The Welsh Answering System

Studies and Monographs 120

The Welsh Answering Syst em Bob Morris Jones

~nds

in Linguistics

.dies and Monographs 120

or ~ner

Winter

,uton de Gruy ter New York ~lin

The Welsh Answering System

by

Bob Morris Jones

Mouton de Gruyter New York Berlin

1999

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

(§ Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones Bob Morris. The Welsh answering system I by Bob Morris Jones. p. em. - (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs: 120) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-016450-7 (cloth: alk. paper) 2. Welsh lanI. Welsh language - Discourse analysis. guage - Social aspects - Wales. 3. Children - Wales Language. 4. Questions and answers. I. Title. II. Series. PB2171.J66 1999 491.6'6'0141-dc21 99-21536 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones, Bob Morris: The Welsh answering system I by Bob Morris Jones. - Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 120) ISBN 3-11-016450-7

©Copyright 1999 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printing: Rotaprint-Druck Werner Hildebrand, Berlin. Binding: Liideritz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Preface A popular observation on Welsh is that it has no single words for "yes·· and "no" but uses a variety of expressions as their equivalents (sec Crystal 1987:99, for instance). This study investigates this aspect of Welsh from two main standpoints: a linguistic analysis describes and explains the Welsh yes-no answering system: and this account then provides a basis for a sociolinguistic analysis of the use of this system by Welsh-speaking children between three and seven years of age. Each aspect in itself is interesting. The linguistics of the Welsh answering system is based on the interplay of several aspects of grammar: this system is rich in descriptive detail and challenging in terms of theoretical explanation. The sociolinguistic investigation reveals considerable variation in the use of this system by young children: this aspect. too. is compelling in terms of description and explanation. An approach which is based on both aspects provides a comprchcnsi\•c discussion of an intriguing area of Welsh grammar. The linguistic analysis of the Welsh yes-no answering system focuses mainly upon the forms, semantics and discourse acts of the system. II only considers wider issues of the pragmatics of yes-no answering insofar as they arc relevant to the main aims. The linguistic study is especially concerned with the existence of different formal types of yes-no ans,vers in Welsh. and the grammatical. semantic and discourse influences which determine the selection of one formal type rather than another. The linguistic analysis is presented in Chapters I to 5. The first chapter provides a typology of yes-no answering systems, based on data from various languages, in terms of their semantics and their forms. This chapter uses this typology to introduce the basic characteristics of the Welsh answering system. thus indicating how Welsh fits in with universal features of semantics and form. Chapters 2 and 3 provide the main account of the Welsh yes-no answering system. Taken together, these two chapters show that selecting a form to convey "yes" or "no" in Welsh is subject to a complex array of grammatical and semantic constraints: Chapter 2 demonstrates the influence of morphological and lexical characteristics of finite verbs; and Chapter 3 shows that further influences are exerted by the syntactic and logical form of the clause. Chapter 4 outlines the discourse functions which rcsponsivcs can fulfil, and provides important distinctions for the sociolinguistic analysis which is provided in Chapter 8. Chapter 5 draws upon Xbar syntax to give a formal analysis of the descriptive facts which arc presented in Chapters 2 and 3, and shows that the Complcmcntizer and Inflection arc significant controlling constituents in an account of Welsh rcsponsivcs. The Welsh yes-no answering system is but one aspect of the grammar of Welsh. Where the linguistic analysis touches upon wider grammatical issues. these arc explained as they arise and in a way which suits the aims of this work. For readers who would like to go beyond these explanations on a descriptive level at least.

vi Preface condensed accounts of Welsh are available in Awbery (1984), Campbell (1991: 1444-1451), Thomas A.R. (1992), and Watkins T.A. (1993). Fuller descriptions arc available in contemporary reference grammars by King (1993), Thorne (1993), and, for those who read Welsh, Thomas P.W. (1996). Early theoretical treatments can be found in Awbcry (1976) and Jones-Thomas (1977) while more contemporary approaches arc available in Sadler (1988) and, especially, Rouveret (1994). The sociolinguistic analysis is presented in Chapters 6 to 8. Chapter 6 provides a descriptive account of young children's use of the Welsh yes-no answering system, supported by descriptive statistics. The remaining two chapters attempt to explain the trends of usage which are revealed in Chapter 6 from two different, but not necessarily dichotomous, standpoints. Chapter 7 examines the trends in terms of external causes of language variation and change, and Chapter 8 examines the same data in terms of internal causes. More advanced statistical analyses support the interpretations of the data in these latter two chapters. The sociolinguistic analysis is made against the background of bilingualism in Wales today. There are three features of Welsh bilingualism which arc crucial to this study. Firstly, in comparison with English, Welsh is a minority language both in terms of numbers of speakers and domains of use. Secondly, successive census figures published by the British Government have shown that the numbers of Welsh speakers in Wales have been declining (for a variety of reasons which cannot be discussed here). Both these points suggest that, in general, Welsh and English in Wales are subordinate and dominant languages respectively. Consequently, Welsh speakers have become increasingly bilingual, and this encourages the influences of language contact, with English being the major influence. Thirdly, through primary and secondary education (and also adult education), Welsh is also used as a second language by speakers whose first language, in the majority of cases, is English. This development, too, can activate influences of language contact, and English is again the major influence. Against the background of these three factors, variation in Welsh is frequently attributed to external factors of language contact: that is, the structure of the subordinate language, Welsh, is being changed to reflect the dominant language, English. An extreme version of this view emphasizes language decline, decay or death; ultimately, the very use of Welsh is ousted by the use of English. The sociolinguistic analysis also considers the possibility of internal causes of variation, and examines the influences of simplification, analogy, semantics and discourse. There is also the possibility of a relationship between external and internal factors. There is a view, as seen in Aitchison ( 1991: 116-117), which holds that external factors alone do not bring about language change unless there are internal conditions which favour outside influences and allow them to take effect (although it is not clear that Aitchison has fully taken into account the pressures of language contact in multilingual societies, particularly where one language is dominant as in Wales). There

l'rejace vii

arc many aspects of Welsh which could be used as the basis for a study of variation (sec Jones B.M. 1988, 1990a and b). But the yes-no answering system is particularly appropriate, for, as the linguistic analysis shows, Welsh uses a complex array of forms for "yes" and "no''. The data for the linguistic analyses of Welsh in Chapters I to 4 is based on three sources: a corpus of the spontaneous conversational discourse of children between three and seven years of age (the corpus is described in Chapter 6); existing accounts of Welsh responsives - the details of which will be given in the relevant parts of the study; and this author's experience of responsivcs based on observations of vernacular Welsh over the years. The data for the sociolinguistic analyses in Chapters 6 to 8 is taken from the corpus of child language which is referred to above. It is self-evident that examples which are taken from the corpus contain characteristics of spontaneous spoken Welsh and also features of real-time performance, such as hesitations, unfinished words, retracings, and so forth. These characteristics are preserved to a large degree in their presentation here, and Appendix I provides a list of conventions which arc used in the corpus examples. Given the strong prescriptive tradition in favour of the formal written language which is apparent in traditional grammars of Welsh, it is worth emphasising that this study is primarily concerned with spontaneous spoken Welsh, unless a point is being made about formal Welsh. Consequently, the devised examples of Welsh which arc used in this study also reflect the characteristics of speech, and several of the conventions which are listed in Appendix I arc also used in these examples. The presentation of examples from languages other than Welsh or English, which are numerous in Chapter 1, follows the sources which I have consulted. In all cases of examples other than those from English, glosses are supplied as well as free translations, except where my sources have not provided glosses and where I am not sufficiently familiar with the language in question to gloss the examples. Appendix II lists and explains the conventions which are used in the glosses.

Contents Preface.......................................................................................................... v Acknon·ledgements ................. .... .. ....... .... .. .. .... ......... .. .. ................................ xi List of figures................................................................................................ xiii List of tables .......... ...... .. .. .. ............. .................................. .. ............... ........... xv

Answering systents ............................................................. ...................

1

1.1 Semantics.............................................................................................. 1.2 Forms.................................................................................................... 1.3 An overview of Welsh responsives.........................................................

1 17 42

2

Welsh echo responsivcs .. .. .. .. ......... .. .... .. .. ........... .. .. ............. .. ........... .. .. .

53

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7

Perfect responsives: tense and aspect..................................................... Full echo and substitute responsives: types of finite verbs ... ................... Agreement features: person deixis ... .... ............. .. .. .. .... .. ......... ...... .. .. ...... Agreement features: number.................................................................. Fonns of bod 'be'.................................................................................. More about negative forms .. ... .. .. .. .. .. ..... ...... .. .. ..... .. .... .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. ...... Sununary...............................................................................................

53 58 71 77 79 87 89

3

Welsh echo and nonecho responsives.....................................................

93

3.1 3.2 3. 3 3.4 3.5

Introduction........................................................................................... 93 Discourse sources.................................................................................. 94 Syntactic form ....................... ................. .. .. ............. ................. .. ........... 10 1 Logical form .......................................................................................... 115 Suntmary ............................................................................................... 126

4

Discourse functions of Welsh responsivcs .............................................. 129

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

Answers................................................................................................ Agreements and disagreements.............................................................. Response questions................................................................................ Acknowledgements ................................................................................ Corrections............................................................................................ Polari~y of responsives ...........................................................................

130 133 138 141 144 144

List of figures Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

I. 2. 3. .f. 5. 6. 7.

Figure Figure Figure Figure

9

8.

10. II. 12.

Figure 13. Figure 14. Figure 15. Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

The Gaelic responsive (the present copula).................................. Welsh rcsponsives as two-form systems....................................... Tenses in Welsh... . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . . . . . . . .. .. .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. .. . . Verbs with exceptional uses of the inflectional paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . Simple lexical verbs and tenses in formal and informal Welsh..... Morphologically regular and irregular verbs................................ Types of finite verbs and echo rcsponsives................................... Discourse roles and the person features of the grammatical subject............... ...................................................................... Person contrasts between rcsponsives and their targets................ Selecting person features in targets and responsivcs . .. . . .. .. ..... .. .. .. The forms of the third person of the present tense of hod 'be·...... Assertiveness and third person forms of the present tense of hod'be' ....................................................................................... Definiteness and the nonassertivc y- and o- forms of hod 'be·...... Present tense forms of bod 'be' with and without-d-in the vernacular style .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . .. .. .. .. . . . . . . . .. .. . . .. .. . . . . . .. .. .. .. . . . . . . . . . Present tense forms of bod 'be' with and without-d-in southern dialects.......................................................................... A summary of the types of Welsh responsives.............................. A summary of the forms of question tags..................................... General discourse sources of targets of rcsponsivcs...................... Responsives and their targets ....................................................... Expected and unexpected pairings of responsives and tagcts.. .. .. .. Scoring of the pairing of rcsponsivcs and targets .. . . . . . . . .. .. .. .. . . . . . . . . A contextual measure of Ll usc...................................................

28 49 54

62 66 67 71 71 74 75 80

80 81 85

86 89 90 94 127 206 241

263

List of tables Frequencies of the discourse contexts of targets for responsives .... Main and subordinate clauses as targets for responsives .. .. .... ...... . The corpus.................................................................................... Frequencies and percentages of targets over the children's ages .... Frequencies for types of responsives.............................................. Frequencies for responsives to missing and inappropriate data...... Frequencies for expected and unexpected positive responsives to perfect and non perfect targets .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . for types of positive responsives to perfect and Frequencies 8. Table non perfect targets.......................................................................... Table 9. Frequencies for expected and unexpected negative responsives to perfect and non perfect targets .. .............. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .... for types of negative responsives to perfect and Frequencies 10. Table ................................... targets....................................... nonperfect imperatives....................... to responsives Table II. Frequencies for types of Table 12. Frequencies for responsives to perfect responsives as targets......... Table 13. Frequencies for positive and negative responsives to perfect aspect targets ... .. ........... .. .. ....... .. .. .. .. .. .. ..... .. .. ........... .. .. ....... .. .. .. .... Table 14. Frequencies for definite and indefinite forms to targets containingeisiau 'needs' ............................................................. Table 15. Frequencies for positive responsives to targets which expect nonecho responsives ...................................................................... Table 16. Frequencies for negative responsives to targets which expect nonecho responsives................................ ...... ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. Table 17. Frequencies for responsives to sentence fragments .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Table 18. Frequencies for responsives to pardon questions ............................ Table 19. Features in mismatches of finite targets and verbal responsives ..... Table 20. Frequencies for types of finite verbs in targets for responsives ....... Table 21. Number mismatches and their person features............................... Table 22. Interpolations in exchanges involving finite targets and verbal responsives .. .. ..... ........................... ........................................... .... Table 23. Numbers of users of responsives.......................... .......................... Table 24. Numbers of children in the main corpus, with additions and losses ............................................................................................ Table 25. T -test comparisons of the different ages in designated bilingual schools .......................................................................................... Table 26. T -test comparisons of the different ages in mixed unstreamed schools.......................................................................................... Table 27. T.-test comparison of boys' and girls' use of responsives (bilingual schools).........................................................................

Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

I 00 107 199 202 204 205 208 208 209 209 212 213 214 215 216 217 219 220 221 222 229 231 243 245 247 248 250

xvi List of tables Table 28. T-tcst comparison of boys' and girls' use of responsives (mixed unstrcamcd) .. ............ ......................................... .. . ........................ Table 29. Numbers of children in the different school types .......................... Table 30. T -test comparisons of children's usc of positive rcsponsives in school types ........... .. .. ....................... .. .. ....... .. .. .. ............... .. .. ........ Table 31. T -test comparisons of children's usc of negative rcsponsivcs in school types ......... .. ....................... ............. .. ................. .. ........... ... Table 32. T -test comparisons of children's usc of positive and negative responsivcs in school types............................................................ Table 33. T-test comparisons of positive rcsponsives in different school types (boys)................................................................................... Table 34. T-test comparisons of negative responsives in different school types (boys)................................................................................... Table 35. T-test comparisons of both positive and negative rcsponsivcs in different school types (boys).......................................................... Table 36. T -test comparisons of positive responsivcs in different school types (girls)................................................................................... Table 37. T-test comparisons of negative responsives in different school types (girls)................................................................................... Table 38. T -test comparisons of both positive and negative responsives in different school types (girls) .......................................................... Table 39. T-test comparisons of Welsh Ll and L2 speakers' strength of usc of Welsh ................. .. ........... .. .. .. ......... .. .. .. ........... .. .. .. .. ................. Table 40. T-tcst comparisons of Welsh Ll and Welsh L2 speakers' use of responsives ............. .. .. ............... .. ........... ... .......... .. .. ........... .......... Table 41. The strength of the usc of Welsh by L I speakers in bilingual and mixed unstrcamcd schools ........... .. ........... .. ... .......... .. ... ........ .. ...... Table 42. Percentages of the discourse acts fulfilled by responsives. .. .. ....... .. . Table 43. Frequencies of the discourse acts and types of rcsponsives............. Table 44. Frequencies of the discourse acts of responsives and their pairings with targets ... .................. .. .. .... ....... .. ............. .. ........... .. .. . Table 45. T -test comparisons of discourse acts conveyed by responsives ....... Table 46. Addressees of responsives expressed in percentages ...................... Table 47. Addressees of discourse acts of rcsponsives expressed in percentages................................................................................... Table 48. T-test comparison of the children's use of answers over different ages .............................................................................................. Table 4 9. T -test comparison of the children· s use of answers over different ages ..............................................................................................

251 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 261 262 264 265 273 284 285 287 288 292 292 294 295

In memory of my father and mother.

t. Answering systems This chapter has two main aims. First, drawing upon descriptions in the literature and generous help from informants, it outlines in two parts common characteristics of answers to yes-no questions in various languages: one part examines their semantics and the other examines their formal realizations. This study is especially concerned with forms of saying 'yes' and 'no': both specialized yes-no words as found in some languages, and their equivalents in other languages. The term responsive is adopted as a general label for both yes-no words and their equivalents.• Second, the chapter uses this outline of answering systems to introduce the main features of the responsive system in Welsh, in preparation for the detailed analyses of that system in the remaining chapters. Szwedek' s observation (1982: 5) about the relative neglect of responsives in comparison with the treatment of questions remains relevant today, and it is hoped that the detailed consideration of the Welsh language presented in this work will contribute to a wider understanding of them. 2

1. I Semantics This section explores the functions of responsives, and examines semantics and, to a lesser extent, pragmatics and discourse. It first introduces the notion of a sentence answer, which allows the semantics of responsives to be explored in terms of grammatical and logical concepts. For introductory purposes, responsives arc discussed more as answers to yes-no questions than as responses to statements or commands. The literature indicates that, in semantic terms, languages answer positive questions in a uniform way but answer negative questions in different ways, and the two are separately considered.

/. /.1 Sentence answers In a general sense, the answer to a yes-no question can be indicated by its equivalent corresponding statement, rendered as either a positive or negative sentence: (I)

a. b.

c.

is it raining? it is raining. it is. it isn't raining. it i.m 't.

2 Answering systems (2)

a. b.

c.

isn't it raining? it is raining. it is. it isn 'I raining. it isn '1.

Languages which allow VP ellipsis, like English, can use shorter versions as illustrated above. In this study, the long and short versions will be referred to as full sentence answers and elliptical sentence answers respectively, or simply sentence answers (the label of sentence answer is taken from Bauerle 1979: 63). Questions and sentence answers arc syntactically, lexically, and semantically closely related. The main differences arise because of: formation of moods, e.g. word order: changes in polarity: changes to person features: pronominalization: ellipsis:

can she swim? can she swim? can you swim? can John swim? can she swim?

she can swim. she cannot swim. I can swim. he can swim. she can.

