Questions: the structures to be investigated

In the following, I will first define the term question in a crosslinguistically applicable way (2.2.1) and then develop a question typology for French (2.2.2). In the course of these two subsections, I will incorporate previous literature on interrogatives to make it usable for my own research. While introducing the terminology used throughout this thesis, I will also give insight into the reasoning behind the selection as well as the classification of structures. In other words, I will elaborate first on what makes a linguistic form a direct interrogative, and then on what (semantic, morphosyntactic, intonational and pragmatic) types are useful to be considered when investigating French question forms.

2.2.1 Defining the term question

Intuitively, everyone seems to know what a question is. Yet, in everyday speech, we use the term question to denominate several things, blending means of expression and meaning. This is only natural since linguistic form and function are very often intertwined, but they should be kept apart when it comes to a scientific definition (cf. Quillard 2000: 32).

For a start, let us keep to the standard idea that a question is ‘the formulation of asking something’.

Putting it differently, when directing a prototypical question to a hearer, the speaker makes explicit what (s)he wants to know. Uttering a question is thus in general a demand of information (see e.g.

Grevisse & Goosse 2016: 528; Feuillet 2000: 7). To sum up this basic idea in the words of Kiefer (1983:

4), “questions indicate knowledge-desiderata”. Yet, a question comprises a lot more than just the explication of the desire for some information, and some non-canonical question types (such as rhetorical questions) could not be identified by an expression of ‘wanting-to-know’. This is why a truly scientific definition – and a practically applicable one in particular – needs to be not a prototypical but

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a criterial one. As a result, I had to define the criteria which a construction had to fulfill to be counted as an interrogative. The criteria had to be categorical, i.e. they should be necessary and sufficient conditions which determine what can be classified as a ‘question form’. In principle, such criteria could be based on formal (=>prosodic/morphological/syntactic) as well as meaning-related (=>semantic/pragmatic) features. In the following, I will argue for a semantic definition, showing why purely formal as well as purely pragmatic criteria are less favourable.

From formal marking…

There are three levels on which the meaning of an utterance can be indicated (cf. int. al. Altmann 1993;

Coveney 2011: 120f.; Grevisse & Goosse 2016; Kalmbach 2012-2017: 531; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a:

32; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991b: 88–91; Meibauer et al. 2013; Siemund 2001; Xenaonan 1988):¹¹ (i) Morpholexis

(ii) Syntax (iii) Prosody

In the case of questions, the French language uses all of them, although not necessarily all of them at the same time. On the morpholexical level, there is the possibility of marking a question by the question particle EST-CE QUE (see (i)). This item can be considered an interrogative grammeme because it implies no more meaning than the functional [+interrogative]. Therefore, it is a purely grammatical marker. Morpholexical marking can though also be performed by question words, such as COMBIEN,

COMMENT, LAQUEL, OÙ, POURQUOI, QUAND, QUE, QUEL, QUI (see (ii)). In the latter case, the structure is specified not only with regard to its interrogativity but also to what the question is about.

(i) Est-ce que cette interrogative est marquée ?¹² (ii) Elle est marquée par quoi ?¹³

As for the second level of marking, the syntactic one, using the strategy of marking an expression as interrogative by word order is very common in Indo-European languages (e.g. English, German and Spanish), although typologically rather marked (cf. Siemund 2001: 1017). Contrary to most of these other languages, it is not obligatory in French, so unlike most other Romance varieties, wh-words other than ‘why’-equivalents do also occur postverbally in non-echo questions. Subject-verb inversion is

11 Sometimes, morpho-lexis is sperated into morphology and lexis, while in other cases morpholexis is not separated from syntax, counting morphosyntax as one level only. As a consequence, some of the authors speak of only two or even four levels instead of three.

12 English translation: ‘Is this interrogative marked?’; in the following, examples are written in blue when they are taken from one of my three corpora (i.e. reality TV shows, detective novels or teaching materials), and in black if they are constructed or taken from other sources.

13 English translation: ‘By what is it marked?’ / ‘It is marked by what?’

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frequent in written language only (Koch & Oesterreicher 2011: 173), but even in spoken language, it is an option for marking a sentence or phrase as interrogative (see (iii)).

(iii) Est-elle marquée par l’inversion ?¹⁴

On the third level, which is the prosodic one, interrogatives can be marked by intonation. Final rises have been claimed to encode questionness (Bolinger 1957: 13), and French interrogatives have been mapped to final rises (Faure 1973: 11; Léon 1973: X; Dubois 2007: s.v. "interrogation"; Delais-Roussarie

& Herment 2018), but it has also been observed that not all French questions end in a high tone (Zwanenburg 1965; Fónagy & Bérard 1973: 95; Wunderli 1990). This level of marking is yet of paticular importance to French because the prevalent type of yes/no-questions in spoken French, the so-called intonation question, is marked exclusively by a rising contour (Kaiser 1980: 32; Prüssmann-Zemper 1986: 113) (see (iv)).

