Finnish human non-human
singular kuka ketk
plural mik mitk
Two additional examples of languages that
draw a distinction between singular and plu-
ral in this domain are West Greenlandic and
Ute, with West Greenlandic exhibiting a sin-
gular/plural distinction with both human and
non-human interrogative words. An English
interrogative like Who is here? corresponds to
two different interrogatives in West Green-
landic:
1022
(57) West Greenlandic (Sadock 1984:
200 f.)
(a) Kina maaniit-pa-?
iw.sg be.here-int-3sg
What single person is here?
(b) Ki-kkut maaniit-pa-t?
iw-pl be.here-int-3pl
Which people are here?
The relevant interrogative words in West
Greenlandic for querying non-human refer-
ents are suna (sg) and suut (pl). Ute, by com-
parison, has the relevant contrast only for
animate interrogative words. Here, the inter-
rogative pronoun aa is specified for animate
and singular, aa-mu for animate and plural,
but aga-ru is used for both singular and plu-
ral inanimates.
A very similar distribution is found in
Swedish, which differentiates between singu-
lar (vem) and plural (vilka) in the case of
human nouns (cf. (58)), but has vad to substi-
tute both singular and plural non-human
nouns.
(58) Swedish
(a) Vem ppnade drren?
Who opened the door?
(b) Vilka ppnade fabriksportarna?
Who (pl) openend the factory
gates?
It is important to bear in mind, however, that
the interrogative words in many languages
can be used both as nominals and as adjec-
tives. In view of the fact that the adjectives in
certain languages show agreement with their
nominal head, it is little surprising that the
interrogative words in these languages also
show agreement. One example of such a
language would be Icelandic. Many other
languages, however, have different, though
clearly related forms for the two uses and
then only the adjectival forms show agree-
ment marking (cf. German welch-, Swedish
vilk- and Latin qui).
(59) German
(a) Welcher Mann ist gekommen?
Which (m.sg) man came?
(b) Welche Frau ist gekommen?
Which (f.sg) woman came?
(c) Welches Kind ist gekommen?
Which (nt.sg) child came?
(d) Welche Kinder sind gekommen?
Which (pl) children came?
Apart from distinguishing between interroga-
tive words in the singular or plural, some lan-
X. Syntactic Typology
guages also have special forms reserved for
binary oppositions (remnants of a dual). An
example would be Finnish kumpi, which liter-
ally means which one of the two, and forms
with a comparable meaning are also found in
Latin (uter, utra, utrum).
Another interesting contrast is found in
Ute (cf. Givon 1984: 226 ff.), which, appar-
ently, differentiates between referential and
non-referential interrogative words, with the
latter being used for type identification, and
the former for token identification. Consider
the following contrast between referential aa
and non-referential pu:
(60) Ute
(a) aa a atu-ci paxa-qa?
siva
iw.subj goat-obj kill-ant
Who killed the goat?
(b) pu wi-kya?
iw.subj fall-ant
What kind of a thing fell?
The interrogative pronouns of Ute for sub-
ject and object position can be summarised
as follows:
Table 77.7: Interrogative words in Ute
UTE SUBJECT OBJECT
ref non- ref non-
ref ref
animate sg aa ni aay in
animate pl aa-mu in-u aa-mu in-u
inanimate aga-ru pu aga-ru pu
In languages with case systems that are more
elaborate than the parsimonious systems of
say English and Chinese, what one typically
finds is that case marking also extends into
the domain of interrogative words. Out of
the 16 cases of Finnish, no fewer than 13 case
forms can be differentiated in this domain,
ranging from nominative (kuka) to abessive
(kenett). Another language with a fairly
elaborate case system is West Greenlandic.
The following table (77.8) shows the full par-
adigms of kina (who) and suna (what)
found in this language (cf. Sadock 1984: 200).