Such issues arc discussed in detail in respect of Welsh in Chapter 5. Only general points will be made here. Syntactically, the significant differences arise because of polarity and, in some languages, the formation of moods. But these are systematic differences which can be handled within a common syntactic structure for both the clause which supplies the sentence answer and the clause which asks the yesno question. The polarity of questions and sentence answers is highly significant, and is discussed in 1.1.2 and 1.1. 3. The extent to which interrogative and declarative moods produce differences in clause structure varies from language to language. A detailed account is outside the aims of this study but we can note that the use of word order (as in English), particles, and intonation supply the main methods which are variously used to distinguish interrogative and declarative clauses. Lexically, although there arc differences because of pronominalization, person features and ellipsis. both the question and the sentence answer share common referring expressions in their noun and verb phrases. Differences produced by ellipsis arc based on the fact that the sentence answer is able to exploit the question as a source for the recoverability of omitted items. Semantically, both sentence answers and yes-no questions are based on the same propositional content. For the purposes of the discussion at this stage. we can say that propositional content refers to entities (peoples, objects. and abstract concepts) which arc involved in processes (activities and states) in various circumstances (in particular, places and times). lwanicka ( 1976) considers other sorts of sentence answers which she refers to as hesitant answers:

Semantics 3

(3)

is it raining? /think so. c. I don 'tthink so. d. I hope so. c. I hope not. a.

b.

The important point is that these answers do not have the same equivalences to the question as sentence answers. Further, they do not occur in place of sentence answers. Fuller versions of the above arc as follows: (4)

a. /think it is [raining]. b. I don 't think it is [raining/. c. I hope it is [raining}. d. I hope it isn 't [raining].

These fuller versions show that sentence answers to yes-no questions can be modified to produce qualified answers. Expressions like I think ... , I hope ... and so forth bring sentence answers under semantic constraints: the responses are no longer offered categorically but are subject to the nonfactive meanings of words like think and the desires of words like hope. Although the expressions which modify the responses can occur by themselves, they do not occur in place of sentence answers: the latter arc absent through ellipsis and not substitution. This study will concentrate upon unqualified sentence answers. It is not being claimed that sentence answers like (lb-c) and (2b-c) arc typical answers in spontaneous discourse in all languages. Their importance for this study is that they clarify an analysis of responsivcs in a number of ways. The notion of a sentence answer helps to avoid confusion in the use of the term answer itself: in some accounts, it is sometimes not clear whether the term answer refers to a responsive or a sentence answer. This distinction is particularly important when discussing negative questions, as is shown in 1.1. 3. Sentence answers also provide clear illustration of the semantics of answering a yes-no question: in terms of traditional semantics, sentence answers indicate the propositional information that the questioner seeks (discussion in 1.1.4 shows that pragmatic information is also important to achieve a complete understanding of answers). On a more detailed level, certain aspects of sentence answers can be used to explain the function of responsives. Of particular importance arc the grammarian's notion of polarity and the logician's notion of truth value, and these arc considered in the following scctions.3

4 Atuwering systems

1.1.2 Answers to positive questions: polarity am/truth value

The term polarity refers to the familiar grammatical category of negation, or negativity, as it is sometimes called. It is an essential analytic category in the discussion of both questions and answers. In this section, we shall maintain a consistent polarity in the question, and discuss the polarity of the sentence answer and the responsive. In the case of both questions and answers, however, it is useful to distinguish between sentential polarity, on the one hand, and lexical and derivational polarity, on the other hand. We arc concerned in this study with sentential polarity, which is based on the absence or presence of a negating clement in clause structure, such as English not. We shall not consider negation through lexical items such as the English proforms nothing, nohoc{y etc. or the quantifier no, nor negation through derivational affixes as in English dislike."' Polarity captures the obvious difference between the choice of sentence answers: they are either positive or negative. The equivalent responsives can also be distinguished in terms of polarity. In replying to positive yes-no questions, English, for instance, uses one form, yes, when the sentence answer is positive, and another form, no. when the sentence answer is negative. The rcsponsivcs can cooccur with a sentence answer, or - pragmatics allowing - they can occur alone and indicate whether the omitted sentence answer is positive or negative: (5)

a. is it raining? b. yes, it is [raining]. c. yes. d.

e.

no, it isn 'I I raining]. no.

The literature on answers to positive yes-no questions indicates that it is a universal feature of languages that they usc a two-form responsive system, and that the choice of one form or the other is determined by the polarity of the sentence answer. Japanese has an answering system which in another respect is different to English (as is discussed in 1.1.3) but the forms of the responsivcs which it uses to answer positive questions maintain the same polarity distinctions as English, as is shown by the following examples which are based on Dunn-Yanada (1958: 53): (6)

a. ano hito wa Rondon ni imasu ka? that person pt London in is q 'is he in London?' b.

hai, imasu.

yes is 'yes, he is.'

Semantics 5 (7)

a.

b.

kimasu ka? come q 'arc you coming?' iie, ikimasen. no comc+ncg 'no, I am not coming.'

As can be seen, hai 'yes' and iie 'no' convey responses which indicate equivalent positive and negative sentence answers respectively, and for this reason they can be regarded as positive and negative forms. Other examples of answers to positive questions can be found in Appendix III, which provides illustrative data of rcsponsives in various languages. There are apparent counter-examples to the claim that rcsponsivcs agree with the polarity of the equivalent sentence answer. Consider the following: a. b. (9) a. b. (10) a. b. (11) a. b.

(8)

is John working at the moment? no, he 's sleeping. are you William /Ioney? no, I'm Fredclie Baker. is he t1ying to arrange a loan? yes, he hasn 'I got any money. are you tired? yes, I haven 't slept for two days.

In these examples, the polarity of the responsive and the accompanying statements do not agree. But the accompanying statements arc not sentence answers as we have defined them: they do not share the same propositional content as the question, and arc not syntactic and lexical equivalents. The sentence answers have been omitted from the above examples, but if they are overtly indicated, it can be seen that their polarity is the same as that of the responsive: he is not, I am not, he is and I am, respectively. The accompanying sentences are additional answers, and are discussed in 1.1.4. Another possible way of characterizing the functions of yes and no can be found in traditional propositional logic, particularly in accounts which apply it to linguistic semantics. s Propositional logic uses the concept of truth value. It is applied to the concept of a proposition, and has two mutually exclusive possibilities. namely, true and false (often paraphrased as 'it is so /the case that' and 'it is not so I the case that'). In linguistic semantics, it is explained that a proposition: is conveyed by a declarative sentence when such a sentence is used to make a statement, and is ~rue or false when the sentence is uttered on a specific occasion.

6 Answering systems

Consider the following devised examples from English: (12) a. ,','ionecl has a home in the Loire valley. b. yes. c. 110. (13) a. does Sionecllike Brahms? b. yes. c. no. The example in (12a), when it is uttered on a particular occasion, provides an instance of a proposition. There is a view that yes-no questions have no truth value, and that their function is to find out whether the proposition of the equivalent statement is true or false. Thus, does Sioned like Brahms? asks whether it is true or false that .'')ionecllikes Brahms. It can then be said that responsives convey the truth value of a proposition. Bauerle (1979: 64) cites Egli's ( 1976) view that yes means 'it is true' or 'it is the case that', and no means 'it is false' or 'it is not the case that·. Similarly, Lyons ( 1977, 2: 777) claims that the responsives in standard British English may have the meanings 'that is so' and 'that is not so'. The truth-value interpretation is assessed later in this section and in 1.1.3. Unlike polarity, truth value is not explicitly signalled as a matter of routine in declarative sentences in languages with which I have a working familiarity. However, speakers can overtly mark the truth or falsity of a proposition if they feel that it needs to be emphasized. Quirk eta/. ( 1985: 583) discuss expressions which can reinforce tmth value such as clearly and of course, amongst others; and to these can be added expressions like it is the case that and it is not the case that. Thus, we can have examples such as: ( 14) a. b.

c.

of course I don 't/ike Brahms. it is the case that I loathe package holidays, though I'm a travel agent. it's not the case that Gwen refused to help us.

But marking truth value is exceptional. As Quirk eta/. (1985: 583) say: "Since it is normally expected that a person intends his hearer to accept what he says as true, the addition of the comment or assertion in no way alters but merely emphasizes the tmth of the communication. " 6 The routine absence of an overt signal of truth value does not stop speakers of languages from interpreting the propositions which sentences convey as true or false. In traditional logic, this is explained along the following lines. A proposition, :m the occasion of uttering the sentence which expresses it. refers to some state of affairs in the world which is conveyed by its propositional content: entities (peoples, objects, and abstract concepts), processes (activities and states) and circumstances (in particular, places and times). Particular and specific instances of

Semantics 7 entities, processes and circumstances supply the truth conditions of a proposition when it is expressed on a certain occasion. A proposition is said to be true when all these can be verified when the statement is made. Otherwise. if one or more do not hold at the time of utterance, then the proposition is false. Thus. although the form of a sentence docs not signal truth value explicitly. speakers have n·ays, in principle, of interpreting whether a proposition is true or false. In practice. however, users arc not always in a position to be able to match the content of a proposition with specific states of aiTairs. But this docs not restrict our ordinary usc of language. As Chicrchia-McConneli-Ginet (1990: 63) say: "The important thing to notice here is that though we might not know what the facts arc we do know what they ought to be in order to make the sentence truc." 7 We now have two ways of interpreting rcsponsives. On the one hand, they can be seen as signals of the polarity of sentence answers. On this basis. rcsponsives are determined by characteristics of the response, i.e. the sentence answer. which may or may not be realized. On the other hand. responsives can be seen as indicating the truth value of a proposition which is implied by a question. In this case. their determining factor is in a previous utterance by another speaker (anaphoric, in the wide sense of this term). There is no one-to-one relationship between truth value and polarity. A proposition which is true can be either positive or negative- 'it is true that it is raining' or 'it is true that it is not raining'. Similarly. a false proposition can be either positive or negative - 'it is false that it is raining' or 'it is false that it is not raining'. This makes it difficult to reconcile the two interpretations of responsivcs to positive questions that we have developed so far. This can be shown when negative sentence ans\vers arc considered in detail. Given the negative sentence answer it is not raining, there arc two ways of interpreting it in terms of truth value: either 'it is true that it is not raining' or 'it is false that it is raining'. The comment by Quirk eta/. (1985: 583). quoted earlier. that speakers of natural languages make true propositions - or. at least. they create the appearance of making them - is also seen in treatments of questions and answers which are more from the perspective of logic: Biiucrlc (1979: 64) and Hoepehnan (1983: 198) report that Karttuncn ( 1978) interprets questions to expect only true answers. Wason ( 1959: 92), reporting on an experiment to process positive and negative information, also suggests that only true statements are relevant or valid - what he calls "positive information and negative information''. This is not to say that a speaker cannot comment upon the truth value of a statement made by another speaker by referring specifically to its truth or falsity. Indeed. we sec in 1.1.3 that this is the basis, in part, for the answering systems of some languages. But the point is that a statement. when it is made, is intended to be taken as true. In this light, the sentence answer it is not raining in response to is it raining? is more appropriately interpreted as 'it is true that it is not raining· rather than 'it is false that it is raining·. This makes it difficult to interpret no as 'it is false·. If this

8 A11s11'eri11g .fystems

were the case, given an answer such as no, it is not rainin[{. there would be a conflict between the message 'it is false· conveyed by no. and the message 'it is true' conveyed by the truth value of the sentence answer it is not raining. In contrast, it is simpler to say that all statements arc true statements, and that no and .ves, for instance. do not convey truth value but the polarity of the sentence answer - negative polarity in the case of no and positive polarity in the case of yes. In summary, then. all sentence answers arc intended as true statements and that. in respect of positive questions. responsivcs: (i) indicate that a true sentence answer is given. and (ii) reflect the polarity of the sentence answer.

1. 1.3 Answers to ne[{ative questions: polarity and truth value In the following discussion. we shall concentrate again on sentential polarity and not lexical or derivational polarity. The label negative question is a linguistic one and not a value judgement on the aims of a question. It refers to questions whose polarity is negative: ( 15) a. b.

c. d. c.

aren 't you staying? haven't they finished? clicln 't you arrive yesterday? isn 't she married? don't you have the keys?

Discussions of negative questions generally note that they suggest two sorts of belief by the questioner: an original positive belief which can be conveyed by a positive sentence (e.g. you are stl~Ving). and a subsequent negative belief brought on by later doubts which can be conveyed by a negative sentence (e.g. you are not staying). 8 Like positive questions, negative questions can be given either a positive or negative sentence answer. But. unlike positive questions in the main. negative questions are not neutral questions: the questioner is biased either towards a positive sentence answer based on the original belief or a negative sentence answer based on the subsequent doubt. 9 There is some disagreement in the literature as to the direction of the bias. Quirk et a/. ( 1985: 808). in their discussion of English data, refer to negative orientation. Pope ( 1976: 68) acknowledges that it is difficult to decide where the bias lies but then goes on to say "because of the speaker's original positive belief, the question is definitely biased toward the positive [statement] answer". Choi (1991: 408) also allows that a negative question can be used "to emphasise its positive meaning" .10 But there are probably cross-linguistic differences: some languages may allow negative sentences to be used with either positive or negative bias, while others may favour one or the other. Choi (1991:

Semantics 9

409) claims that negative questions in Korean are biased towards the subsequent doubt. and thus imply a negative sentence answer. Boslcgo ( 1984: 75) remarks that there arc no negative questions in Thai. although the data offered earlier in the article suggests that there may be functional. if not formal. equivalents of negative questions. This elusiveness in defining the questioner's bias is not really a problem for the analysis being presented here. It is sufficient to know that the questioner has a bias. As such. the responder can either accept or counter the bias of the question. If the question is thought to have negative bias. a negative sentence answer accepts the bias but a positive sentence answer counters it. If the question is thought to have positive bias. a positive sentence answer goes with the bias but a negative sentence answer goes against it. Solely for convenience of presentation in the remainder of this discussion. we shall assume that negative questions are used with a negative bias and thus imply a negative sentence answer. For a language like English. the selection of a responsive form to respond to a negative question is decided in the same way as to a positive one. i.e. according to the polarity of the sentence answer: (16)

a. b. c.

aren't you slc~ving? no f, I'm not}. yes f, I am].

This data is used by some writers (e.g. Hoepelman 1983: 193-94, 202-203) to challenge the truth-value interpretation of English responsivcs. The argument is that if no means 'it is false that'. then when it answers a negative question like ( 16a). it replaces the original truth value of the implied proposition in the question. Thus. the original 'it is true that you are not staying' is contradicted by 'it is false that you are not staying·. and thus implies 'you are staying'. In other words, we would have: (17)

a. b.

aren't you staying? no {. I am}.

Similarly, if yes means 'it is true·. then the answer yes means 'it is true that you arc not staying': ( 18) a. aren 'I you staying? b. yes f, I am not]. These responses are opposite to the way that yes and no arc typically used in English.

JO A11sweri11g systems

However, the truth-value interpretation is suitable for other languages. Japanese is a frequent example in the literature, as is found in Pope (1976: 122) and Takashima ( 1989). The following data is based on Pope:

desu ne? kyoo wa atuku nai aff today pt hot bc+ncg pol 'it isn't hot today. is it?' de.m ne. b. hai soo aff yes pro[= kyoo wa atuku nai) pol 'no, it isn't hot.' c. iie, kyoo wa atui desu. no today pt hot pol 'yes, it is hot today.·

(19) a.

It will be recalled from previous Japanese examples of answers to positive questions in 1.1.2 that hai is the positive form. and iie is the negative form. But the responses to negative questions show that their selection is not always determined by the polarity of the sentence answer: in this context. when the latter is negative, the positive responsive hai is used, but when the latter is positive. the negative responsive iie is used. We cannot, then, explain the selection of a Japanese responsive to a negative question by referring to agreement with the polarity of the sentence answer. We could maintain the link between responsives and sentence answers by saying that some languages choose the form of the responsive by reversing the polarity of the sentence answer. Such an account reflects the descriptive facts, but there is another approach which has greater explanatory appeal. We can explain the Japanese data by referring to the truth value of the proposition which is implied by the question. In the case of negative bias. the questioner is suggesting 'it is true that not s·. For instance, in the case of example (19a) above, the questioner is implying 'it is true that it is not hot today'. In selecting a responsive, the responder addresses not the polarity of his or her own sentence answer but the truth value of the proposition which is implied by the bias of the question. Thus, when the responder agrees with the implied negative proposition he or she gives a negative sentence answer. soo de.m ne 'it isn't hot", but chooses the positive responsive to agree with the truth value behind the questioner's implied proposition- hai 'yes' or 'it is true (that it is not hot)'. And when the speaker disagrees with the implied negative proposition. he or she responds with a positive sentence answer kyoo wa atui de.m 'it is hot today', but chooses the negative responsive to disagree with the tmth value behind the questioner's implied proposition- iie 'no' or 'it is false (that it is not hot)'. With languages like Japanese, responsives must have a more complex explanation to account for their uses with both positive and negative questions. In responding to positive (neutral) questions. their forms arc polarity-based: they are the same as the polarity of the

Semantics II

sentence answer. In responding to negative questions, they arc based on the truth value associated with the question: where the responder accepts the truth value of the implied negative proposition of the question, a positive responsive is used. hai 'yes' ('it is true'); and where the responder sees the implied negative proposition as false, a negative responsive is used, iie, 'no' ('it is false'). Appendix lll provides examples of other languages found in the literature which are like Japanese in answering a negative question. They are Amharic, Cantonese. Gwa, Harari, Hausa, Korean, Mandarin, Navajo, and Yoruba. Langendonck (1980: 347) says that West Flemish can also function on a truth-value basis. 11 The analysis of English rcsponsivcs as being polarity-based reflects the usage in international varieties which arc primarily monolingual English. such as standard British English. But there are other international varieties of English which operate on a truth-value basis when answering negative questions. Bokamba ( 1992: 132-133) and Oladcjo (1993) say that varieties of African English arc like this, and Bokamba supplies illustrations such as the following: (20) a. hasn 'tthe Presidentlefl for Nairobi yet? b. yes, the President hasn 'tlefl for Nairobi .vet. Bokamba goes on to make the reasonable suggestion that this usage is the result of the influence on English of African languages which usc truth-value systems, e.g. Lingala (a Bantu language), Yoruba and Hausa (examples of the latter two can be found in Appendix III). Baik-Shim (1993: 46) also claim interference as a cause of the use of English yes and 110 on a truth-value basis by some speakers. To complete the outline of negative questions in truth-value systems. we can refer to answering those which have a positive bias. Dunn-Yanada (1958: 53) give an example of what happens in Japanese. They refer to "the kind of negative question that is a disguised positive request": (21) a.

b.

kimasen ka? comc+neg q 'won't you come?' hai, ikimasu. yes come 'yes, I'll come.'