(iv) Elle est marquée par l’intonation ?¹⁵ ↑

To complicate things, structures can be marked on all three levels (see (1)) but also on none (see (2)).¹⁶ In the latter case, a purely formal definition would exclude et toi from being a question although it is clearly a request for information. It is the typical follow-up prompt for shifting the focus from the current speaker to the current interlocutor. Consequently, any definition of the term question should include this structure. Formal marking can thus be a sufficient, but not a necessary condition. In other words, when a structure is marked as an interrogative, it can be counted as a question, but when a structure is not, this should not automatically exclude it from being counted as a question.

Alors quelle influence l’addition aura-t-elle sur leurs jugements ? ¹⁷ ↑ Et toi ?¹⁸ ↓

On top of that, there are several problems with the unequivocalness of the above-mentioned markers.

The presence of a question word does not necessarily mean that the utterance is an interrogative.

Sentences such as (3) or (4) may seem interrogative constructions at first sight (or rather at first hearing), but they do not offer any room for an answer. Rather, they express the viewpoint of the speaker (‘he is extremely stupid’) without allowing any objections.

Qu’est-ce qu’il est bête ! Quel imbécile !

14 English translation: ‘Is it marked by inversion?’

15 English translation: ‘{Is it / It is} marked by intonation?’

16 In most cases, however, they are marked on one or two levels (cf. results in chapters 5 and 6). For more insight into prosodic marking of morphosyntactically unmarked questions, see p.184.

17 English translation: ‘So what influence will it have on their judgments?’ (ADDI_2_01_03_41)

18 English translation: ‘And you?’ (ADDI_2_00_13_03)

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Word order is not an unambiguous marker either.¹⁹ There are still some expressions like peut-être which may trigger subject-verb inversion. Therefore, the sentences (5) and (6) (‘Maybe he’s sick./?’) cannot be distinguished based on morphosyntax. Since peut-être evokes uncertainty, one may opt for a question in most cases, but a statement is not excluded per se.

Peut-être est-il malade.

Peut-être est-il malade ?

Even more problems arise when it comes to prosodic marking. First of all, prosody is problematic because of its gradience: While an utterance is either morphosyntactically marked or not, prosodic marking can be gradual (Gadet 1989: 143; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991b: 91).²⁰ Hence, an utterance can have only slightly rising intonation, but the melody curve can also show a very distinct slope. Also, prosodic marking is not automatically restricted to final tonal movement. Strictly speaking, duration or intensity might also play a role in encoding interrogative meaning.²¹ For example, Morel & Danon-Boileau (1998: 125) observed that the absence of lengthening in combination with a high pitch at the sentence beginning and a shallow fall may also be a typical intonation pattern for questions.²² Finally, it is still controversial whether intonation marks certain interrogative sentence types or the pragmatic function of questioning (Péteri 2013: 886). In other words, prosodic marking might rule out certain interrogatives although one wants to include as many interrogatives as possible. If one takes formal marking as a criterion for the definition of a question, this will thus have a great influence on the outcome.

In summary, in many cases formal marking can be used as a justification for counting an utterance as a question. It is, however, not an unequivocal criterion which can be applied to all cases.

… via the pragmatic function…

A purely formal definition having failed, a functional one should be considered. Such a functional definition may be based on the prototypical communicative goal of questions: obtaining information.

Hence, a pragmatic definition of the term question could be ‘a request for information’ (see int. al.

Blakemore 1992: 114; Escandell Vidal 1999: 3931; Druetta 2009: 88; Coveney 2011: 112). Such information requests, which are commonly referred to as asking or questioning, are one of the three basic discourse functions of which languages dispose, namely transmitting knowledge or attitudes,

19 Strictly speaking, inversion is not a marker of interrogativity, but of emphaticness or indecision (Berrendonner 2018).

20 This is particularly valid if you consider explicit marking only.

21 F0, duration and intensity are the three suprasegmental phonetic features of which intonational marking consists (cf. Ladd 2008: 6).

22 Note, however, that this intonation pattern was described for questions which were morphosyntactically marked by a question word.

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giving instructions, and asking for information (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a: 5).²³ Interestingly, questioning is central in this trio, being le maillon intermédiaire entre l’ordre, et l’assertion (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a: 6+9).²⁴ Also, questioning can be described by the two other discourse functions (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a: 8): asserting a lack of knowledge and commanding the compensation of this lack of knowledge. However, if the basic discourse function shall be used for a criterial definition, questioning must be delimited from commanding and asserting.