As far as interrogative words in non-argu-
ment positions are concerned, languages
around the globe appear to distinguish be-
tween at least four different types, seeking in-
formation about (i) the location of a situa-
tion, (ii) its temporal setting, (iii) the manner
77. Interrogative constructions 1023

Table 77.8: Interrogative words in West Green- Table 77.9: Semantic distinctions
landic
concept gloss concept gloss
WG HUMAN NON-HUMAN
person who time when
singular plural singular plural object what manner how
location where reason why
abs kina kikkut suna suut
erg kia(p) kikkut suup suut
inst kimik kikunnik sumik suunnik In a small-scale and not very representative
abl kimit kikunnit sumit suunnit study, Heine et. al (1991: 5559) try to estab-
all kimut kikunnut sumut suunnut lish correlations between the concept ex-
loc kikunni sumi sunni pressed by an interrogative word and its
perl sukkut phonological and morphological properties.
According to their findings, the interrogative
words for person, object and location are the
of carrying it through and (iv) the reason for ones that exhibit the least phonological and
it. The four English sentences below exem- morphological complexity. In the majority of
plify these options: languages in their sample these concepts are
expressed by monomorphemic and monosyl-
(61) (a) Where did he surprise her? labic forms. Interrogative words for time and
(b) When did he surprise her? manner are usually more complex. The pro-
(c) How did he surprise her? totypical case seems to be a monomorphe-
(d) Why did he surprise her? mic, but polysyllabic word. Most complex in
In addition, languages frequently have inter- terms of morphological structure, however,
rogative words or case-inflected word forms are interrogative words coding reason or
that allow more precise inquiries concerning cause (and also purpose), which usually con-
one or more of these four domains. As for sist of more than one morpheme. In this re-
location, for instance, Early Modern English spect, English why is clearly the exception
draws a clear distinction between source and rather than the rule.
goal (cf. (62)). A similar distinction is found 5.3. Multiple occurrences of
in German, Lezgian, Georgian and Finnish, interrogative words
with woher/wohin, hinaj/hiniz, saidan/sait and
mist/mihin being used to inquire about source Particularly interesting parameters of cross-
and goal respectively. Swedish only codes the linguistic variation can be observed with
goal with a separate word (vart). those clauses that contain not just one inter-
rogative word, but multiple occurrences of
(62) (a) O whither shall we fly from this re- them. Hence, the subject of the subsequent
proach? discussion will be sentences like the follow-
[Shakespeare, Henry VI, 1. 1. 97] ing:
(b) Now; whence come you? [Shake-
speare, The Merry Wives of Wind- (63) Who did what to whom?
sor, 4. 5. 95]
One parameter along which languages differ
Equally noteworthy is the way in which cer- is the position of such multiple occurrences
tain languages distinguish between several of interrogative words in a clause. As was
temporal interrogative words. West Green- discussed in 5.1., languages also show varia-
landic, apparently, uses qanga to inquire tion in the position of interrogative words
about states-of-affairs that happened before when just one of these words is present in
the moment of utterance and qaqugu for a clause. What we mainly find is languages
those that lie in the future (cf. Sadock 1984: that obligatorily front interrogative words to
201). In Kannada, there is, apart from the clause-initial position (fronting languages)
interrogative word corresponding to English and languages in which interrogative words
when (ya:vattu, ya:va:ga), a separate form remain in the position of the constituents
dedicated to days (endu what day). they substitute for (in-situ languages). A very
The semantic distinctions that languages similar pattern of variation can be observed
typically draw in the domain of interrogative when multiple occurrences of interrogative
words are summarised in Table 77.9: words are present in a clause. On the one
1024
hand, there are languages like English, which
only front one interrogative word while leav-
ing additional occurrences in situ. This is ex-
emplified by the following pair of sentences:
(64) (a) John gave the book to Mary.
(b) Who gave what to whom?
Additional languages following the English
pattern include German, Dutch, Swedish,
Italian, Spanish, etc. In languages such as
these it is usually still possible to locate any
of the interrogative words in clause-initial po-
sition while rearranging the remaining ones
according to syntactic rules specific to the
language in question (cf. (65)). Nevertheless,
the non-fronted interrogative words will oc-
cur in exactly the same positions in which the
substituted constituents would occur.