To agree with the positive bias of the question, the sentence answer is positive. It can be seen that the responsive form is also positive, namely, hai 'yes'. There arc two \vays of accounting for the selection of a positive form. One is to claim that it is determined by the polarity of the sentence answer, as happens with positive questions. The other is to say that it is determined by agreement with the truth value of the proposition which is implied by the question. The latter is the more

12 Answering systems

appealing explanation as it maintains consistency with the method of answering negative questions which have implied negative propositions. Langendonck (1980: 347) also suggests that, in West Flemish, negative questions which have a positive bias arc also answered with a positive responsive form when the bias is accepted. Pope (1976: 129) records that English, primarily a polarity system. and Navajo. primarily a truth-value system (sec Appendix Ill), vacillate. She provides examples of rcsponsives to a negative question in Navajo being selected on the basis of the polarity of the statement answer, reproduced in Appendix III, rather than the truth value of the questioner's implied negative proposition, as follows: (22) a. b.

c.

doosh ch 'eeh dlnlyaada? 'aren't you tired?' doocla, cloo ch 'eeh c/eyimda. 'no, I'm not tired.' aoo ·. ch 'eeh deyci 'yes, I'm tired.'

There appear to be no similar illustrations of English vacillation in Pope's work, and her view would seem to be based on responses to positive sentences which contain negative lexical items (Pope 1976: 125-129). Intuitively, however, I feel that English can form a responsive to accept or reject the truth value of the proposition of a negative statement: (23) a.

you cion 'I like my cooking, then.

b. yes,/ do. c. no, 1 do. The usc of yes in (23b) may be typical. but strong contradiction can be achieved by using no in (23c) with appropriate emphatic pitch movement on no and, possibly, a longer pause between it and the sentence answer. Bald (1980: 184-185) provides corpus examples which he interprets as showing that yes can agree with a negative statement in place of the more typical no (given here without the prosodic markings): (24) (25)

B: 1 dicln 'I want to he pressurized like that any more. A: yes, yeah. A: they don 'I use the library because they take books out. C: yes.

As Bald points out, the interpretation of (25) is complicated by the occurrence of a negative main clause and a positive subordinate clause: the responsive can target

Semantics 13

either the main or subordinate clause (this issue is examined in respect of Welsh in 3.3.3). Further, this use of yes may simply be based on the familiar discourse strategy whereby listeners indicate that they are paying attention. The latter, of course, can also be fulfilled by no so Bald's interpretation that yes in the above examples as agreeing with a negative statement must be taken seriously. French is like English in that its responsive system is mainly based on the polarity of sentence answers. But Grcvisse (1993: 1571) says that French oui 'yes' can also be used to agree with a negative statement, "Oui sert parfois aconfirmcr une phrase negative (au lieu de non)" [Oui sometimes serves to confirm a negative sentence (in place of non)]. In effect, he is suggesting that oui can also be used like a positive responsive form in a truth-value system, and supplies the following illustration: (26) a.

b.

if n

a pas le sou. he neg has neg the sou 'he hasn't got a penny.' oui. 'yes.'

There is then some evidence which suggests that the norms of both the polarity system and the truth-value system can be broken. In summary, there are two major types of answering systems on semantic grounds. Some languages like English typically select their responsivcs on the basis of the polarity of the sentence answer to both positive and negative yes-no questions. In such languages, the selection of a responsive is determined by the syntactic form of the sentence answer. But other languages like Japanese only do this when responding to positive questions. When responding to negative questions, they choose a positive responsive to accept the truth value of the implied proposition in the question, or a negative responsive to counter it. In such languages and in this discourse context, the selection of a responsive is determined by the logical form of the proposition which is implied by the question. In this study, these two answering systems arc referred to as the polarity system and the truth-value system. Strictly, of course, the latter is a mixed system but the label truth-value system is used for convenience. In a much-cited and influential study, Pope (1976: 73) distinguishes between a positive-negative answering system for languages like English, and an agreementdisagreement answering system for languages like Japanese. The former is the same as this study's polarity-based system, and the latter refers to languages whiclf have been accounted for in this study as being based on truth value. The main point of Pope's views is evident in her overall exposition and from her data, but the details of the explanation of the agreement-disagreement system arc not always completely clear. She says: "In such languages [as Japanese], there arc

14 Answering systems

many questions - probably far more than in English - where it is obvious what answer is intended, and the answerer simply agrees or disagrees with this expected answer.'' Pope also goes on to say that a responder can also agree or disagree with what he or she interprets to be the likely answer. Pope's presentation lacks clarity in two respects. It is not clear what Pope means by an answer - it could be a sentence answer. a responsive or both together. And Pope does not clearly define the focus of the agreement or disagreement II is not clear whether it focuses on the grammatical category of polarity or the logical notion of tmth value. As her explanation stands. it could apply to polarity-based languages like English whose speakers can also agree or disagree with sentence answers which arc expected by a negative question. but do so on a polarity basis. Pope's usc of agreement I disagreement can be compared with a later definition which is clear and specific (Pope 1976: 132 fn. 3). This later definition is based on whether the question and the answer (presumably responsive) share the same polarity or not: if they do. then they agree; if they do not. then they disagree. If this latter definition is applied to the Japanese data in examples ( 19). it can be seen that the Japanese positive responsive disagrees with the negative polarity of the implied proposition. i.e. they disagree. But we know from the sentence answer that agreement is the intention. The diiTerence between languages like English and other languages like Japanese can be more clearly stated if a distinction is made between the grammatical category of polarity in the sentence answer and the logical notion of tmth value in the implied proposition of the question. Pope's agreement I disagreement becomes clearer if the tmth value of the implied proposition of the question is the focus of the agreement I disagreement Pope's work. however. generally identifies the two major answering systems and has been exploited by other writers. such as Baik-Shim (1993: 44 ). These authors. however. give a clearer explanation: " ... in English Yes/No answers correspond with the positivity or negativity of the proposition that follows the answers while there arc other languages in the world in which Yes/No answers signal agreement/disagreement with the proposition in the question."

/./.4 Pragmatics ancl discourse The literature on answers to yes-no questions contains examples which suggest that there is more to answering a question than supplying a responsive and I or a sentence answer. A common observation is that answers can be supplied by statements which are neither the propositional nor grammatical equivalents of the question. Studies on discourse analysis provide some striking examples of this, such as the illustration which is provided in Coulthard ( 1985: 8):

Semantics 15

(27) a. b.

Are you going to work tomorrow? I'm on jw:v du(v.

And Labov (1972). as cited in Coulthard (1985: 8). supplies this delightful illustration: Linus: Do you want to plcw with me, l'io/et? Violet: J"cm 're younger than me. (shuts the door) Linus: (puzzled) ,-

=>

Singular

Plural

Person 3rd

=>

3rd

9

23%

1st

=>

3rd

3

8%

2nd

=>

3rd

2

5%

3rd

=>

lsl

2nd

=>

1st

13

34%

lsi

=>

lst

6

16%

3rd

=>

lst

3

8%

1st

=>

3rd

3%

3%

The percentages are based on the total for all mismatches of number, namely 38.

230 Cllilclren 's use of We/sll responsil•e.f

In the case of second singular first plural exchanges, some intriguing possibilities arise. First. many of the examples suggest that the speaker has reinterpreted the original singular subject as a plural one to include other children or adults (sec examples ( 15a) and (15c) in particular). That is. the questioner may have intended singular intimate reference to the addressee only, but the latter may feel that other persons arc involved and selects a plural responsive to create a wider reference. Second, and more speculatively, the mismatch may be due to children's interpretation of the intimate I nonintimate contrast on a much wider basis. Traditional descriptions of Welsh say that the language. like other European languages. only makes the distinction between intimate and nonintimatc with singular reference i.e. ti vs. chi (and their related forms): all plural references involve chi and the intimacy contrast is lost. Tentatively speaking. some children may abandon the differences of number but retain the contrasts of intimacy: that is. the li set is intimate while the chi set is nonintimatc; and both can be singular or plural. As a result. a plural form can be used in response to a form which is based on ti. Third. and speculatively again. we may have an erosion of the use of chi forms by the generalization of the ti forms: that is. some speakers abandon the distinctions of intimacy and number. and usc ti in all circumstances. In this light, ti can then be responded to with a plural pronoun. In support of this wider usc of ti either as an intimate pronoun or a general pronoun, we can note that it enjoys widespread usc in the vernacular as a generic second person equivalent to c{vn 'man'. as can chi (as discussed in 2.3.3). This lends tentative support for the view that ti is developing beyond the usage which is traditionally attributed to it as a singular intimate pronoun. In the case of the third plural third singular exchanges. the situation is less clear-cut. We have already noted in 2.4.2 that a singular third person verb which has a plural nominal subject can be responded to with a plural responsive: yc~v 'r c~rnion yna? yc{vn' (='is the men there?' '(they) are'). But in the corpus we have instances of the reverse number change: ydyn' nhw yna? :vc{v 'arc they there? is'. Given that the first type of change is motivated by a plural subject, one would expect a plural pronominal su~jcct in the second type to maintain plural reference. One possible explanation is that the choice of a singular or plural responsive with plural nominal subjects has been extended to plural pronominal subjects. The third singular figures as a responsive in a number of mismatches sec Table 21 - and it may be that this form is overgcneralizcd by some children.

6. 5 . .f Person

The most frequent interaction is that of direct exchange between previous speaker and addressee, who exchange roles. There are only twenty seven instances of interpolations by the listener (there are slightly more than this but we shall concen-

FomJS of verbal responsives 231

trate upon those which involve person changes) Table 22.

statistical details arc given in

Table 22. Interpolations in exchanges involving finite targets and verbal responsives

1st

::)

3rd

e.g. yclw 'I am'

::)

ydy 'he is'

3

2nd

::)

2nd

e.g. uyt 'you are'

::)

"llyt 'you are'

4

2nd

::)

3rd

e.g. uyt 'you are'

::)

ycly 'he is'

8

3rd

::)

1st

e.g. yc~v 'he is'

::)

yclw 'I am'

12

llte percentages arc based on the total for all interpolations, namely 27.

In the majority of cases, the listener responds to the previous speaker. In twelve of these, the original grammatical subject is the listener - the person change, therefore, is third singular first singular: (16) a.

b.

R:

dar/len rhain, S-. read these 'read these, S-.' ma ' ,')' yn met/111 dar/len o. is prog fail read he 'S-can 't read it.' S: vndw, Tad. ·am, Father (heavenly Father, used as reinforcing exclamation) 'yes, of course'. MJ: Yl~V S- yn hyw yn agos? is prog live adv close 'does S-live near?' R: ydy. is 'yes.' MJ: yndy? is 'does he?' S: ydw. am 'yes.'

232 Children's 11se of Welsh responsives

wirion, R-? bod yn 'n ti MJ: uyt be+pres+2sg you prog be prcd silly 'arc you being silly, R-?' ee? 'eh?' S: ync~v. bc+pres+ 3sg 'yes.' R: nac dw. neg bc+pres+ 1sg 'no.' 'dy dy enw di? be d. MJ: your name you is what name?' your 'what's 0: 0-. '0-.' MJ: 0- be? '0- what?' [intervening exchanges] bachgen dn1•g. mae o 'n 1: bad he pred boy is 'he's a naughty boy.· 0: nac ydw. neg am 'no.' MJ: ydy? is 'is he?' pam hynny? why that 'why's that?' ddn1•g. 0: dw i deli 111 yn pred bad am I not 'I'm not naughty.'

c.

In eight exchanges, the original grammatical subject is the addressee and the person change is second singular third singular :

Fom1s of verbal responsives 233

(17) a.

b.

c.

MJ: 11yt

ti 'n byw yn 1'-,L-? be+pres+2sg you prog live in 'do you live in T-, L-?' S: nac ydy. neg be+pres+3sg 'no.' S: 'li 1s1e lillY i byta. be+pres+2sg+pro needs spoon to eat 'do you want a spoon to eat?' L: nac ydy. neg is 'no.' S: Janna mae e. there is he 'that's where it is.' MJ: yn y gornel. in the corner 'in the corner.' S: ie. 'yes.' ls:vt li 'eli (3} yn y gornel. be+pres+2sg you perf in thecorner 'you have (3) in the corner.' ":vt ti? be+ pres+2sg you 'have you?' 1: ody. be+pres+ 3sg 'yes.' dipyn bach. piece little 'a little bit.'

In three instances, the original grammatical subject is the speaker and the person change is first (:) third: (18) a.

MJ: oo ie,

S:

ond dw i isio 'r papur 'na i gyd oh yes but am I needs the paper there all 'oh yes, but I want all that paper.' ody. is 'yes.'

234 Children's use of Welsh respo11sives

b.

I:

0:

c.

R:

C:

dw i ddim yn gas. am I not pres nasty 'I am not nasty.' ydy. is 'yes.' a dclim yn #. 'fi and be+pres+ lsg+pro not prog 'and I'm not#.' yndy. is 'yes.

Only four interpolations respond to the previous addressee, for example: (19) a.

b.

'n li gweiddi fel 'na ohyd, J-? MJ: nyt bc+pres+2sg you prog shout like that always 'do you always shout like that J-?' S: ym{v. is 'yes.' n:vt. be+prcs+2sg 'yes.' MJ: n:vt li 'n licio dawnsio? be+pres+2sg you prog like dance 'do you like dancing?' R: n:vt. be+prcs+2sg 'yes.'

Example (l9a) supplies a double interpolation: the first response addresses the (old) speaker while the second response addresses the (old) addressee. In all the above interpolations, the relationship of the person features of the verb in the target and the responsive are consistent with the speech participants involved in the exchange, and the rcsponsives arc well-formed. There are, however, instances where it is not possible to find any rational explanations for mismatches of person, even on a tentative basis. There arc only fifteen instances of mismatches on the basis of person alone (see Table 19). Here are some examples:

Fom/S of verbal responsives 235

(20) a.

b.

c.

'ji 'n rhoi y peth lawr. be+pres+lsg+pro prog put the thing down 'I'm putting the thing down.' A: nac ydy. neg is 'no.' s 'o i moyn pen mawr. be+pres+neg I want head big 'I don't want a big head.' MJ: 'ti 'm yn licio garddio, 0-? be+pres+2sg+pro not prog like garden 'do you like gardening, 0-?' 0-?

D:

'0-?' u:vt ti 'n licio garddio? be+pres+ 2sg you prog like garden 'do you like gardening?' 0: ydy. is 'yes.' HJ: ydy o 'n edrych ar news? is he prog look on news 'does he look at the news?' M: ydw. am 'yes.'

It is more than likely that the majority of mismatches are due to performance errors, mishearing or misinterpretation (as in (20b) which may be an unusual question to ask a child) rather than to any systematic change in the language.

6.5.5 Definiteness

In this section we shall consider to what extent the definiteness of the target is maintained in the responsive. It will be recalled from 2.5.1 that Welsh possesses definite and indefinite forms of the third singular of the present tense of bod 'be': ~11ae for both, ydy for the former and oes for the latter. These forms are used in different grammatical contexts as already discussed. There are a total of 28 mismatches involving definiteness: 12 are due to definiteness alone while the remainder are combined mismatches involving the other features of responsives (10 with mismatches of person, four with mismatches of number, and two with mismatches

236 Children's use of Welsh responsives

of tense). The majority arc caused by a failure to respond appropriately to the indefinite responsive of bod 'be· rather than the definite one ( 17 for the former and nine for the latter - of the latter, two are past indefinites which do not have any formal distinction of indefiniteness like the present tense). Another possible systematic mismatch may occur with the existential present in possessive sentences. In Welsh, possessive sentences are formed by using a copular sentence which has a noun phrase subject and a prepositional phrase predicate. A devised example is as follO\vs:

mae afal gyda Sioned is apple with 'Sioncd has got an apple.'

(21)

In this example, the subject noun phrase, afal 'apple', is the thing possessed, and the prepositional phrase indicates the possessor, Sioned. A possible explanation for some mismatches in the corpus is that the responder has formed the responsive on the basis of a definite possessor rather than on the basis of an indefinite thing which is possessed, thus: (22) a.

b.

mae 1111 nell~vcld gyda 'r ysgol, ynd oes e, G_'J. is one new with the school q-tag is he 'the school's got a new one, hasn't it, G-?' G: yc(v. ne11~vdd. is new 'yes. new.' MJ: 's gen li (vfre aclre, M-? is with you books home 'have you got any books at home, M-?' M: yndw. am 'yes.'

H:

In the language of children, there is a variant pattern which shows the possessor in the subject position and the thing possessed in the prepositional phrase: (23) a.

mae .S'ioned gyda afal is with apple 'Sioned has got an apple.'

This mismatch may link up with this variant pattern. Thus, (22a-b) may have been interpreted by the responder as mae 'r ysgol gyda un newydd 'the school is with a new one' and wytti gvda llyfre adre? 'are you with books at home?', and

Fom/S of verbal responsives 237

the responsives given in (22) would be appropriate for these variant possessive patterns (the latter arc discussed in Jones B.M. 1988: 8-10; 1994).

6.6 Summary In acquiring the perceived standard system of Welsh responsives, it is clear from this chapter and previous chapters that the children face a formidable task: different subsystems of responsives have to be paired with different types of targets. From the description of their usage given above, the following main points emerge: i. ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

The positive nonecho responsive ie is encroaching into the territory of the positive verbal responsives while maintaining its usc in its own territory. For negative rcsponsivcs, the form na by itself emerges as a general responsive in place of all types of responsives, but there is some statistical evidence which may suggest that the spread of na meets with sterner resistance from the nonecho nage. Where there is a choice of either an echo responsive or a nonecho responsive, there is a tendency to choose the nonecho responsive; this is seen in responses to sentence fragments. where the positive nonecho responsive is more frequent than positive echo responsivcs. Where there is a choice of either a variable echo responsive or an invariable echo responsive, there is a tendency to choose the invariable responsive; this is seen in responses to: a. present tense and perfect aspect patterns, where the invariable perfect responsive is more frequent than the variant verbal one; b. eisiau 'needs' patterns involving the present tense of bod 'be', where the invariable indefinite oes is more frequent than the variant definite forms. Where a verbal responsive is appropriately used, the pairing of target and responsive is generally well-formed, and erroneous pairings are due mainly to mismatching of number; but these mismatches may be explicable in systematic terms.