For the first distinction, i.e. questioning vs. commanding, it is important to acknowledge that the speaker is trying to provoke a reaction of the hearer in both cases; the only difference between the two is whether the interlocutor is supposed to react by saying or by doing something (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a: 6). In contrast, as for the distinction between questioning and asserting, there is a difference in the distribution of roles. When asserting something, the speaker takes on the role of the

‘knowledge transmitter’ and the hearer the one of the ‘knowledge intaker’; when asking something, it is the other way around. Hence, whereas the roles of the speaker as ‘the instructor’ and the hearer as ‘the instructed’ are the same in questioning and ordering, the roles of speaker and hearer in questioning and asserting are inverted. This relation between the three speech situations and their corresponding discourse functions can be summarized in a triangular chart as follows:

Figure 1: The enunciative trinity²⁵

23 As Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1991a: 5) formulates it, "trois 'archi-actes'". With A.-M. Diller (1980: 162, cited ibid.), one can also speak of the three ‘primitive acts’ (actes primitifs) of describing the world, trying to change the world, and asking about the world. Although this number is surrounded by controversy (see Fónagy & Bérard 1973: 76, and cf. Feuillet 2000: 24), I will follow Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1991a) and Diller (1980) and agree on the idea of a modal trio. One of the most convincing arguments is certainly that, even though exclamatives are linked to the attitude of a speaker, classifying a sentence as ‘emotive’ or ‘emphatic’ does not automatically exclude the interrogative, assertive or injunctive form and/or meaning of the message. Consequently, I would see the related kinds of sentences not as one of the basic sentence moods, but as more specific subtypes. Sentences like Si seulement j’étais riche! are thus seen as a special subtype of statement, expressing ‘I’m pointing out that [I would like to be rich.]’).

24English translation:'the intermediate link between injunction and assertion'

25 The term enunciative trinity and the corresponding chart have been created by myself, but its content is based on the literature cited above. The term injunctive is used for the mood of instructing sentences. In French, injunctive sentences are usually expressed by the imperative.

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Although these concepts are supposed to be complementary (the three discourse functions are conceived as an enunciative trinity so to speak), it has been claimed that it is sometimes hard to draw the line between them (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a: 8). There is what one could call “pragmatic blurriness”. As I will show, this may be valid for the discourse functions, but not for the questions themselves.

As for the blurry border between interrogativity and assertivity, we have seen that in a truly interrogative speech situation, the speaker is requiring information and the hearer supposed to give it, while in a truly assertive speech situation, the speaker expresses his thoughts and the hearer is only supposed to take in the information offered by the speaker. There are, however, plenty of speech situations in-between, and asserting and asking are closely connected. Rémi-Giraud (1991:

40–56) comes to the conclusion that the non-existence of a clear boundary is due to the fact that the two discourse functions are of the same interactional nature. In both cases, there is a transition from incompleteness to completeness; this transition takes place (with)in declaratives as well as in the interactional frame of a question + its response.²⁶ The two speech acts have, thus, a common core function. In addition, the roles as ‘knowledge transmitter’/’information-giver’ and ‘knowledge in-taker’/’information-receiver’ are by no means always well separated. Although the inversion of roles is normally conceived as a complementary²⁷ antonomy, in this case, the antonomy provoked is rather gradual. Even by uttering a clearly assertive sentence, hearers often feel the need for some evaluation in the sense of ‘that’s (not) true’ or ‘I (don’t) agree’ (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1991a: 8). An assertion can, therefore, require the turn taking of the hearer. What is more, “lorsqu’on émet une question, on ne fait qu’exprimer, ou extérioriser un doute”²⁸ (Lyons 1980: 3763, cited in KerbratOrecchioni 1991a: 7), so the reflex of answering may be explained by a “simple effet perlocutoire de la déclaration d’incertitude”²⁹ (Berrendonner 1981: 168f., cited in KerbratOrecchioni 1991a: 7). There are thus many declaratives which can be interpreted as demanding the hearer to react by commenting on the uttered (Orecchioni 1991a: 8). As a result, I will follow Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1991b), who regards interrogativity and assertivity as the two poles of a continuum.

26 As the author explains, the difference lies in the distribution of those two states: In the first case, the transition takes place within an utterance; in the second, the two states are divided by two utterances. As the author explains, seen in an interactional framework, each statement incorporates a question and vice versa, i.e. there is always an entity which is asserted and a predicate that is under question (Rémi-Giraud 1991: 54); own paraphrase): Le chien(?) (il) dort. 'Is there a dog?' 'Yes -and he's sleeping.' Le chien(.) (il) dort? 'There is a dog.' 'And is the dog sleeping?'