(65) (a) What did who give to whom?
(b) To whom did who give what?
On the other hand, we find languages in
which multiple occurrences of interrogative
words all occur clause-initially, although often
in a well-defined order. Such multiple front-
ing languages are most likely a proper subset
of fronting languages because there is prob-
ably no language that is in situ for just one
interrogative word, but which becomes front-
ing if there are more than one of these words
contained in a clause. Within the group of
European languages, it is the Slavic languages
that most clearly demonstrate multiple front-
ing of interrogative words, as the examples
below illustrate (cf. Cheng 1997: 64 ff.; for a
recent treatment within optimality theory cf.
Ackema & Neeleman 1998):
(66) Bulgarian
Koj kogo e vidjal?
who whom saw.3sg
Who saw whom?
(67) Polish
Co komu Monika daa?
what to whom Monica gave
What did Monica give to whom?
(68) Russian
Kto kogo ljubit?
who whom loves
Who loves whom?
In these languages, there is a very strong
requirement to front all interrogative words.
Failing to do so either results in ungrammati-
cality, or the relevant sentence has to be in-
terpreted in a different way, usually as an
echo question:
X. Syntactic Typology
(69) (a) *Koj e vidjal kogo? (Bulgarian)
(b) *Co Monika komu daa? (Polish)
(c) *Kto ljubit kogo? (Russian)
Another language that obligatorily fronts
multiple occurrences of interrogative words
is Georgian:
(70) Georgian (Harris 1984: 71),
(a) vin ras qidulobs?
who what he.buy.it
Who is buying what?
(b) *vin qidulobs ras?
who he.buy.it what
Interestingly enough, there also appear to be
languages that clearly allow multiple fronting
of interrogative words, while, at the same
time, it does not seem obligatory for them
to front all interrogative words. One of the
languages for which optional multiple front-
ing has been reported is Finnish (cf. (71),
(72)). Nevertheless, it is not entirely clear
whether there is a difference in meaning or in
distribution between the two sentences.
(71) Finnish (Sulkala and Karjalainen
1992: 16)
Kuka nauroi kenelle?
who laugh.impf (3sg) who-all
Who was laughing at whom?
(72) Finnish
Kuka kenelle nauroi?
who who-all laugh.impf(3sg)
Who was laughing at whom?
Another parameter of variation can be found
in the group of multiple fronting languages
itself. This parameter concerns the relative
order of the adjacent interrogative words
which, on the one hand, may be governed by
strict rules and, on the other hand, be rela-
tively unconstrained. One of the rules confin-
ing the order of multiple interrogative words
in Bulgarian is that the one in the nominative
has to come first, followed by an interroga-
tive word in either the accusative or dative
(cf. Cheng 1997: 77 ff.). Accusative interroga-
tive words, in turn, occur before those in the
dative (nom acc dat).
(73) Bulgarian
(a) Koj kogo vizda
who whom sees
Who sees whom?
(b) *Kogo koj vizda
whom who sees
An additional rule in Bulgarian, apparently,
regulates the relative order of arguments and
77. Interrogative constructions 1025

adjuncts, with arguments always occurring (78) German

before adjuncts: a. Wer kommt da?
(74) Bulgarian Who is coming?
(a) Koj kude e otisul b. Da kommt wer.
who where went.3sg Someone is coming.
Who went where? As can be seen in Table 77.10, languages may
(b) *Kude koj e otisul either use interrogative words as a source for
where who went.3sg the development of indefinites or simply use
In Czech and Polish, in contrast, the relative the same form for either function.
order of interrogative words is said to be Table 77.10: Interrogative words and indefinite
relatively unconstrained (cf. (75), (76)). It pronouns
should be borne in mind, however, that with
respect to the parameter under discussion, language who indefinite
the judgements of native speakers do not al-
ways coincide and that detailed studies deal- Bulgarian koj njakoj
ing with this parameter from a typological Hungarian ki valaki
point of view do not exist. Polish kto ktos
(75) Czech Japanese dare dare
Kdo kdy koho pozval, nevm Korean nwukwu nwukwu
who when whom invited I dont know Mandarin shei shei
Who invited whom when, I dont
know.