The generalization of na makes it impossible to assess trends of usage with negative responsives, apart from the obvious point that it exists as a general form. Because na neutralizes the differences between the various types, it is not possible to say whether it is a reduced version of a particular type and, further, whether that type would othenvisc be a well-formed or erroneous pairing. It is with the positive responsives that trends of usage clearly emerge, and the main point here is that the echo responsives lose ground to the positive nonccho ie.

238 Children 's 11se of Wel.fh responsives

In the next two chapters, we shall attempt to explain why this variation exists. Two main approaches are adopted, which are seen in discussions of language change. McMahon (1994: 13) notes: "Whatever our views on the cxplicability of changes, it seems clear at least that some have internal motivations, within the linguistic system itself, while others are motivated by external factors, and notably by contact between languages." Welsh is used by speakers who arc bilingual, and the language is therefore open to both internal and external causes of change. External change through language contact with English is considered in Chapter 7, and internally-driven change is considered in Chapter 8. They are discussed separately for convenience and simplicity of presentation. But in handling these two sources of change, the view of Dorian ( 1993) is adopted that they are not exclusive influences, and that both may be in operation. More is said about the relationship between internally- and externally-motivated change or variation in 8.4.

7. Language contact: the influence of English

7.1 Introduction The aim of this chapter is to examine evidence which suggests that the children's deviations from perceived adult norms can be attributed to the contact of Welsh with English. This is undertaken against the view which is voiced by writers such as Aitchison (1991 : 116-117). Dorian ( 1993) and McMahon ( 1994: 21 0) that language contact should not necessarily be viewed as the sole cause of change. Other causes of change arc considered in the next chapter. Here we shall concentrate upon explanations which can be put forward on the basis of language contact. In referring to the languages of the children, this study will follow the common convention of using the abbreviations LI and L2 for first language and second language. respectively. Language change through the influence of one language on another is a muchdiscussed phenomenon which is seen in early treatments such as those in Jespersen (1922: 191-215) and Bloomfield (1935: 444-475), and in contemporary writers such as McMahon (1994: 200-224). 60 Language contact is offered as the typical illustration of externally-motivated change. with the result that the internalexternal contrast can be commonly considered to be based on the linguistic systems of two different languages. But there is another view of the internal-external contrast which centres on a single language and which arises from the distinction between the language system and the speakers who usc that system, as found in Milroy J. (1992: 22-28, 165-168). Change in terms of the characteristics of the system can be seen as internally-based change. while change in terms of the characteristics of the speakers can be seen as externally-based change. We would now appear to have two different uses of the internal-external contrast: one refers to the relationship between two different languages. and the other refers to the relationship between one language's linguistic system and its speakers. However, following the general view in Milroy (1992). these two uses of the internal-external contrast arc not incompatible. but can be unified by emphasizing the role of speakers in language change or variation, and by treating language contact as a speaker variable. Along with other speaker variables like sex, age, region, social class and cthnicity, language contact is thus an aspect of the sociolinguistic context which is external to the linguistic system. Language contact can be used as a speaker variable by adopting the common view, as seen in McMahon (1994: 200), for instance, that "... language contact, and therefore borrowing, relics on bilingualism." Speakers can be characterized by the nature of their bilingualism, specifically by identifying their L1 and L2. In the case of this study, we arc specifically concerned with Welsh, and the children can be grouped into LI Welsh speakers and L2 Welsh speakers. The external-internal contrast which is often seen as the contact of (speakers of) languages is thus a particular example of the

240 Language contact: the influence of English

general internal-external contrast which is based on the distinction between the linguistic system and the speakers of the system. This is the view of externallymotivated change which is adopted in this study.

7.1.1 111e preliminm:v evidence for the influence of English There is a strong prima facie case that the children's use of Welsh rcsponsivcs is influenced by English. First, the dominant use of na as a general negative responsive and the spread of ie into echo contexts bear clear similarities with English no and yes. Two other points can also be noted: a variant form of yes in vernacular English is [je;,] (informally spelled in the orthography as .veah). and this form bears some similarity with rcali7..ations of ie in Welsh as [iE]; likewise, no sometimes occurs as [na] (informally spelled in the orthography as nah). All this amounts to the use of ie and na very like the use of English yes and no. Secondly, the children use language within a sociolinguistic context which is widely recognized to promote change through language contact. namely bilingualism. This bilingual context is also of a type which explains why English should influence Welsh and not vice versa: English has overall higher prestige and this factor, too, is widely recognized as a crucial aspect of language change and variation. Thirdly, the influence of English is seen in other areas of Welsh. The most obvious indication of this is in the texis of Welsh which has borrowed extensively from English over the centuries. Parry-Williams (1923) shows that there arc wellestablished loanwords, and the spontaneous conversational Welsh today of some individuals demonstrates extensive rclexification which goes well beyond the use of established borrowings. English influence is also seen in the phoneme stock of contemporary Welsh. The phonemes N! and lil5! occur only in borrowings such as in initial position in the two well-established loans, lsaen 'chain' and jam 'jam' where they have been preserved from English (however, both sounds can occur as allophones in indigenous words in certain dialects). The influence of English is also found on the morpholO!,'Y of Welsh. a clear example being the use of /s/ as a plural marker which, in the spontaneous speech of some speakers, competes or combines with native plural markers: the singular chwarelwr 'quarryman' forms its plural indigenously by replacing -wr with -11:~,,. as in chwarelwyr, but chwarelwrs is also commonly heard. Taking all these points together, there is a preliminary basis for examining the view that the mixed nonecho I echo responsive system of Welsh is being brought into line with the nonecho system of English through contact with the latter. This issue will be examined by comparing the use of rcsponsives by children who have different linguistic backgrounds, specifically mother tongue and school backgrounds. But before looking at the analyses, general points will be made about the method of analysis.

Introduction 241

7. 1. 2 Afethodological considerations Comparative analyses of groups of speakers are ambitious studies. They attempt to make generalizations about users of language, and their success depends in part on the extent to which the data is representative of the groups which are examined. The original data was collected in welcoming and helpful infant and primary schools, 61 but proper sampling was difficult. Ultimately, the statements made in this chapter arc an adequate account of the performance of the children in this corpus. It is a huge jump, of course, to move from the performance of particular children to the competence of general groups to which these children belong. In some instances. the analyses given below indicate trends and possibilities rather than firm generalizations. Nevertheless, they provide useful accounts of the sociolinguistics of vernacular Welsh, and they arc offered as a contribution to the wider consideration of the relationship between language variation and groups of users. Target

I. Finite, nonnal order

2. Perfect tense

Responsive a.lexeme b. paradigm c. number d. person c. definiteness total positives f. for 1w if negative totalnegati ves g. none of the above a. positive do b. negative naddo

Scoring

4 3

2

II 12 0 II (weighted) 12 (weighted)

I 0

/Ia

3. Present tense and perfect aspect 4. All other targets

c. none of the above a. verbal responsive b. perfect responsive ie a. positive nage b. negative

as I above as 2 above

/Ia

c. none of the above

II (weighted) 12 (weighted) I

0

Figure 21. Scoring of the pairing ofresponsives and targets

In order to make comparisons between groups of children, the statistical approach in this chapter must be different to that used in Chapter 6 on four counts.

242 1-emguage contact: the influence of English

First, mere frequencies and percentages arc inappropriate, as they do not take account of individual variation within the groups which arc compared. Consequently, t-tcsts arc used to compare groups. using the statistical computer package Mini tab. Second, in view of the complexity of the pairing of rcsponsivcs and their targets. it is not enough to describe a responsive as simply correct or incorrect, and score it as I or 0 respectively. Instead. a scale is used which reflects the set of grammatical features that characterize a responsive, and which provides a score for the extent of well-formcdncss of each pairing of responsive and target (the details arc given in Figure 21 ). Third. consideration must be given to the fact that the linguistic analysis of child usage is based on a naturalistic corpus and not on standardized experimental tests. The children do not all produce the same number or type of rcsponsivcs. and absolute scores would be misleading: a talkative child who produces a large number of rcsponsives could have a higher score than a less talkative child (Table 23 gives a frequency table of numbers of responsivcs used in relation to numbers of users). Consequently. the score for each child is given as a proportion of the actual score for his or her responsivcs to the potential total score for those responsivcs: for example. let us say that a child produces 10 rcsponsivcs which have a potential total score of 110 but which actually score 55 - the proportion of actual to potential is 55 I 110. namely, 0.5 or 50%. This approach has the disadvantage, of course. that a child whose actual score is 22 out of 44 for a small number of examples is proportionally identical with a child who scores 55 out of 110 for a greater number of examples. Fourth, itemized scoring along a scale of grammaticality gives the more complex verbal rcsponsives a higher potential total than the simpler nonccho and perfect rcsponsivcs. If the scores for the latter were itemized on the basis of the extent of their own grammatical complexity. the potential total score would be considerably lower and the proportions would be considerably higher. Clearly. children who may use numerous verbal ones would be given lower scores than children who may usc the other types. Consequently. nonccho and perfect rcsponsivcs are weighted so that their total scores arc the same as the verbal rcsponsives. There still remains the problem that there is more opportunity to obtain a lower score with the more complex verbal ones than with the other types. But there is little that can be done about this in terms of scoring. The only way of achieving greater standardization is to restrict comparisons to rcsponsives of the same degree of complexity. But the tables which arc referred to in this chapter show that the numbers in some of the cells in the comparisons arc quite low, and any matching of the responsivcs would reduce their numbers even further. In addition. separate comparisons for different types of rcsponsivcs would add to the level of detail of the statistical analyses (which is already substantial) and would make it even more difficult to make generalizations about the data. Consequently, no attempt will be made to allow further for the uneven scores which the different types of responsives can produce. However, it has already been seen in Chapter 6 that the main cause of variation is the choice

lntrocluction 243

of either an echo responsive or a nonecho one and, in the case of negatives. the selection of na alone. The standardization of the scoring as outlined above caters for the main causes of variation. Table 23. Numbers of users ofresponsives

Numbers

Ages ·nuce (37)

Four(37)

Five (79)

Six (90)

Seven (98)

0-5

10

2

4

2

3

6-10

3

6

6

4

14

11-15

5

3

12

10

8

16-20

6

6

6

20

14

9

9

9

15

of responsi ves

21-25 26-30

0

6

12

n

13

31-35

4

3

II

10

9

36-40

2

5

7

6

7

3

3

41-45 46-50

0

0

4

4

4

51-105

5

()

3

8

9

The numbers in brackets give the numbers of children in each age group. The programming language Icon (Griswold-Griswold 1997) was used to go through the database of responsives referred to in 6.1.1, and set up a data file suitable for Minitab analyses. This data file contained the scores for each child in the main corpus along with details about his or her background . . Discussion in Chapters 3 and 6 has shown that the relationship between some targets and rcsponsives is not always clear-cut. An obvious instance occurs with sentence fragments as both echo and nonecho ones can occur. The occurrence of na alone as a target is also problematic because of the possible choice of recovering different full forms. Less obvious arc rcsponsivcs to imperatives where the statistical trends in the corpus suggest that we should revise our notions about

244 Language contact: the influence of English

imperatives and their rcsponsives. Rcsponsives to pardon targets arc exceptional in that the latter recall responsives given to other targets and do not themselves have any systematic relationship with types of rcsponsivcs. For the purposes of the statistical comparisons, these types of targets are excluded from the analysis. Also excluded for quite obvious reasons are responsives to English targets, responsivcs to bona fide x-interrogatives, and responsivcs to obscure targets. The targets which arc included, therefore, arc as follows: -

-

those which expect a verbal or perfect responsive: normal finite clause targets; - normal finite clause targets with the perfect tense; - perfect responsivcs as targets ; those which expect a nonccho responsive: fronted finite clause targets; demonstrative targets; nonecho responsives as targets: unaccompanied adverbial noun clauses; echo questions; suggestion questions; efa/lai 'perhaps'; chunks of text; situational targets.

This chapter is especially concerned with the language backgrounds of the children. But before looking at these matters. two other factors will be considered, namely age and sex. They arc interesting in themselves and have figured prominently in sociolinguistic studies of variation. But within the specific aims of this chapter, they arc of more general interest. Consequently, the discussion will first consider these latter two, thus clearing the way to engage upon the more relevant discussion of the influence of language factors. In all comparisons, however, an attempt should be made to compare like with like. For instance, in comparing language backgrounds, attention must be given to the composition of the compared groups in terms of the other factors - it CIJUid be misleading to compare language groups if they are markedly different in terms of age. Consequently, where the data allows, the comparisons of groups within one factor will match those groups in terms of the other factors: thus, if language backgrounds are being compared, the different groups should be as similar as possible in terms of age and sex. The nonstandardized data of the corpus, however, docs not allow matching in sufficient numbers in all instances. All these points will emerge in greater detail in the following sections.

/ntrmluction 245

7. /.3 Age The corpus covers the range from three to seven years of age. In schools in Wales, as in England, the compulsory age for attending school is five years old. But many local authority schools accept children at four years of age. and some accept children at three years of age. for different periods of time (perhaps for one full morning or afternoon every school day, or even for a full day). Table 24 gives the numbers of children in the five age groups. It can be seen that there arc more children aged over five than there arc children under five. Table 24. Numbers of children in the main corpus, with additions and losses Ages

previous year additions

lltree

Four

Five

Six

Seven

0

17

0

70

77

+0

+20

+0

+ 20

+ 15

+6 losses

-0

-20

-0

-9

- 13

totals

37

37

79

90

98

"Iltc corpus is based on two cohorts of children: three to four years of age, and five to seven years of age (hence the zero entries for the starting ages of each cohort). The additions to the seven year olds arc made up of 15 children who were new to the project and 6 who were missing at six years of age but present at five years of age.

This is due to the way that the data collection was designed in the original research project. 62 The project was funded for only three years, and it was only possible to cover the age range of three to seven by having two cohorts - a younger one from three to four and an older one from five to seven. The difference of numbers is due to the fact that there are fewer three-year olds present in schools than there arc five-year olds. An attempt was made to follow the same children, and the numbers of four-year olds was partly determined by the numbers of threeyear olds. It should be emphasized that the aim of following children from year to year is easier to state than it is to achieve - absenteeism, family movements and so forth frustrate the best of intentions. Furthermore, the composition of the children in the original project was continually under review, and a deliberate attempt was made both to make up losses and to add to existing types of children. The

246 Lang11age contact: the injl11e11ce of Hnglis/1

longitudinal nature of the study is based on a core of children present at all ages within their cohort but there arc also additions of new children. as given in Table 24. It can be seen that losses were at their greatest from three to four years of age. This was due to the difficulty of following children from voluntary preschool groups to the schools of the local education authority. A further point can be added about the numbers of children in Table 24. These arc the numbers of children in the project but it is not necessarily the case that these numbers tally with children using rcsponsives as not all children have used one - details of the latter arc given in the relevant tables referred to in this and the following sections. It is reasonable to suppose that the older children would outperform the younger ones because of the effects of greater linguistic maturation. Tables 25 and 26 show that this is not the case. These tables match the children for language background and school background. Table 25 compares children who all speak L I Welsh and who all attend a designated bilingual school (sec 7.2.1 for an outline of the types of schools). Table 26 also concentrates on children who speak Welsh Ll but who attend unstreamcd mixed schools. A comparison of the means of the different age groups which arc given in these tables docs not produce a clear and definite development that shows the use of the expected rcsponsivcs increasing. Indeed. in both types of schools. the three-year olds in some cases have higher means than the older children (in fifteen out of twenty four comparisons). There arc a total of sixty comparisons in both tables combined: of these. forty show that children of a younger age have higher means than children of an older age (that is. three-year olds in comparison with those older. four-year olds in comparison with those older, and so forth): only twenty show the reverse. There arc thirteen comparisons which arc statistically significant. and they all show that children of an older age have lower means than children of a younger age. These occur mainly in unstreamcd mixed schools. But of these thirteen significant differences. five of them show that the six-year olds have lower means while seven of them show that the seven-year olds have lower means: the thirteenth shows the five-year olds with lower means. There is, then, a trend for older children to have lower means than younger children. But this trend is the reverse of what might be expected. Superficially, it would appear that age undermines the perceived norms of the usc of rcsponsivcs. At this stage. it is difficult to explain why this should happen. It may be that, as children become older, peer-group influences exert themselves more than the influences of the family. in particular, and the teachers. This study is not specifically concerned with age, and no more will be said about this factor. But these observations underline the importance of matching compared groups in terms of their ages.

Introduction 247 Table 25. T-test comparisons of the different ages in designated bilingual schools

Polarity

Ages

Positive

Negative

Both

Numbers

Mean

St Dev

SEMean

Three

8

0.818

0.223

0.079

Four

10

0.9645

0.0732

0.023

Five

21

0.834

0.221

0.048

Six

27

0.779

0.197

0.038

Seven

27

0.780

0.211

0.041

Tirrcc

9

0.292

0.308

0.10

Four

II

0.248

0.288

0.087

Five

20

0.346

0.287

0.064

Six

27

0.360

0.221

0.043

Seven

27

0.295

0.185

0.036

"lbree

9

0.593

0.309

0.10

Four

II

0.565

0.254

0.076

Five

21

0.609

0.240

0.052

Six

27

0.587

0.177

0.034

Seven

28

0.511

0.189

0.036

Titese comparisons arc matdtcd for L1 (Welsh) and school type (designated bilingual). Significant differences at the 5% level are found \Vith: positive responsives - four versus five, four versus six, and four versus seven.