27 Semantic conversion (alias converse antonomy) usually implies not only a mutually conditioned directedness but also the marking of the two termes as ‘either or’. Just as a human is either ‘dead’ or ‘alive’, in the frame of parenthood, a person to is either ‘parent’ or ‘child’.

28 English translation: ‘when uttering a question, one only expresses, or exteriorizes, a doubt’

29 English translation: ‘simple perlocution effect of the declaration of uncertainty’

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Corrspondingly, it is certainly true that there are hybrid utterances. Yet, unlike Kerbrat-Orecchioni, I do not think that we cannot establish a general distinction between question and assertion. For instance, rhetorical questions (see (8)) may be pragmatically equivalent to assertions, but they are still questions in form and – to some extent – also in meaning. Hence, I do not think that discrepancies in interrogativity between the form and the function do affect the interrogative status of an utterance per se. On the other hand, there are also cases in which it is indeed very difficult to draw the line.³⁰ For instance, the classification of morphosyntactically unmarked structures for confirmation requests is clearly more a matter of holistic interpretation than of criterial analysis. These structures undoubtedly approach assertions on the pragmatic level, but still many linguists rather classify them as questions.

As for the distinction between interrogation and injunction, the difficulty is another one. In both contexts, the speaker is trying to provoke a reaction of the hearer. Consequently, it is not surprising that interrogation and injunction have been claimed to belong to the same type of speech act:

According to Searle (1969) and other theoreticians, both types are ‘demands’. This relation has materialised even lexically in the French language: The proximity of interrogation and injunction is lexicalised in the meaning of demande(r), which can be read as ‘(to make a) question’ as well as ‘(to give an) instruction’. A similar polysemy can be observed in the English verb to ask. It can be used to express the performance of a question (to ask someone about something) as well as for an instruction (to ask someone to do something). As we have seen, the only difference between an interrogative and an injunctive situation is the kind of reaction expected. While the expectation of a linguistic reaction provokes an interrogative speech situation, a non-linguistic one provokes an injunctive speech situation. Since this is a binary distinction, there cannot be any problem resulting from continuity.

There are, however, sentences which combine an interrogative form with an injunctive function (see (7)) and vice versa (for an overview of the different combinations of forms and functions, see p.18).

As Krifka (2011: 1742) points out, not all questions are questioning, i.e. not all questions “try to make the addressee […] provide a particular piece of information”. Considering the following two examples, we must admit that many questions are, pragmatically speaking, not asking anything:

Est-ce que tu peux me passer le sel, s’il te plait ?³¹ N’a-t-on pas tout fait pour lui ?³²

The first example is actually an indirect (polite) command (‘pass me the salt, please’), the second one an indirect assertion (‘we did everything for him’). There are thus not only interrogative questions, but

30 In fact, in some occasions speakers may even intend to leave it open whether their utterance is an assertion or an interrogation.

31 English translation: ‘Can you pass me the salt, please?’ (Kaufmann 2013: 691).

32 English translation: ‘Haven’t we done everything for him?’ (Hansen 2001: 501).

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also imperative and assertive ones. Correspondingly, any affirmative or negative answer would be unexpected. Nonetheless, it seems obvious that the constructions will be counted as ‘questions’ and not as ‘assertives’ or ‘injunctives’. This is precisely why a definition like the one given by Bußmann (2008: 200) will not be useful for this thesis:

“Frage. Sprachlicher Handlungstyp (Illokutionstyp), der eine Einstellung des WissenWollens gegenüber seinem propositionalen Gehalt ausdrückt und in dessen Kontext Aussagen, die das erwünschte Wissen zum Inhalt haben, als Antworten gelten […].“³³

Yet, some corpus studies have adopted a pragmatic definition of the term question. For example, Druetta (2009) used an operationalised variant of this pragmatic definition: For him, questions were utterances actually entailing a response. Although this definition is certainly practical with regard to its easy applicability and clear limitation, it can be quite problematic. First of all, if such a definition is taken literally, also utterances that are obviously statements (i.e. assertives/ declaratives) would have to be counted as questions when followed by an answer particle (in French: oui, non and si). This is counterintuitive and might be misleading when counting falling intonation patterns. Also, whenever a question is not answered, for instance because of an interruption, because the next one is asked before any response has been made, or simply because it was a self-directed reflexion, it would have to be excluded from the corpus.

In conclusion, considering the pragmatic function is not enough when defining the term question. The presence or absence of an apparent answer will not determine the status of an utterance. Neither will

In conclusion, considering the pragmatic function is not enough when defining the term question. The presence or absence of an apparent answer will not determine the status of an utterance. Neither will