According to Haspelmath (1997), a pervasive
(76) Czech strategy of deriving indefinites from inter-
Kdy kdo koho pozval, nevm rogative words is reduplication. Examples in-
when who whom invited I dont know clude Vietnamese ai ai anybody, whoever
(ai who), Latin ubi-ubi anywhere, wher-
5.4. Additional uses of interrogative words
ever (ubi where) and Khasi kumnu-kumnu
There are quite a few domains of grammar in somehow (kumnu how). Although this
which interrogative words can also be ob- strategy is fairly common and freely distrib-
served to play a role. In the following we will uted all over the world, it is not entirely clear
briefly consider their importance for relative why reduplication should be so suitable for
clauses and indefinites. the derivation of indefinites.
In most European languages interrogative Depending on the limitations defined by a
words are also used as relative pronouns. particular language as well as on the context
This kind of polysemy is not particularly fre- in which such indefinites are used, they can
quent across the languages of the world, but receive mainly two interpretations, either as
in view of the fact that relative clause forma- existential or universal quantifier (J Art. 92).
tion on the basis of relative pronouns is For instance, the preferred interpretation of
mainly restricted to European languages, this Mandarin shenme under the scope of nega-
is certainly little surprising (cf. Comrie 1981: tion is as the existential quantifier (cf. (79)).
142). Languages that do not draw a formal This very sentence could also be read as a
distinction between interrogative words and question (meaning What did Guojing not
relative pronouns include English, Spanish, buy?).
Italian, etc. (cf. (77)), although there is often
no perfect overlap. English is relatively un- (79) Mandarin (Cheng 1997: 97)
restricted in that it can use nearly all inter- Guojing mei-you mai shenme.
rogative words as relativisers. German, in Guojing not-have buy what
contrast, only allows for the adjectival inter- Guojing did not buy anything.
rogative words (welch- which) to be used in In combination with the adverb dou, in con-
this way. trast, shenme must receive a universal inter-
(77) (a) Who did you meet? pretation:
(b) I met the man who you saw. (80) Mandarin (Cheng 1997: 98)
In many languages there is a close relation- Botong shenme dou ch.
ship between interrogative words and indefi- Botong what all eat
nite pronouns (cf. Haspelmath 1997: 170 ff.): Botong eats everything.
1026
The close connection between interrogative
words and indefinites is also clearly visible in
English indirect questions of the type Youre
looking for something?, which are often
understood in the same way as constituent
interrogatives (What are you looking for?).
Note that replacing the interrogative word by
an indefinite yields the presupposition of a
question.
6. Non-canonical uses of
interrogative constructions
Just as non-interrogative clauses can be used
to elicit information, it is equally possible to
employ interrogatives for purposes other
than asking questions (i. e. as indirect speech
acts). The use of interrogatives as directives
was demonstrated in the beginning of this
article (cf. (3b)), but apart from such well-
known and widely used exploitations, we also
find more specific applications. Attention
shall be drawn in this final section to echo
questions and rhetorical questions.
Echo questions are used as responses to
either statements or questions. Uttered in re-
sponse to a statement they typically express
surprise about it and are used to seek con-
firmation. In English, this type of echo ques-
tion is not coded by a usual interrogative
clause. Instead, normal declarative word or-
der is used (cf. (81)), which means that inter-
rogative words stay in situ.
(81) (a) A: Ill be 100 next year. B: Youll
be 100 next year?
(b) A: Ive seen a ghost. B: Youve
seen what?
In Russian, by contrast, no syntactic peculi-
arities are associated with such echo ques-
tions. Where they differ from normal inter-
rogatives is in the intonation pattern used (cf.
Comrie 1984: 38). More interesting from a
typological point of view is Japanese, because
here we find a particle (tte) exclusively dedi-
cated to marking echo questions (cf. (82)).