248 Lang11age contact: tile inj111ence of English

Table 26. T-test comparisons of the different ages in mixed unstreamed schools Numbers

Mean

StDev

SE Mean

Three

II

0.886

0.120

0.036

Four

25

0.863

0.131

0.026

Five

37

0.908

0.140

0.023

Six

34

0.801

0.218

0.037

Seven

33

0.835

0.147

0.026

Three

II

0.633

0.300

0.090

Four

23

0.489

0.310

0.065

Five

35

0.501

0.288

0.049

Six

34

0.408

0.215

0.037

Seven

31

0.333

0.194

0.035

Three

II

0.729

0.222

0.067

Four

26

0.740

0.191

0.037

Five

37

0.731

0.187

0.031

Six

34

0.631

0.157

0.027

Seven

33

0.600

0.178

0.031

Polarity

Ages

Positive

Negative

Both

These comparisons are matched for L1 (Welsh) and school type (mixed unstreamed). Significant differences at the 5% level are found with: positive responsives -five versus six, five versus seven, and four versus seven; negative responsivcs - three versus six, three versus seven, four versus seven, five versus seven; and positive and negative responsives combined- four versus six, four versus seven, five versus six, and five versus seven.

/ntroclllclioll 249

7.1.4 Sex Studies of adults have shown that the sexes use language differently. But the comparisons arc by no means straightfonvard: in speech communities in England, sex differences are linked with social class, and show that working-class women adopt the higher status variants of middle-class speakers. while middle-class males adopt the masculine-oriented variants of working-class males (Trudgill 1974). Research into the Welsh of adults has also found differences but Ball (1988) and Thomas B. ( 1988), unlike the English studies quoted above, have shown males more likely to usc status variants. Studies of children have been less conclusive but Romaine (1984: 111-123) reviews work, including her own, which suggests that sex may be a differentiating factor amongst young children. In the corpus under study. there arc 166 boys and 175 girls. But the nonstandardizcd nature of the corpus results in a very uneven distribution when the sexes are matched for the other categories: the most numerous groupings occur amongst Welsh L I speakers in designated bilingual schools and unstrcamed mixed schools, particularly in the older cohort. Welsh L2 speakers and other school types are smaller in numbers. and are excluded from the following analyses. The statistical details for a comparison of the use of rcsponsives by boys and girls arc given in Tables 27-28. They present a total of twenty-nine comparisons, and the performances of the boys and girls arc well-matched: the means of the boys arc higher in thirteen instances while those of the girls arc higher in fourteen instances (with one comparison equal - not shown on the charts). However, if we concentrate on the older cohort of five- to seven-year olds, where there are larger numbers in the cells, a different picture emerges. Of the eighteen comparisons, the girls have higher means in thirteen of them while the boys have higher means in only four (boys and girls arc equal in the remaining comparison). But these differences arc statistically significant at the 5% level in only one comparison. Given that we have already seen a trend for older children to have lower means than younger ones, there now exists the possibility that this is due to the linguistic development of boys rather than girls. These differences arc in line with other findings as seen in Romaine (1984: 111-123). But there appears to be no obvious explanation why these differences should emerge in the Welsh data on responsives.

) Lo11guage coil tact: the illjlllellce of E11glish ble 27. T-test comparison of boys' and girls' use ofresponsives (bilingual schools)

'ositive

Age

Sex

Three

Five

Six

Seven

Negative

Three

Five

Six

Seven

Both

Three

Four

Numbers

Mean

StDev

SEMean

Boys

4

0.891

0.147

0.073

Girls

4

0.745

0.284

0.14

Boys

12

0.784

0.259

0.075

Girls

9

0.902

0.145

0.048

Boys

15

0.751

0.255

0.066

Girls

12

0.8125

0.0791

0.023

Boys

13

0.699

0.252

0.070

Girls

14

0.854

0.132

0.035

Boys

5

0.267

0.253

0.11

Girls

4

0.323

0.406

0.20

Boys

12

0.283

0.277

0.080

Girls

8

0.440

0.294

0.10

Boys

15

0.391

0.273

0.071

Girls

12

0.320

0.133

0.038

Boys

13

0.252

0.174

0.048

Girls

14

0.335

0.192

0.051

Boys

5

0.607

0.338

0.15

Girls

4

0.576

0.320

0.16

Boys

9

0.633

0.210

0.070

Girls

2

0.257

0.246

0.17

/lltrodllctioll 251

Age

Sex

Five

Six

Seven

Nwnbers

Mean

StDev

SEMean

Boys

12

0.528

0.238

0.069

Girls

9

0.717

0.209

0.070

Boys

IS

0.577

0.210

0.054

Girls

12

0.599

0.134

0.039

Boys

14

0.421

0.173

0.046

Girls

14

0.601

0.164

0.044

The children in these comparisons are matched for Ll (Welsh), school (designated bilingual) and age (see table). Significant differences at the 5% level: positive- none; negative - none; both positive and negative combined - seven-year olds. Table 28. T-test comparison of boys' and girls' use ofrcsponsives (mixed unstreamed)

Positive

Age

Sex

'Iltree

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Nwnbers

Mean

StDcv

SEMean

Boys

6

0.878

0.144

0.059

Girls

5

0.8951

0.0980

0.044

Boys

16

0.885

0.120

0.030

Girls

9

0.825

0.150

0.050

Boys

12

0.874

0.127

0.037

Girls

25

0.925

0.145

0.029

Boys

10

0.801

0.309

0.098

Girls

24

0.801

0.176

0.036

Boys

12

0.802

0.159

0.046

Girls

21

0.855

0.139

0.030

252 Lang11age contact: the inj111ence of English

Negative

Mean

St Dev

SE Mean

Boys

6

0.639

0.323

0.13

Girls

5

0.626

0.308

0.14

Boys

14

0.518

0.331

0.089

Girls

9

0.444

0.286

0.095

Boys

II

0.571

0.301

0.091

Girls

24

0.469

0.283

0.058

Boys

10

0.401

0.295

0.093

Girls

24

0.410

0.179

0.037

Boys

12

0.294

0.163

0.047

Girls

19

0.357

0.211

0.048

Boys

6

0.731

0.256

0.10

Girls

5

0.727

0.202

0.090

Boys

17

0.787

0.175

0.043

Girls

9

0.651

0.197

0.066

Boys

12

0.757

0.158

0.046

Girls

25

0.718

0.201

0.040

Boys

10

0.645

0.170

0.054

Girls

24

0.625

0.155

0.032

Boys

12

0.542

0.160

0.046

Girls

21

0.633

0.183

0.040

Sex

llucc

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Both

Numbers

Age

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

The children in these comparisons arc matched for Ll (Welsh), school (mixed unstreamcd) and age (sec table). Significant differences at the 5% level: positive -none; negativenone; both positive and negative combined- none.

La11g11age backgro1111d 253

7.2 Language background This section examines the relationship between variation in the usc of responsives and the language backgrounds of the pupils. Their language backgrounds are assessed in terms of their first language and the language which was used as the medium of teaching in their schools. The latter is examined in outline mainly to establish a background against which the effects of the first language can be considered. as is explained in 7.2.2. As already indicated in the Preface to this study, the influence of English is frequently proclaimed as a factor which brings about changes in the structure of Welsh. Indeed. it is sometimes suggested that the result is language decay rather than language change. The Welsh word hratiailh 'ragged language' is often used disparagingly to describe Welsh which is deemed to be heavily influenced by English. In the case of Welsh responsives. the incursions of the simple nonecho responsivcs into the territory of the more complex system of echo responsives could be explained by suggesting that the invariable system of English is influencing children to adopt the invariable nonecho system in Welsh.

7.2. 1 Medium of teaching For the purposes of this study. schools are grouped according to the language of the medium of instruction. The following categories can be established. First, there arc designated bilingual schools which arc established through central and local government specifically to maintain the Welsh language. These schools usc Welsh as the medium of instruction up to the age of seven, which covers the age range of this study. and then introduce English in addition to Welsh from seven onwards. They are commonly referred to as Welsh schools. Second, there are mixed schools in which the extent of the use of Welsh as a medium of instruction is determined by local factors. especially the balance of the intake of Welsh and English speakers. the attitudes of the hcadteachcr and the staff, and parental desires.63 Mixed schools can be further subdivided into those which involve language streaming and those which do not. In streamed schools, as the label indicates, Ll Welsh speakers arc taught in Welsh in one class and Ll English speakers arc taught in English in another class. In unstreamcd schools, Ll Welsh and Ll English speakers are taught in the same classes but the medium of instruction may vary along a scale of Welsh-only to English-only with bilingual combinations between the two extremes (according to local conditions of the sort already given above). The original research project wl_tich collected the data possessed no precise details of the medium of instruction in unstreamed schools but the field workers gained impressions that there were two main possibilities: predominantly Welsh with all pupils, or Welsh with L1 Welsh speakers and English with Ll

4 Lang11age contact: the inj111ence ofEnglish

tglish speakers. Where the intake was predominantly Ll Welsh children, the edium of instruction was Welsh, and such schools arc often referred to as natu1 Welsh schools. For the three-year olds, in the event of the absence of provision by the local eduation authority in one of its primary or infant schools, a voluntary preschool 1aygroup was provided in many areas by Afudiad Ysgolion .Meilhrin 'movement 1r nursery schools' (Stevens 1996 offers a history of Welsh-medium playgroups). hesc groups organized their sessions through the medium of Welsh only, but tey met for only two hours per morning, five mornings per week. Table 29 gives the numbers of children in the various school types over the dif:rent age groups. As can be seen, there arc two dominant types in the project: .esignated bilingual and unstreamcd mixed. Consequently, this study will conccnrate upon designated bilingual schools and unstreamed mixed schools. But the .nalysis will also supply details, where fruitful, about Welsh streams in streamed chools, and Welsh-medium preschool playgroups of Mucliad Ysgolion Meilhrin. rable 29. Numbers of children in the different school types

Bilingual

144

Unstreamcd

149

Streamed

32

M11diad

12

Others

4

Total

341

Both these school types are unevenly distributed over the other background factors and some of the matched groupings have very low numbers: in particular, the playgroups are only relevant to three-year olds, and the Welsh streams do not contain any children under five. The latter also have quite low numbers. There are other types of schools in which Welsh-speaking children arc to be found - but the numbers of children are so small that statistical comparisons are not feasible. 64 Tables 30-32 give t-test comparisons of the school types matched for Ll and age - only Ll Welsh speakers are used as there are insufficient numbers of L2 speakers to support adequate analyses. There are a total of thirty-nine individual comparisons over the five ages. The Mudiad groups appear in six comparisons

La11g11age backgro1111d 255 Table 30. T-test comparisons of children's use of positive responsives in school types

Age

School

Titree

Bilingual

Number

Mean

StDev

SEMean

8

0.818

0.223

0.079

II

0.886

0.120

0.036

8

0.701

0.319

0.11

Bilingual

10

0.9645

0.0732

0.023

Unstreamed

25

0.863

0.131

0.026

Bilingual

21

0.834

0.221

0.048

Unstreamed

37

0.908

0.140

0.023

Streamed

6

0.796

0.284

0.12

Bilingual

27

0.779

0.197

0.038

Unstreamed

34

0.801

0.218

0.037

Streamed

7

0.856

0.176

0.067

Bilingual

27

0.780

0.211

0.041

Unstreamed

33

0.835

0.147

0.026

7

0.741

0.269

0.10

Unstreamed M11diad

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Streamed

These comparisons are matched for Ll (Welsh) and age (see table). There is a statistically significant difference at the 5% level with bilingual schools versus unstreamed schools at four years of age.

:56 Lang11age contact: the illj111e11ce ofEnglish

fable 31. T-test comparisons of children's usc of negative rcsponsives in schoolt}pes Number

Mean

StDcv

SE Mean

9

0.292

0.308

0.10

II

0.633

0.300

0.090

6

0.422

0.357

0.15

Bilingual

II

0.248

0.288

0.087

Unstrcamed

23

0.489

0.310

0.065

Bilingual

20

0.346

0.287

0.064

Unstrcamcd

35

0.501

0.288

0.049

Streamed

6

0.264

0.124

0.051

Bilingual

27

0.360

0.221

0.043

Unstreamed

34

0.408

0.215

0.037

Streamed

7

0.244

0.250

0.094

Bilingual

27

0.295

0.185

0.036

Unstreamcd

31

0.333

0.194

0.035

7

0.218

0.138

0.052

Age

School

Three

Bilingual Unstreamcd

M11diacl Four

Five

Six

Seven

Streamed

·n1cse comparisons arc matched for Ll (Welsh) and age (sec table). 1berc arc statistically significant differences at the 5% level with: bilingual versus unstrcamed at three and four years of age, and unstrcamed and streamed at five years of age.

at age three only. The Welsh streams appear in eighteen comparisons at ages five, six and seven. But comparisons involving these two types are very limited - the latter type, in particular, has low numbers. The remaining fifteen comparisons arc based on the performance of children in designated bilingual schools and unstreamed schools, and the analysis will concentrate on these (three comparisons in each age group). The unstreamed schools have the highest means in fourteen of the fifteen comparisons (in comparisons with the other school types, too, it emerges that the unstreamed schools emerge with the highest means overall).

La11g11age backgro1111d 251 Table 32. T-test comparisons of children's use of positive and negative responsives in school types Age

School

11rree

Bilingual

Number

Mean

StDev

SEMean

9

0.593

0.309

0.10

II

0.729

0.222

0.067

9

0.623

0.276

0.092

Bilingual

II

0.565

0.254

0.076

Unstreamed

26

0.740

0.191

0.037

Bilingual

21

0.609

0.240

0.052

Unstreamed

37

0.731

0.187

0.031

Streamed

6

0.580

0.181

0.074

Bilingual

27

0.587

0.177

0.034

Unstreamed

34

0.631

0.157

0.027

Streamed

7

0.592

0.185

0.070

Bilingual

28

0.511

0.189

0.036

Unstreamed

33

0.600

0.178

0.031

7

0.523

0.192

0.073

Unstreamed

Mmliad Four

Five

Six

Seven

Streamed

These comparisons are matched for L I (Welsh) and age (see table). Titere is a statistically significant difference at the 5% level with bilingual versus unstreamed at five years of age.

However, of the total of fifteen comparisons, only five of them are statistically significant at the 5% level. Four of these favour the unstreamed schools: at age three (negative responsives), at age four (negative responsives, and positive and pegative responsives combined), and at age five (positive and negative responsives combined). The only one which favours the designated bilingual schools occurs at age four (positive responsives) - but it is interesting to note that at the same age, it is the unstreamed schools which enjoy a statistically significant difference with the negative responsives. Other differences approach the 5% level of statistical

258 Lang11age co1/lact: the inj111e11ce of English

significance at age five (negative responsives) and at age seven (positive and negative responsives combined), and these favour the unstreamed schools. Overall, then, there is a trend for the unstreamed schools to have higher means than the other school types. Tables 33-38 also give t-test comparisons of school types but match the children for sex as well as Ll and age. Because this extra matching reduces the numbers in the comparisons, the Mucliad schools and the Welsh streams are excluded from some of them. It can be seen from these tables that the numbers are very low with the three-year olds, and analysis here cannot support any useful conclusions. Table 33. T-test comparisons of positive responsives in different school types (boys)

Age

School

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Number

Mean

St Dev

SE Mean

Bilingual

4

0.891

0.147

0.073

Unstreamed

6

0.878

0.144

0.059

A!ruliacl

7

0.673

0.333

0.13

Bilingual

9

0.9606

0.0765

0.026

Unstreamed

16

0.885

0.120

0.030

Bilingual

12

0.784

0.259

0.075

Unstreamed

12

0.874

0.127

0.037

Streamed

5

0.755

0.297

0.13

Bilingual

15

0.751

0.255

0.066

Unstreamed

10

0.801

0.309

0.098

Streamed

5

0.799

0.179

0.080

Bilingual

13

0.699

0.252

0.070

Unstreamed

12

0.802

0.159

0.046

4

0.661

0.322

0.16

Streamed

Matched for Ll (Welsh), age and sex (boys). No statistically significant differences.

La11g11age backgro1111d 259 Table 34. T-test comparisons of negative responsives in different school types (boys) Age

School

llrree

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Number

Mean

St Dev

SEMean

Bilingual

5

0.267

0.253

0.11

Unstreamcd

6

0.639

0.323

0.13

Mudiad

5

0.348

0.344

0.15

Bilingual

9

0.285

0.309

0.10

Unstreamed

14

0.518

0.331

0.089

Bilingual

12

0.283

0.277

0.080

Unstreamed

II

0.571

0.301

0.091

Streamed

s

0.2999

0.0968

0.043

Bilingual

IS

0.391

0.273

0.071

Unstreamed

10

0.401

0.295

0.093

Streamed

s

0.181

0.160

0.072

Bilingual

13

0.252

0.174

0.048

Unstreamed

12

0.294

0.163

0.047

4

0.186

0.167

0.084

Streamed

Matched for Ll (Welsh), age and sex (boys). 1bere is a statistically significant difference at the 5% level: bilingual versus unstreamed at five years of age.

260 Language contact: the influence of English Table 35 T-test comparisons of both positive and negative rcsponsives in different school types (boys)

Age

School

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Number

Mean

St Dcv

SE Mean

Bilingual

5

0.607

0.338

0.15

Unstreamed

6

0.731

0.256

0.10

Alruliad

8

0.596

0.282

0.10

Bilingual

9

0.633

0.210

0.070

Unstrcamed

17

0.787

0.175

0.043

Bilingual

12

0.528

0.238

0.069

Unstreamed

12

0.757

0.158

0.046

Streamed

5

0.592

0.200

0.089

Bilingual

15

0.577

0.210

0.054

Unstrcamed

10

0.645

0.170

0.054

Streamed

5

0.574

0.122

0.055

Bilingual

14

0.421

0.173

0.046

Unstreamcd

12

0.542

0.160

0.046

4

0.464

0.240

0.12

Streamed

These comparisons are matched for Ll (Welsh), age (sec table) and sex (boys). There is a statistically significant difference at the 5% level with bilingual versus unstreamcd at five years of age.

La11g11age backgrormd 261 Table 36. T-test comparisons of positive responsives in different school types (girls) Age

School

Tirrcc

Five

Six

Seven

Number

Mean

StDev

SEMean

Bilingual

4

0.745

0.284

0.14

Unstreamed

5

0.8951

0.0980

0.044

Bilingual

9

0.902

0.145

0.048

Unstrcamcd

25

0.925

0.145

0.029

Bilingual

12

0.8125

0.0791

0.023

Unstrcamed

24

0.801

0.176

0.036

Bilingual

14

0.854

0.132

0.035

Streamed

3

0.847

0.178

0.10

21

0.855

0.139

0.030

Unstreamcd

These comparisons are matched for Ll (Welsh), age (sec table) and sex (girls). There arc no statistically significant differences at the 5% level.

Table 37. T-test comparisons of negative rcsponsives in different school types (girls) Number

Mean

StDev

SEMean

Bilingual

4

0.323

0.406

0.20

Unstreamcd

5

0.626

0.308

0.14

Bilingual

8

0.440

0.294

0.10

Unstrcamed

24

0.469

0.283

0.058

Bilingual

12

0.320

0.133

0.038

Unstreamcd

24

0.410

0.179

0.037

2

0.401

0.449

0.32

Age

School

Tirree

Five

Six

Streamed

)2 Lang11age contact: the inj111ence ofEnglish

Age

School

Seven

Number

Mean

St Dev

SE Mean

Bilingual

14

0.335

0.192

0.051

Unstreamed

19

0.357

0.211

0.048

3

0.2616

0.0998

0.058

Streamed

hese comparisons are matched for Ll (Welsh), age (see table) and sex (girls). There are o statistically significant differences at the 5% level.

'able 38 T-test comparisons of both positive and negative responsives in different school rpes (girls) Age

School

lbree

Four

Five

Six

Se\·en

Number

Mean

St Dev

SE Mean

Bilingual

4

0.576

0.320

0.16

Unstreamed

5

0.727

0.202

0.090

Bilingual

2

0.257

0.246

0.17

Unstreamed

9

0.651

0.197

0.066

Bilingual

9

0.717

0.209

0.070

Unstreamed

25

0.718

0.201

0.040

Bilingual

12

0.599

0.134

0.039

Unstreamed

24

0.625

0.155

0.032

Streamed

2

0.636

0.374

0.26

Bilingual

14

0.601

0.164

0.044

Unstreamed

21

0.633

0.183

0.040

3

0.6011

0.0906

0.052

Streamed

fltese comparisons are matched for Ll (Welsh), age (see table) and sex (girls). lltere are statistically significant differences at the 5% level.

110

J..anguage hackgrowul 263

It can also be seen that, with the older cohort (five and older), there arc more girls in the unstreamcd mixed schools than there arc in the designated bilingual schools. There are a total of twenty-eight comparisons and the same trend again emerges: the unstrcamcd schools have higher means in twenty-five of them. But the number of statistically significant (and near significant) differences is lower. We shall return to examine the differences between the performances of children in different school types in the next section.

7. 2. 2 First language

Figure 22 outlines a typical method of assessing the L I and L2 of bilingual speakcrs.65 This approach is based on the children's language choices when conversing with other speakers in the extralinguistic context. It asks which language is used in interactions between the child and various classes of individuals which he or she regularly encounters. This type of assessment of language choices has two uses. First, it can establish a child's predominant choices. Those within the family are taken to be the primary indication of a child's Ll: for example. if a child speaks mainly Welsh with parents and siblings, then Welsh is taken to be the child's LI. Second. this approach can also be used to indicate the extent of usc of the Ll and also the L2 with different types of interlocutors. In this study. we shall concentrate upon the two extreme contrasts of Ll Welsh and Ll English, and make only limited use of the strength of usc of the two. 66 Mother ( 10)

Father (10)

Sibling

t

(10)

"

II;

Child Friends

Neighbours

(6)

(2) Grandparents (2)

Figure 22. A contextual measure ofLI usc

.64 Lcmgrwge contact: tire inj111e11ce of Rnglislr

The above method was used in a postal questionnaire which was completed by >arents to establish Ll and L2 speakers of Welsh. It revealed that there arc 271 Ll Nelsh speakers and 70 Ll English speakers. We arc essentially concerned with hesc two groups' use of Welsh, and henceforth we shall refer to them as Ll Nclsh and L2 Welsh respectively. The children in the Ll group acquire Welsh in he naturalistic fashion through exposure to the language in their homes and, in ;omc instances, the wider society. The L2 group acquires Welsh mainly through .he schools and, for many, the school is the only domain of usc for Welsh. This iifTcrence between the two groups is seen in the strength of their respective uses Jf Welsh as given in Table 39. As might be expected, the Ll speakers use Welsh Ill a far greater number of interactions. The difTcrcnces over the three ages are mbstantial, and in each case are highly statistically significant. It is clear from these comparisons that the L2 speakers' experiences in the use of Welsh arc very restricted. Table 39. T-test comparisons of Welsh Ll and L2 speakers' strength of use of Welsh Age

Ll/ L2

Five

Six

Seven

Numbers

Mean

StDev

SE Mean

Welsh L1

59

37.92

3.9R

0.52

Welsh L2

12

10.92

5.6R

1.6

Welsh Ll

63

37.30

4.92

0.62

Welsh L2

19

10.32

6.22

1.4

Welsh L1

66

37.41

4.84

0.60

Welsh L2

29

9.17

6.37

1.2

These comparisons arc matched for age (see table). Statistically significant differences occur at live, six, and seven years of age.

The distribution of these two groups over the other background factors is uneven: L2 Welsh speakers arc few in number under the age of five and, above five, they are located mainly in designated bilingual schools. The statistical comparisons given here therefore concentrate upon children between the ages of five and seven who attend designated bilingual schools. The details arc given in Table 40.

Language background 265

Table 40. T-test comparisons of Welsh LI and Welsh L2 speakers' use ofresponsives

Positive

STDcv

SE Mean

WelshLI

21

0.834

0.221

0.048

WelshL2

7

0.668

0.223

0.084

WelshLI

27

0.779

0.197

0.038

WelshL2

15

0.557

0.313

0.081

Welsh Ll

27

0.780

0.211

0.041

Welsh L2

21

0.604

0.303

0.066

WelshLI

20

0.346

0.287

0.064

WelshL2

8

0.169

0.106

0.038

Welsh Ll

27

0.360

0.221

0.043

Welsh L2

15

0.224

0.190

0.049

Welsh Ll

27

0.295

0.185

0.036

Welsh L2

22

0.163

0.139

0.030

WclshLI

21

0.609

0.240

0.052

WelshL2

8

0.414

0.213

0.075

Welsh Ll

27

0.587

0.177

0.034

Welsh L2

16

0.404

0.252

0.063

WelshLI

28

0.511

0.189

0.036

WelshL2

23

0.356

0.205

0.043

Five

Seven

Five

Six

Seven

Both

Mean

Ll/L2

Six

Negath•e

Nwnbers

Age

Five

Six

Seven

These comparisons are matched for age (see table) and school type (designated bilingual). Statistically significant differences at the 5% level occur: for positives - at six and seven years of age; for negatives - at five, six, and seven years of age; and for both positives and negatives combined - at five, six, and seven years of age.

268 Langr10ge contact: the inj111ence of English

tern of their Ll. Akiyama's finding can be compared reasonably with the Ll Welsh bilingual children using the nonecho system of their L2 to respond to targets in their L I. The classical version of interference, which was put forward mainly to account for the learning of an L2 as a foreign language, does not predict that the L2 influences the Ll. We shall now consider three possible explanations which are based on language contact and which can explain the Welsh data, namely: dominance, the influence of speaker contact and accommodation, and the strength of the use of Welsh amongst Ll bilinguals. There is a well-established view in discussions of language contact that one of the languages enjoys greater prestige or power than the other languagc(s), and that the dominant language influences the dominated language. This type of view is seen in Bloomfield ( 193 5: 40 I) who, speaking of word borrowing in particular, says: "The borrowing goes predominantly from the upper language to the lower, and it very often extends to speech forms that are not connected with cultural novelties." This same view is found in contemporary writers such as McMahon (1994: 202) who echoes Bloomfield's words: "In such linguistic relationships of unequal prestige, borrowings generally move from the more to the less prestigious language, and will be concentrated in the semantic fields where the more prestigious speakers wield the greater influence." The dominance factor is also seen in studies of the relationships of varieties within a single language, such as the work of Labov-Harris (1986) and Ash-My hill ( 1986). This type of view tends to attach prestige to the linguistic system, because of the prestigious domains in which it is used. For the purposes of this study, this approach can be referred to as institutional dominance or prestige. Overall, it is reasonable to claim that English is the dominant language in Wales in these terms: it is the language of political dominance, it is used in a greater number of social and commercial domains, and there is a greater number of English speakers. Political, commercial and social dominance is reflected, as indicated in 7.1.1, in extensive English influence on the Welsh linguistic system. Given the theoretical usc of dominance in sociolinguistic studies and the status of Welsh in Wales, it is reasonable to turn to it to explain why the children bring the characteristics of the English responsive system into their Welsh. However, it may be judged inappropriate to attribute to young children an awareness of dominance which is often measured in institutional terms which underline commercial, social and political status. But it is more reasonable to suggest that they arc aware of everyday commercial and social interactions in their local communities, either directly through their own actions or indirectly in the company of their parents and others, which demonstrate a more extensive use of English. For the data under consideration here, this general awareness of English as a dominant language may lead them to introduce aspects of English into their Welsh, including the nonecho system of rcsponsivcs. Milroy J. (1992: 192) refers to the view that dominant varieties do not always dominate. This point reminds us that language change is subject to constraints of stability as well forces

Lang11age backgro1111d 269

of innovation. But there are circumstances in which dominance is a reasonable explanation for the influence of one variety on another or for one language on another. It can be reasonably applied to the influence of English on Welsh in Wales. Unlike interference, which is essentially a cognitive process, dominance is a sociolinguistic process. For dominance to work, a speaker must have control over the L2. In this respect, it can be noted that Ll Welsh bilinguals acquire their L2 mainly in the naturalistic fashion through exposure to English in the wider society and, in some instances, their families. Dominance overrides the influence of classical interference to ensure that the L2 influences the Ll and not vice versa. Another explanation can be offered in terms of speaker contact or accommodation. Milroy-Milroy ( 1985) and Milroy J. ( 1992) are strong advocates of speaker contact as an agency of both change and stability, depending upon the nature of the relationship. Milroy-Milroy (1985: 345) support the view that the expression language change is misleading as "... it is not languages that innovate; it is speakers who innovate." As Milroy (1992: 199) points out, the same can be said about language contact: "... strictly speaking, it is not really language contact at all, but speaker contact." This view of language contact certainly applies to Wales where Welsh and English speakers are in direct contact \Vith each other, and this includes children. According to the Milroys, close contact in a community of strong tics preserves community norms. Weak ties between speakers of different speech communities can introduce innovations which can lead to change. It is not clear that the contacts of Ll and L2 speakers of Welsh in schools fit in with the Milroys' view of weak ties in the community. As classroom peers, there is no obvious reason to believe that their tics are weak. But their direct contact with each other provides a conversational context in which speakers of two language groups can experience each other's linguistic norms and for one group to influence the other. The Ll speakers' usc of responsivcs is determined not by their perceptions of the dominant status of English on an institutional level but by the norms of L2 speakers' Welsh. 67 Trudgill ( 1986), in a study of dialects in contact, addresses the influence of speaker contact by using the concept of accommodation which is especially associated with the work of Howard Giles, as in Giles (197 3) and Giles ( 1984), but has also been applied and developed by other scholars as in Giles-Taylor-Bourhis ( 1973), Giles-Smith ( 1979), Giles-St. Clair ( 1979), and Giles-CouplandCoupland ( 1991 ). In essence, accommodation refers to one speaker adapting his or her language variety in order to reduce differences with the language variety of another speaker. Although much of the work on accommodation theory, including Trudgill's work, is based on accent, it can also apply to other levels of linguistic analysis. Similarly, although the development of accommodation theory was based mainly on the relationship of speakers who usc different varieties of the same language, it can also be applied to the encounter of speakers who have different mother tongues. Trudgill cites work by Nordcnstam ( 1979) which demonstrates

270 lnnguage contact: the it!fluence of English

both points: this latter work looks at lexical and morphological accommodation between two Scandinavian languages. In his discussion of accommodation, Trudgill reviews both linguistic and sociopsychological factors which motivate speakers to accommodate or which constrain accommodation. The linguistic factors which Trudgill considers relate to phonology. and arc not relevant in detail to the Welsh data which is being discussed here. Of course. this is not to say that broadly equivalent points could not be made about other linguistic levels. But of more immediate application to this study arc the sociolinguistic motivating factors. of which Trudgill mentions three. First. there arc the well-known phenomena of status or prestige. Speakers accommodate because they believe that the language conventions of other speakers accrue kudos. In a broad sense. this motivating factor is similar to institutional dominance which is discussed above. But here the emphasis is not on the institutional level (where it can be said that speakers arc aware of the status of a language) but on the personal level where speakers arc aware of the status of the users of a language. For accommodation to work for these reasons. Welsh children must recognize that English speakers have a desirable status. Whereas it is argued for institutional dominance that children can become aware of the way in which the two languages arc used in the local community, it is less convincing to hold that they believe that their L2 classroom peers have greater prestige or status as individuals. An answer to this objection is to argue that the L2 speakers have status because their LI. English. has institutional status. The mutual interplay of the status of speakers and language varieties is well-known, and this is not an unreasonable view. It is. of course. not easy to differentiate between speaker status, on the one hand. and institutional dominance. on the other hand: the former can arise because of the latter. and vice versa. This is not a crucial matter for this study. Either way. English has the edge over Welsh. and this can motivate some speakers to adopt conventions of English in their Welsh. Second. a speaker may not feel that other users arc necessarily more prestigious, but they may be moved by a desire not to be different: that is, they may want to conform with prevailing consensus norms. whether high status or low status. For Ll speakers to accommodate to L2 speakers on these terms. the prevailing consensus norms would have to be determined by greater numbers of L2 speakers who use a nonecho responsive system. This second motivation thus depends upon the numerical mix of speakers. Where Welsh L2 speakers are in the minority, then their norms would not be the prevailing norms. and it is unlikely that the Ll Welsh speakers would want to change their own prevailing norms, if dissimilar, in order not to be different to the minority L2 speakers. Overall in the corpus, L2 speakers arc in the minority (it will be recalled that the contextual measure of the usc of Welsh which is discussed at the beginning of this section established that there arc 271 L I speakers and 70 L2 speakers). But this study does not have sufficient information about the numerical mix of speakers in individual schools, and

Language background 271

no reliable analysis can match the prevailing consensus norms with numbers of speakers in their schools as opposed to frequency counts in the corpus. But given a situation where the classroom peers of Ll speakers involve a substantial presence of L2 speakers. then the force of conformity could sec Ll speakers adopting the norms of the latter. The numbers in individual schools in this corpus do not supply an adequate database to investigate this possibility in statistical terms. Third. Tmdgill ( 1986: 23) highlights a study by Shocky (ms) which emphasizes mutual intelligibility as a cause of accommodation: "Shock)• rightly makes the point ..... that students of accommodation must recognize that. in addition to the sociopsychological factors which lie at the root of accommodation (such as the desire not to be different). the desire to be intelligible is also an important factor." It is this third factor which has the greatest appeal in explaining why L1 speakers adopt the conventions of their L2 and why they appear to be accommodating to the norms of an overall numerical minority. The Ll speakers have the ability to usc either the echo or nonccho system -both systems arc used in Welsh. In contrast, the L2 speakers arc familiar with a nonccho system and have to acquire the echo system as a new linguistic convention. If interference comes into play as discussed above. the acquisition of the echo system will be held back. The L 1 speakers can accommodate to the grammar of the L2 speakers by generalizing the nonecho system in order to promote mutual intelligibility. Unlike prestige I status and dominance. this explanation docs not have to rely upon young children being aware of social conventions in domains beyond their own immediate interactions (although it is reasonable to believe that their wider experience of the usc of Welsh and English promotes familiarity with the status of the two languages). This explanation relates directly to the face-to-face encounters of children in school as they attempt to communicate effectively with each other for their own purposes. This strategy in the context of the Welsh data being considered here bears comparison with the unfortunatcly-labcllcd concept of foreigner talk which has been developed in the study of second I foreign language teaching and learning. This concept is associated with the work of Ferguson (1971. 1975, 1981), and an example of its application to Welsh is available in James C. ( 1986). According to James C. (1986: 41), foreigner talk "is that simplified version of a natural language which its native speakers usc for facilitating communication with nonproficicnt learners of their language". Using experimental data elicited from university students, James C. ( 1986: 45-50) lists features of Welsh foreigner talk. These features arc based on a small set of sentences which the subjects of the experiment were asked to modify for the purpose of talking to learners of Welsh, and, although interrogatives were investigated, responsivcs were not part of the experimental design. I make no claims for the status of foreigner talk here or the possible inclusion of rcsponsivcs as another feature of Welsh foreigner talk. nor do I wish to claim that the Ll Welsh children arc demonstrating foreigner talk. But

272 Language contact: the influence of English

accommodation which is based on mutual intelligibility or foreigner talk arc similarly motivated in that both can be seen as strategies which arc used by speakers to negotiate communication with other speakers. There is some evidence for the influence of speaker contact and accommodation if school type and first language are related. The analysis of school types which is given in 7.2.1 focuses upon Ll users of Welsh in different school types. and shows that unstreamed schools have higher means than designated bilingual schools. The comparison of L l and L2 users of Welsh given above is based on children in designated bilingual schools only. and it shows that L l users have higher means than L2 users. Taking into account both comparisons. it can be suggested that \Ve have three groups of speakers based on Ll and school type, and that their performances justify the following ranking: Ll speakers inunstreamed schools L l speakers in designated bilingual schools L2 speakers in designated bilingual schools

highest rank middle rank lowest rank

A similar picture emerges in an analysis of pronominalization by Jones B.M. ( 1990a). This ranking of types of speakers provides a basis for suggesting that there are two extreme norms of usage represented by the Ll speakers in unstreamcd schools and L2 speakers in designated bilingual schools. Further. and tentatively. the view can be put forward that the mid-way position of the Ll speakers who share designated bilingual schools with L2 speakers shows that they accommodate to some extent to the norms of the L2 speakers. There is. then. a tentative basis for suggesting that L I speakers accommodate to the norms of L2 speakers when the latter arc present in sufficient proportions. 68 In this way. accommodation. facilitated by school type. is a possible source of variation in the usc of rcsponsivcs. This view of accommodation is necessarily tentative as accommodation cannot be directly observed but is based upon inferences relating to statistical comparisons of language performance. 69 However. the ranking of the Ll speakers in different types of schools can be interpreted in another way. namely. in terms of the strength of the use of Welsh. It is suggested here that the trends of performance of the L I speakers in the different schools are due to the nature of the speech communities in which the schools are located. The unstrcamed mixed schools arc found mainly in the stronger Welshspeaking areas whereas the designated bilingual schools are mainly established in urban areas where the usc of the language is felt to be weaker. Generally, then, unstreamed mixed schools accept an intake of L I Welsh speakers from communities where Welsh is more widely used. The comparison of school types is essentially a comparison of the speech communities outside the school. The higher means of the unstreamed mixed schools reflect the greater use of Welsh by their pupils outside the school walls. The means of the designated bilingual schools

1Ang11age backgro1111d 273

have to be set against the type of speech communities in which they arc located. There is statistical evidence to support these views. Table 41 provides the means of the use of Welsh by Ll speakers in the two school types. As can be seen the pupils who attend mixed unstrcamed school use Welsh in more interactions than the pupils in designated bilingual schools. Further, in all three ages the differences are statistically significant. The possible influence of the speech community leads us to reconsider the influence of accommodation. In addition to the possibility of adopting the norms of L2 speakers, the usage of Ll speakers in bilingual schools may also be influenced by the more limited domains of use for Welsh outside the school. The extracurricular domains may promote their English, and this in turn may encourage the influence of the latter on their Welsh. That is, the linguistic systems of the two languages are brought into contact within the head of Table 41. "Ibe strength of the usc of Welsh by Ll speakers in bilingual and mixed unstreamed schools

Five

Six

Seven

Number

Mean

StDev

SE Mean

Bilingual

20

35.95

5.48

1.2

Unstreamcd

34

39.18

2.18

0.37

Bilingual

25

35.44

6.44

1.3

Unstrcamed

33

38.73

3.04

0.53

Bilingual

27

35.70

6.27

1.2

Unstrcamed

32

38.72

3.09

0.55

Statistically significant differences at the 5% level occur with the comparisons at each age.

the Ll speaker, and this facilitates the influence of their L2 on their Ll. All this is speculative, but reviewing different possibilities does at least remind us that there may not be a single cause for variation but a battery of causes which may well interact with each other to promote change.