The particle tte is a truncated form of tte ii-
mashita ka, with tte being the quotative par-
ticle, ii-mashita a verb meaning said and ka
the interrogative particle.
(82) Japanese (Hinds 1984: 165)
dare deshita tte?
who was part
Who did you say it was?
When echo questions are used in response to
a preceding question, they are usually used to
X. Syntactic Typology
make sure that the question was understood
correctly and/or to gain time to work out the
relevant answer. With this type of echo ques-
tion no syntactic modifications are observ-
able in English (apart from adjusting the
deictic expressions):
(83) A: How much would you like to give?
B: How much would I like to give?
As far as English is concerned, this is true of
echo questions given in reply to both polar
interrogatives and constituent interrogatives.
By comparison, echo questions given in re-
sponse to polar interrogatives in Russian,
German and French obligatorily take a par-
ticle. In other words, in these languages this
type of echo questions behaves like an em-
bedded question.
(84) German
A: Hast du dieses Buch gelesen?
have you this book read
B: Ob ich dieses Buch gelesen habe?
Ja.
part I this book read have
yes
A: Have you read this book? B:
Have I read this book? Yes.
Rhetorical questions are interrogatives ut-
tered in a context in which the answer to
them is given. Therefore, they are frequently
referred to as questions that expect no an-
swer. As (85) shows, negative rhetorical
questions imply a positive answer whereas
those with positive polarity expect a nega-
tive answer.
(85) (a) Isnt the weather terrible?
(b) Who cares, anyway?
Arguably, rhetorical questions can be found
in all languages and they also appear to be
functioning in a comparable manner. How-
ever, very little typological work has been
carried out in this area so that we have to
confine ourselves to a few brief remarks.
One interesting observation is reported
from Mandarin, where, as discussed in 4.4.,
we find two strategies for coding polar inter-
rogatives (the A-not-A construction and the
particle ma). As Li & Thompson (1984: 57 ff.)
point out, it is only polar interrogatives
based on the particle ma that can be used
rhetorically. In the following example, the A-
not-A construction would be inadequate (cf.
4.4.):
77. Interrogative constructions 1027

(86) Mandarin inst instrumental

he! n ywei wo ernuqungchang ma int
ha you think I sentimental
Ha! Do you suppose Im sentimen-
tal?
The reason for this division of labour, Li &
Thompson argue, must be sought in the fact
that A-not-A interrogatives are restricted to
contexts in which the speaker makes no as-
sumptions about the truth-value of the prop-
osition in question (cf. 4.4.). Given that the
key property of rhetorical questions is that
the speaker knows the answer, this condition
cannot be fulfilled.
The main function that is usually attributed
to rhetorical questions is to make an indirect
statement (as demonstrated in (85)). However,
they can also be used with a thematicising
function in order to establish or reintroduce a
discourse theme (cf. And what happens to the
girl? She gets pregnant.). Drawing on a sub-
stantial corpus of oral narratives from Tamil,
Herring (1991) argues that the frequent use of
rhetorical questions in that language, particu-
larly as a thematicising device, has resulted in
the interrogative words involved being gram-
maticalised into conjunctions:
(87) Tamil (Herring 1991: 273)
Avan en inke illai n n a avan
he why here neg conj he
urukku pon an
town.dat go.3.sg.m
Why he isnt here, he went to his vil-
lage.
(88) Tamil
Avan inke illai en n a avan urukku
he here neg conj he town.dat
pon an
go.3.sg.m
Hes not here because he went to
his village.
In example (88) above the interrogative word
en (why) has merged with the conditional
conjunction nna into an autonomous con-
junction. Even more striking is that there are
also contexts where interrogative elements oc-
cur as conjunctions on their own. Evidently,
interrogative constructions across the world
still leave ample room for new discoveries.
7. Special abbreviations
all allative
ant anterior
cl classifier
conj conjunction
interrogative
ip ip interrogative particle
iw interrogative word
lig ligature
nt neuter
par partitive
part particle
past past tense
perl perlative
ref referential
rem remote
8. References
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16: 3, 443490.