7.3 Conclusions The main findings can be listed as follows. In terms of the general speaker variables of age and sex, we have seen that there are trends such that:

272 Language contact: the influence of English

accommodation which is based on mutual intelligibility or foreigner talk arc similarly motivated in that both can be seen as strategies which arc used by speakers to negotiate communication with other speakers. There is some evidence for the influence of speaker contact and accommodation if school type and first language are related. The analysis of school types which is given in 7.2.1 focuses upon Ll users of Welsh in different school types. and shows that unstreamed schools have higher means than designated bilingual schools. The comparison of L l and L2 users of Welsh given above is based on children in designated bilingual schools only. and it shows that L l users have higher means than L2 users. Taking into account both comparisons. it can be suggested that \Ve have three groups of speakers based on Ll and school type, and that their performances justify the following ranking: Ll speakers inunstreamed schools L l speakers in designated bilingual schools L2 speakers in designated bilingual schools

highest rank middle rank lowest rank

A similar picture emerges in an analysis of pronominalization by Jones B.M. ( 1990a). This ranking of types of speakers provides a basis for suggesting that there are two extreme norms of usage represented by the Ll speakers in unstreamcd schools and L2 speakers in designated bilingual schools. Further. and tentatively. the view can be put forward that the mid-way position of the Ll speakers who share designated bilingual schools with L2 speakers shows that they accommodate to some extent to the norms of the L2 speakers. There is. then. a tentative basis for suggesting that L I speakers accommodate to the norms of L2 speakers when the latter arc present in sufficient proportions. 68 In this way. accommodation. facilitated by school type. is a possible source of variation in the usc of rcsponsivcs. This view of accommodation is necessarily tentative as accommodation cannot be directly observed but is based upon inferences relating to statistical comparisons of language performance. 69 However. the ranking of the Ll speakers in different types of schools can be interpreted in another way. namely. in terms of the strength of the use of Welsh. It is suggested here that the trends of performance of the L I speakers in the different schools are due to the nature of the speech communities in which the schools are located. The unstrcamed mixed schools arc found mainly in the stronger Welshspeaking areas whereas the designated bilingual schools are mainly established in urban areas where the usc of the language is felt to be weaker. Generally, then, unstreamed mixed schools accept an intake of L I Welsh speakers from communities where Welsh is more widely used. The comparison of school types is essentially a comparison of the speech communities outside the school. The higher means of the unstreamed mixed schools reflect the greater use of Welsh by their pupils outside the school walls. The means of the designated bilingual schools

1Ang11age backgro1111d 273

have to be set against the type of speech communities in which they arc located. There is statistical evidence to support these views. Table 41 provides the means of the use of Welsh by Ll speakers in the two school types. As can be seen the pupils who attend mixed unstrcamed school use Welsh in more interactions than the pupils in designated bilingual schools. Further, in all three ages the differences are statistically significant. The possible influence of the speech community leads us to reconsider the influence of accommodation. In addition to the possibility of adopting the norms of L2 speakers, the usage of Ll speakers in bilingual schools may also be influenced by the more limited domains of use for Welsh outside the school. The extracurricular domains may promote their English, and this in turn may encourage the influence of the latter on their Welsh. That is, the linguistic systems of the two languages are brought into contact within the head of Table 41. "Ibe strength of the usc of Welsh by Ll speakers in bilingual and mixed unstreamed schools

Five

Six

Seven

Number

Mean

StDev

SE Mean

Bilingual

20

35.95

5.48

1.2

Unstreamcd

34

39.18

2.18

0.37

Bilingual

25

35.44

6.44

1.3

Unstrcamed

33

38.73

3.04

0.53

Bilingual

27

35.70

6.27

1.2

Unstrcamed

32

38.72

3.09

0.55

Statistically significant differences at the 5% level occur with the comparisons at each age.

the Ll speaker, and this facilitates the influence of their L2 on their Ll. All this is speculative, but reviewing different possibilities does at least remind us that there may not be a single cause for variation but a battery of causes which may well interact with each other to promote change.

7.3 Conclusions The main findings can be listed as follows. In terms of the general speaker variables of age and sex, we have seen that there are trends such that:

274 !.tmgrtage contact: the inflrtence of English

-

younger children have higher means than older children. older girls have higher means than older boys.

In terms of the speaker variables which arc relevant to a discussion of language contact. we have found that: -

unstrcamcd mixed schools have higher means than designated bilingual schools. Ll speakers of Welsh have significantly higher means than L2 speakers. Ll Welsh speakers in mixed unstreamcd schools outperform Ll Welsh speakers in designated bilingual schools who outperform L2 Welsh speakers in designated bilingual schools.

In the main. the above analyses have revealed trends rather than statistically significant differences. But in the case of Ll influence. a firmer picture emerged which showed statistically significant differences between Ll and L2 speakers. It was found that there arc grounds for suggesting that the influence of English is to be found in Ll Welsh as well as L2 Welsh (although it is much stronger in the latter). In attempting to explain how language contact can bring about change or variation, known explanations were reviewed. Interference can be exploited as an explanation of how L2 speakers can bring the influence of English into their Welsh. Dominance can be suggested as an influence which introduces the influence of English into Ll Welsh. Another explanation for the latter is speaker contact and accommodation. whereby Ll speakers are influenced by the norms of L2 speakers. But another explanation for the emergence of English influence in Ll Welsh is the concept of the strength of usc of Welsh, ,,·hereby some Ll speakers have weaker interactive experiences in the language and arc more exposed to the influence of English. Even if a statistical correlation between bilingualism and variation is apparent, it docs not provide conclusive evidence that English is solely responsible for innovations in Welsh. It is extremely difficult to establish with certainty that changes in a language arc brought about mainly by the external influence of another language. There are very often competing explanations which are based on other factors. Interference is not the only explanation which scholars put forward for L2 innovations. Both Corder (1973: 282-292) and Mackey (1965: 111) refer to other factors which can cause deviations from L I norms such as incomplete learning, confusion. and Mackey refers to "the extension by analogy of patterns one has already learned in the language." The latter is particularly relevant to this study, and we return to it in the next chapter. In respect of Ll innovations, Akiyama's ( 1979) study of Japanese bilinguals may suggest that that the responsive system of their L2, English, influences their Ll, Japanese. But Akiyama also shows that monolingual Japanese children do not acquire the truth-value system as early as

Conclusivm 275

monolingual English children acquire the polarity-based system. Thus, it may be that the Ll system is delayed in Japanese, anyway. and that the L2 influence is able to exert itself because of this. Choi-Zubin (19R6) and Choi (1991) show that young speakers of both polarity-based language and a tmth-value language share common developmental stages. These developmental factors suggest that language contact alone is not at work. Given the sociolinguistic status of Welsh today, the influence of English cannot be discounted. But it must also be acknowledged that there arc compelling reasons to look for other influences, too. It could be argued that the dominance of English provides the circumstances for other factors to create change which would otherwise be held in check if Welsh \Vere not so subordinate. The next chapter examines system-internal explanations for variation.

8. Internal causes of variation The aim of this chapter is to examine the possibility that there arc internal causes of change and variation in the Welsh responsive system. Following from the discussion of the internal-external contrast in 7.1, internal causes refer to causes of change which can be explained in terms of the linguistic system. The latter is interpreted to include aspects of discourse as well as grammar and semantics. Particular attention is given to isomorphism and discourse acts. and aspects of semantics and focus are also reviewed. Each aspect is discussed independently, and the analysis concentrates on the potential of each one to cause change and variation. A concluding section attempts to present an overall view not only of the internal causes of change and variation which arc discussed here but also the external causes which are discussed in the preceding chapter.

8.1 Isomorphism The description of the children's language in Chapter 6 demonstrates two main points about their usc of rcsponsives: one is that the positive nonecho responsive ie and the negative particle 110 arc used as generalized rcsponsives in contexts where they are not expected on the basis of the assumed norms of adult Welsh; but the other is that 11a is used far more frequently than ie. This section attempts to account for both points. In respect of the emergence of change or variation such as this, simplification, analogy and redundancy arc oficn put forward as linguistic explanations. There is prima facie evidence for such explanations. Simplification seems particularly appropriate in that the choice from a wide range of forms of echo rcsponsives is replaced by the choice from a very much narrower range of forms. Analogy also seems to present a reasonable explanation as the nonecho responsive ie is already well-established in Welsh. and its spread docs not represent a novel innovation. In particular, analogical extension seems especially relevant. McMahon (1994: 71) gives a characteristic definition of analogical extension as "the generalization of a morpheme or relation which already exists in the language into new situations or forms." She lists the spread of the English plural marker -s in place of other plural markers as a well-known illustration of this type of analogy. Redundancy seems to provide an acceptable explanation for the emergence of 11a as a generalized negative responsive in that 110 by itself is sufficient to convey negation. However, unless these notions of simplicity, analogy and redundancy can be expressed in terms of principled grammatical analyses, they remain as subjective impressions whose status as explanations of change and variation is based on their intuitive appeal. A more detailed and explicit view of change, which underlies these notions, can be achieved by exploiting the concept of isomorphism, on the one hand, and the

278 lntema/ cww!.f ofmriation

grammatical analysis of rcsponsivcs which is given in 5.3, on the other hand. Isomorphism is discussed in Haiman ( 1980) and is part of the wider issue of iconicity in language. It refers to the uniqueness of the relationship between form and meaning. The ultimate isomorphic state is one where there is an exclusive relationship between one form and one meaning: that is, the same form always conveys the same meaning, and this meaning is always conveyed by the same form. In terms of the Welsh responsive system, an isomorphic relationship would exist when the function of a responsive is uniquely conveyed by one and the same form. This section explores the relationship between the forms of rcsponsivcs and the functions of rcsponsives. exploiting the feature analysis which is put forward in 5.3.2. On this basis, grammatical arguments arc put forward to support the view that the spread of the nonccho system ie and the negative particle na is the result of a tendency towards isomorphism in the Welsh responsive system. The essential function of a responsive can be recalled from the points which are made in 1.1 and 1.3.2. Welsh uses a polarity-based system. and the function of a responsive is that of indicating the polarity of a sentence answer: in short. a responsive indicates whether the sentence answer is positive or negative. We shall ignore at this stage the relationship of Welsh rcsponsivcs with tmth value and illocutionary force, and return to these issues in 8.3. It can also be recalled from 5.3.2 that this function is represented by a feature specification on the Complementizer. The feature specification for a positive responsive is [responsive, positive] and for a negative responsive is [responsive, negative). In this way, the semantic core of [responsive, {positive, negative}), where {positive. negative} conveys the choice of either positive or negative. represents the necessary and sufficient feature specification for the basic function of all rcsponsives. The degree of regularity between meaning and form can be assessed by comparing these core features with the actual features which can be attributed to the total range of Welsh rcsponsivcs. On the basis of 5.3.2. the following illustrations show the features that can be given to the main types of echo rcsponsivcs, and the nonccho responsive: (I)

a. b. c.

bydd bc+fut+3sg do yes ie yes

[responsive. positive] [future, singular, third] [responsive. positive] [perfect]

lresponsive, positive]

The negative equivalents of the illustrations in (I a-c) have the same set of feature specifications except, of course, for the change of the polarity feature:

Jsomorpllism 279

(2)

a. b.

c.

na fvdd [responsive, negative] neg be+fut+ 3sg naddo (responsive, negative] no nage [responsive, negative] no

[future, singular, third] [perfect]

In the case of echo responsives, the feature specification depends on whether the responsive is a verbal one, as in (Ia) and (2a), or a perfect one. as in (lb) and (2b). As can be seen, the verbal responsive echoes all the features of the finite verb: these include tense and agreement features. A perfect responsive lacks the agreement features and, as outlined in 2. I, has restricted tense features: it responds to targets of normal order whose verb is in the perfect tense. The feature specification which is given for the nonccho responsive in (I c) and (2c) could be challenged on the grounds that it says nothing about focus. In traditional accounts of responsivcs. such as the works referred to in 2.2.1, there is exclusive emphasis on its usc in responses to targets which arc finite clauses of fronted order. In these terms, it could be claimed that the feature specification of a nonccho responsive should include a feature which conveys information about focus. But. as Chapter 3 shows. a wider consideration of the types of targets to which nonccho responsives can respond demonstrates that fronted clauses arc only one of a number of possible targets. In comparison. the echo rcsponsives arc very restricted: they occur only in response to finite clauses of normal word order. Taking into account the full range of targets for both echo and nonecho responsivcs. it is reasonable to interpret the nonccho responsive as the default responsive. as suggested in the formal analysis in 5.3.3. whose use is overridden in one particular context, namely when the target is a finite clause of normal word order. The feature specification of nonecho responsivcs. then. need not include any details about focus but can remain as it is in (lc) and (2c). It is clear from the illustrations in (I a-c) and (2a-c) that there are features which arc common to the different types of responsivcs and features which distinguish them. They all contain features about mood and polarity, namely [responsive, {positive, negative }J. But they differ as to the extent to which they contain features relating to the category I, that is features of tense and agreement. It is against this background of core and peripheral features of Welsh responsives that we can consider grammatical explanations of change and variation in terms of isomorphism. These comparisons allow us to develop in detailed grammatical terms the notions of simplicity, redundancy and analogical extension. The feature specification allows us to define simplicity in terms of the number of features which are associated with the different types of rcsponsives: verbal responsivcs have the most number of features associated with them, next are the perfect responsives, and the nonecho responsives ie and nage have the fewest

280 lntemal causes of Wlriation

features associated with them. In terms of numbers of features. the verbal rcsponsivcs arc the most complex and the nonccho rcsponsives arc the simplest. It is. however. the more significant matter of isomorphism and redundancy which supplies the most useful insights into change and variation in the Welsh rcsponsivcs system. In the case of echo responsives. the array of information conveyed by their feature specifications far exceeds that which is needed for a polarity-based response. The features about tense and agreement arc not needed. and in this sense they arc redundant. But they are also redundant in another respect: within the anaphoric relationship between a responsive and its target sentence. they arc recoverable from the latter. All that is needed from the responsive is information about polarity. and the additional information about tense and agreement features is unnecessary. Because of the additional features which the echo rcsponsivcs convey. they also produce nonisomorphic relationships between form and meaning. Differences of tense. number and person. along with differences due to the range of lcxcmcs which carry these features. mean that a large range of finite verbal forms can occur as rcsponsivcs. The central function of a Welsh responsive. [responsive. {positive, negative }J, is thus conveyed by more than one form from the full range of echo rcsponsivcs. In the case of nonccho rcsponsivcs. the same forms ie and nage uniquely convey positive and negative respectively. That is. they are isomorphic. In terms of a tendency to isomorphism. these points all support the development of a rcsponsives system which is uniquely based on the feature assignment Iresponsive. {positive. negative}]. This development can be most obviously demonstrated by considering first the usc of na as a generalized negative responsive. It will be recalled from Chapter 5 that na is the overt realization of the feature [responsive. negative). It occurs in all negative responsives either as an independent word form as in (2a) or. because of phonological processes. as an internal part of the responsive form itself as in (2b-c). Thus. when the redundant features which arc associated with I arc abandoned for isomorphic reasons. the overt realization of the negative as na still remains:

nafvdd nat ddo

na na

The emergence of na as a negative responsive is a classic example of the simplification of a complex linguistic system motivated by redundancy. It is shown in 2.6 that this use of na is commented upon by Fyncs-Clinton ( 1913: 389), Greene (1972). King (1993: 325), Morris-Jones (1913: 423) and Thomas P.W. (1996: 522) in their descriptions of adult Welsh. Following from comments made there, it can be safely concluded that the use of na as a general negative responsive is not