Baker, Carl Lee. 1970. Notes on the description
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Bazin, Louis. 1984. La particule interrogative -mi
en Turc. In: Valentin, Paul (ed.) Linterrogation.
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Paris-Sorbonne, 8994.
Chang, Suk-Jin. 1996. Korean. Amsterdam: Benja-
mins.
Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen. 1997. On the typology of wh-
questions. New York: Garland.
Chisholm, William S. & Milic, Louis T. & Greppin,
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quium on the grammar, typology and pragmatics of
questions in seven diverse languages. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language universals and
linguistic typology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Comrie, Bernard. 1984. Russian. In: Chisholm,
William S. et al. (eds.), 746.
Givon, Talmy. 1984. Ute. In: Chisholm, William
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Geluykens, R. 1988. On the myth of rising intona-
tion in polar questions. Journal of Pragmatics 12,
467485.
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Some universals of
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Haiman, John. 1985. Natural syntax. Cambridge:
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Harris, Alice C. 1984. Georgian. In: Chisholm,
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Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns.
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Friederike. 1991. Grammaticalization. A conceptual
framework. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Herring, Susan C. 1991. The grammaticalization
of rhetorical questions in Tamil. In: Traugott,
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78. Hortative constructions
1. Hortative constructions: definition and
calculus
2. Classification of hortative constructions
3. Interpretations of hortative constructions
4. Semantics of verbs used in hortative
constructions
5. The imperative paradigm
6. Description of the imperative paradigm
7. Actual imperative paradigms as contrasted
with the ideal imperative paradigm
8. References
1. Hortative constructions:
definition and calculus
Hortative constructions represent a substan-
tial proportion of speech patterns generated
by man and are instrumental in regulating
joint activities in society. They are designed
X. Syntactic Typology
Macaulay, Donald. 1992. The Celtic Languages.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sadock, Jerrold M. 1984. West Greenlandic. In:
Chisholm, William S. et al. (eds.), 189214.
Sadock, Jerrold M. & Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985.
Speech act distinctions in syntax. In: Shopen,
Timothy (ed.). Language typology and syntactic De-
scription. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Vol. I, 155196.
Saha, P. K. 1984. Bengali. In: Chisholm, William
S. et al. (eds.), 113143.
Sneddon, James Neil. 1996. Indonesian. London:
Routledge.
Sulkala, Helena & Karjalainen, Merja. 1992. Fin-
nish. London: Routledge.
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1985. Conditional mark-
ers. In: Haiman, John (ed.). Iconicity in syntax.
Amsterdam: Benjamins, 289307.
Ultan, Russell. 1978. Some general characteristics
of interrogative systems. In: Greenberg, Joseph
H. (ed.). Universal of human language. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, Vol. IV, 211248.
Wasik, Zdzisaw. 1982. Zur strukturellen Typolo-
gie der Fragen (anhand ausgewhlter Sprachen der
Gegenwart). Zeitschrift fr Phonetik, Sprachwissen-
schaft und Kommunikationsforschung 35: 4, 466
475.
Peter Siemund, Berlin
(Germany)
to stimulate a specific reaction, including a
speech reaction. Despite the transparency of
their meaning (Bring me some water!, Si-
lence!, Fire!, etc.), the semantic structure of
hortative constructions comprises three ele-
ments belonging to three different planes:
Prescription (consisting of Prescriptor, Re-
cipient of Prescription, and Performer of Pre-
scribed Action); Communication (consisting
of Speaker [ Prescriptor], Listener [ Re-
cipient of Prescription], and Outside Person
not included into the act of communication,
or a third person); and Imposed State of Af-
fairs whose minimum constituents are Action
P and its Agent [ Performer of Prescribed
Action]. The above semantic model is both
necessary and sufficient to formulate a defini-
tion of hortative constructions.
Hortative constructions are constructions
conveying the idea of direct speech causa-