/somm11hism 281

confined to children's contemporary Welsh but is a reflection of long-standing vernacular usage. In the case of positive echo responsives, the feature (responsive, positive] has no overt realization: this feature is unmarked, or empty. In the case of polarity, zero realization is contrastive. There are only two possible ways of indicating polarity: [negative) is realized with na, and (positive] is conveyed by the absence of a particle. Thus, if the tense and agreement features are dropped, no form remains to realize rresponsive, positive]. But ie is available with the same feature specification. and, in the absence of a form to realize I features, it can be extended to the echo contexts as a generalized positive responsive. This interpretation of the development of ie as a generalized positive responsive calls for a reconsideration of the development of na. If [responsive, positive] leads to the extension of ie, on the same basis, rresponsive, negative] should lead to the extension of nage. But. as we have already seen, [responsive, negative] is already realized by the particle na, which remains in place when the realization of I is abandoned. The existing occurrence of na discourages the extension of nage to realize these features. Indeed, as na is a common clement in all negative responsi\'es it can itself be extended as a general marker of [responsive, negative] to displace nage: nafvdcl na +ddo nag+e

na na na

The form na is the supreme example of a generalized responsive in Welsh. These points about the realization of mood and polarity features can also be exploited to explain the different frequencies of the use of ie and na as generalized responsives. The statistics given in Chapter 6 show that na is far more frequent as a generalized responsive than ie. It is the presence of na as a realization of [responsive, negative] in all responsives which can account for its wider use: a verbal responsive such as na fvdd 'will not be', the perfect responsive naddo, and the nonecho responsive nage can all be directly reduced to na. We have seen that equivalent positive responsives do not have an overt realization of [responsive, positive], so that when bydd '"··ill be' and do are dropped, no phonetic material remains. As already emphasized. the features of ie, rresponsive, positive], match the mood and polarity features of all positive responsives, and ie can, by analogical extension, realize these same features when they occur as the remnants of re·duced echo responsives. But, in contrast, na does not have to rely on analogical extension: its direct availability in situ can explain why na is more generally used. There is support for the influence of isomorphic simplification in other areas of the Welsh responsive system. In all areas of the system where there is a choice of either a more or less isomorphic form, the more isomorphic form is preferred. An

282 l11temal cause.f ofmriatioll

example is seen with sentence fragments. As discussed in 3.3.4. there is a choice of either recovering the full form of the sentence and responding accordingly, or using ie and na. The statistical outline in 6.4.1 shows that a ie or na is preferred to the less isomorphic and more complex echo responsives. A tendency towards isomorphism is also seen with other choices that do not involve ie and na. As is explained in 2.1.3. normal finites which contain the present tense and perfect aspect can be responded to with either a verbal responsive or perfect responsive. Comparisons of (Ia) with (lb) and (2a) with (2b) show the perfect responsive is more isomorphic: the forms do and naclclo can be used where a range of different verbal responsives would occur. The outline of statistics in 6.2.4 shows that the simpler perfect responsive is used more frequently than the more complex verbal responsive. It is shown in 2.5.2 that normal finite clauses which contain the present tense of hoc/ 'be' and eisiau 'needs' can be responded to either with one of several definite forms or the indefinite form. oes. Compared with the definite forms. which vary for number and person. the indefinite form is an invariable form and is more isomorphic. The statistics which are given in 6.2.4 show that there is a tendency to select oes rather than the variant definite personal forms. In all these cases. where the children are faced with a choice of a complex variant responsive or a simple invariable one. they prefer the latter. A comparison of the feature specification of responsives has revealed that ie and na are more isomorphic than echo responsives: they realize a necessary and sufficient feature specification of the core function of a responsive. In this sense. they can be thought to be simpler, less open to redundant feature specification. and more open to analogical extension. Their development as generalized responsives is semantically and formally well-motivated from within Welsh itself. and introduces into the responsive system a consistent isomorphic relationship of form and function: ie and na emerge as a two-term nonecho system which. in the children's data. is challenging the non isomorphic echo system. io

8.2 Discourse 8. 2. 1 Discourse acts

As explained in Chapter 4. a discourse act refers to the inte.-active function of an utterance: it is based on the relationships of utterances which are directly linked in conversational exchanges between different speakers (and can include instances where one speaker responds to his or her own utterances). Straightforward examples of discourse acts are that of a question which is asked by one utterance and an answer which is provided by another utterance. This particular pairing of related discourse acts is, of course. a classic context for the use of responsives, and it is clear that the notion of a discourse act is very relevant to an understanding of

Disco11rse 283

them. But discussions of responsives in general do not present a comprehensive and focused treatment of their discourse functions, being limited in the main to question and answer exchanges. It is shown in the analyses which follow that an analysis of rcsponsives in terms of discourse acts is very relevant to an understanding of Welsh rcsponsivcs. It presents insights into the relationship of echo and nonecho responsives, and indicates sources for the emergence of change and variation. Chapter 4 shows that there are several discourse acts which can be attributed to responsives. which can be relisted here for convenience: answers agreements disagreements response questions acknowledgements corrections The Icon programming language (Griswold-Griswold 1997) was used to investigate the distribution of echo and nonccho responsivcs over these different discourse acts. Using the main database of rcsponsives referred to in 6.1.1 and the scoring system which is explained in 7.1.2. an Icon program established each child's scores for the usc of a responsive with each discourse function. A Minitab file was established which contained the scores and the background details about the children. Table 42 gives the percentages for the functions of responsives. It can be seen that there are three main functions. which together make up 97% of all interpretable occurrences of responsives over all ages: answers, disagreements and agreements. In contrast. response questions. acknowledgements and corrections arc relatively infrequent. Over all ages. of the three most frequent, answers occur more than the other two, accounting for 4 7% of all known rcsponsivcs in contrast to 27% for disagreements and 23% for agreements. It could reasonably be argued that agreements and disagreements arc contrasting terms in the same system. As a combined system, these two terms then account for 50% of all interpretable instances of responsivcs. There arc then two major and statistically well-balanced functions which account for the vast majority of occurrences of rcsponsives: answers on the one hand, and agreements and disagreements on the other hand. It will be shown below, however. that there are good reasons for distinguishing bet.wecn agreements and disagreements. It is interesting to compare these statistics with those which arc given in Bald ( 1980), despite differences in the size and nature of his database and the one which is the basis of this study. Bald· s data shows that positive statements arc the most frequent target, and questions are relatively

284 /ntenwl causes of variation Table 42. Percentages of the discourse acts fulfilled by responsivcs Ages "lbrcc

Four

Five

Six

Seven

(807)

(756)

(2118)

(2473)

(2678)

Answers

76

45

52

45

36

Agreements

12

22

20

23

26

Disagreements

10

30

23

28

35

2

4

2

2

Response questions

2

Acknowledgements Cataphora

0

0

0

0

0

Corrections

0

0

0

0

0

TI1e percentages arc based on the total number of responsives for each age (given in brackets above), excluding those instances where the discourse act is obscure.

infrequent. This can be attributed to the different conversational settings and the different relationships of the participants. The Welsh data is based mainly on peer-group interaction with occasional input from an adult. Bald's data is based on interviews involving adults. The greater incidence of answers in the Welsh data is due to the typical way in which adults converse with young children, and further discussion about this is given in 8.2.3. Positive statements are discussed in another respect below in this section. Table 43 looks at the relationships between the forms of responsives and discourse acts. There arc two interesting points which emerge from this table. First, 60% of disagreements use na as a responsive. This is a consequence of the fact that disagreements in the corpus are mainly negative and, as such, become primarily associated with the simple na form which, as we have seen in Chapter 6, is the main negative responsive. As is underlined in 4.6, there is no exclusive relationship between disagreement and negative polarity. Disagreement rests on the relationship of the polarity of the target sentence and that of the responsive: it arises where the responsive reverses the polarity of the target, and disagreement can be conveyed by either a positive or negative responsive. It happens that in the corpus most targets for disagreements arc positive and, thus, the responsive is

Disco11rse 285

negative. On the basis of the frequencies in Table 44 (which is discussed below). it is found that most disagreements involve the relationship of positive target and negative responsive (885 out of 1084, or 82%), and most agreements arc positive target and positive responsive (816 out of 941, or 87%). This lends statistical support to the claim by Pope ( 1976: 111) that: "We tend to use yes to agree and no to disagree, although the former tendency is stronger." Pope goes on to say: 'The functional explanation for this tendency is the difficult to express but strongly felt semantic bond between negation and contradiction or opposition on the one hand. and positive phrasing and agreement or similarity on the other." It seems to me that the relationship is due to frequency of use rather than a semantic bond: the regular occurrences of positive and negative responsivcs to convey agreement and disagreement respectively creates an association of form and meaning. Table 43. Frequencies of the discourse acts and types ofresponsives Verbal

Perfect

Nonecho

Na

All

1658

260

1205

695

3818

Disagreements

322

50

493

1323

2188

Agreement

320

39

1265

142

1766

76

31

80

II

198

93

0

95

()

3

4

Answers

Response questions Acknowledgements Corrections

0

Cataphora

2

()

4

2

8

131

28

281

314

754

Obscure

Second. some interesting contrasts emerge when the statistics for the Welsh data are compared with those which arc provided in Bald ( 1980). The conversational settings in the two studies arc different: the Welsh data is based on peergroup conversations while the English data is based on interviews between adults. Ocspite differences in the size of the databases, the proportion of positive to negative statements is quite similar: 170 I to 324 (roughly 84: 16) for the Welsh data, and 133 to 24 (roughly 85:15) for the English data. But the use of positive and negative rcsponsivcs after these statements is very different. In the Welsh data, positive statements are followed by 816 positive rcsponsives and 885 negative

286 lntemal causes

c~{ mriation

rcsponsivcs (roughly 48:52). while the negative statements arc followed by 199 positive rcsponsivcs and 125 negative rcsponsivcs (roughly GI :39). But in the English data, the positive statements arc followed by 130 positive rcsponsivcs and only three negative rcsponsivcs (roughly 98:2), while the negative rcsponsivcs arc followed by nine positive rcsponsivcs and 15 negative rcsponsivcs (roughly 37:63). There arc two major diiTcrcnccs. One is the rarity of a negative responsive after a positive statement in the English interview data compared with its more frequent occurrences in the Welsh data. The other is the greater proportion of negative rcsponsivcs after negative statements in the English data. Bald (1980: 182) attributes the rarity of a negative responsive after a positive statement to the influence of the interview situation where the interviewee may be more prone to agree with the interviewer. Bald ( 1980: 185) draws attention to the greater occurrences of negative rcsponsivcs after negative statements but otTers no explanation. But it can be suggested that these. too. arc agreements. and the greater usc of a negative responsive in this context can be given a similar explanation. (Bald 1980: 184 also shows that the positive responsive can agree with a negative statement, as outlined already in 1.1.3.) There arc. of course. diiTcrcnccs of age between the participants in the two sets of data. But the contrasts which arc outlined above can be exploited to emphasize the influence of the conversational setting on the usc of language: the peer-group setting allows the participants to agree or disagree relatively freely. while the unequal relationships in an interview setting constrains the participant who is the interviewee. These points arc discussed further in 8.2.3. Third. 72% of agreements arc conveyed by the nonccho rcsponsivcs, and this proportion is far higher than that shown by the other functions: answers, for instance. show that only 32% usc a nonccho responsive while 50% usc an echo one (43% arc verbal rcsponsivcs and 7'Yo arc perfect responsives). On this basis, there is some evidence to suggest that the selection of a responsive is related to its discourse act: answers arc more likely to usc an echo responsive than arc agreements, which arc more likely to usc a nonecho responsive. As already indicated, the selection of 1w for disagreements is a consequence of their polarity rather than their function and. unfortunately. we lose sight of the competition between echo and nonccho rcsponsivcs. Table 43 docs not indicate whether the selection of a responsive produces an appropriate pairing with its target: it docs not show whether agreements use nonccho responsivcs because their targets condition their selection or otherwise. The analysis will now take into account the nature of the pairings of rcsponsives and their targets. Table 44 gives the frequencies for the functions of rcsponsives within a framework of appropriate and inappropriate pairings of targets and responsives. The frequencies in these tables are diiTcrcnt to those given in Table 43. It will be recalled from Chapters 3, G and 7 that not all targets condition a systematic choice of the formal types of responsives. Thus, Table 44 concentrates

Disco11rse 287

upon those pairings where types of rcsponsivcs arc in complementary distribution, and exclude those pairings where there is freedom of choice (such as sentence fragments) and also those pairings which arc totally deviant or obscure. It can be seen from these tables that negative rcsponsives do not produce any differences because of the availability of na, which neutralizes the distinctions between the different formal types. But the positive rcsponsivcs confirm the view that agreements behave differently to the other functions. Whereas 90% of answers and 89% of disagreements have expected pairings. a much lower 60% of agreements pair rcsponsives and their targets appropriately. Looked at in another way, only 10% of answers and ll% of disagreements are mispairings while 40% of agreements arc used erroneously. Thus, if we reconsider the original statistical observation in 6.2.1 that 23% of positive responsivcs arc erroneous on the basis of assumed norms. it now emerges that this is largely due to the use of responsivcs which agree with a previous utterance. Table 44. Frequencies of the discourse acts of responsives and their pairings with targets

Positive

All

Unexpected

1715

191

1906

Disagreements

177

22

199

Agreements

487

329

816

Response questions

82

19

101

Acknowledgements

14

0

14

3

4

Answers

Obscure Negative

Na

Expected

Answers

321

23

535

879

Disagreements

268

66

551

885

Agreements

46

2

77

125

Response questions

14

0

5

19

Acknowledgements

0

0

0

0

0

15

16

Obscure

288 lntemal causes of mriaticm Table 45 supplies t-test comparisons of the influences of discourse acts on the pairings of responsives and their targets. Concentrating on positive responsives in Table 45, it can be seen that agreements have lower means than the other discourse acts, and answers have the highest means. Further, in aU comparisons involving agreements, the differences are statistica11y significant at the 5% level. Table 45. T-test comparisons of discourse acts conveyed by responsives Numbers

Mean

St Dev

SE Mean

Answer

300

0.886

0.203

0.012

Agreement

230

0.537

0.397

0.026

Disagreement

105

0.864

0.309

0.030

61

0.830

0.335

0.043

265

0.386

0.323

0.020

92

0.388

0.388

0.040

229

0.313

0.304

0.020

17

0.686

0.402

0.098

Answer

323

0.699

0.255

0.014

Agreement

246

0.504

0.363

0.023

Disagreement

250

0.417

0.340

0.021

71

0.829

0.312

0.037

Discourse Acts Positive

Response question Negative

Answer Agreement Disagreement Response question

Both

Response question

The mean scores are based on the children's scores for the appropriateness of the pairing of responsives and targets. The numbers give the numbers of children over all the years who have used the discourse act, and includes the same child at different ages. Statistically signilicant diiTerences at the 5% level are as follows: for positives - wiUt every comparison that involves agreements; for negatives - with every comparison which involves response questions and answers versus disagreements; and for boUt positives and negatives combined - with every comparison.

Tables 43, 44, and, in particular, 45 show that distinguishing types of discourse acts reveals marked differences in the use of the positive responsives. These sta-

Disco11rse 289

tistics support the possibility that the children select responsives within a framework of discourse functions. The traditional system is more likely to be retained when the children give an answer or venture a disagreement. But there is a pronounced tendency to favour a nonecho responsive when they agree with a previous target. This interpretation clearly implies that there are both formal and functional factors which explain the children's use of responsives. As answers and disagreements. responsivcs pair more appropriately with their targets. As agreements, types of targets have less influence on the selection of the form of a positive responsive. and ie emerges as a general responsive form. The question arises as to why different discourse acts influence the choice of responsives. There arc two speculative answers - the first relates to the nature of interactive discourse, and the second considers the relative status of the questioner and the answerer. They are discussed in the following sections.

8. 2. 2 Interactive COili{ruence In interactive terms, answers. on the one hand. are different to agreements and disagreements, on the other hand: the former are elicited by a previous utterance, namely a question; but agreements and disagreements are volunteered without any prompting by a previous speaker. In these terms, it can be speculated that the relationship between the expectancy of a question and the compliance of an answer underlines a greater bond between interrogatives and responses. This association reinforces and maintains their stmctural relationships. However. the contrast with answers applies to both agreements and disagreements. and does not explain why differences also emerge between the latter two. We can explore the possibility that there are interactive differences between the two which may relate to the differences in their pairings. Comments which arc found in Pope ( 1976: 118-119, 132) can be developed in an attempt to explain the different usc of responsives to convey agreement. Pope (1976: 118-119) talks about "semantic content". and claims that disagreement has semantic content while agreement does not. This is not a justifiable view as both agreement and disagreement are meaningful. At this point in her discussion, Pope provides a footnote which reminds readers of her use of the terms agreement and disagreement. Pope (1976: 132) says that "by agreement is meant that the negativity of question and answer are the same, and by disagreement, that they are different." In the same footnote, Pope concedes to a possible objection that her notion of disagreement is a syntactic one and not necessarily a semantic one, and that semantic content can be thought of as "incongmity of question and answer", or more specifically, "negativity switch between question and answer". These may be unwieldy expressions but they are far more informative than the bland "semantic content". It is now clear that her ideas are based on the congruity of the polarity of

290 lntemal cause.f of variation

question and answer. It can be said that agreement has no semantic content in the sense that it maintains the polarity of the target utterance and brings nothing new to the discourse. On the other hand, disagreement changes the polarity and brings a new semantic feature into the discourse. A comment by Pope ( 1976: 119) reflects this: "Saying that disagreement is marked is a fairly normal sort of semantic ntle. There is no doubt that the act of disagreeing is more marked than the act of agreeing. It constitutes a departure from what is expected." It is the reference to departure from the expected which is the basis to the concept of the dynamics of interaction which is being put forward here. Agreement and disagreement contribute differently to the dynamics of interaction. Agreements maintain the views of a previous speaker and. in this sense. arc unobtmsive and nonargumcntativc. It can be speculated that the simplicity and generality of the nonecho responsive ie is well-suited to the task of maintaining alignment with the previous speaker with the minimum of fuss. In contrast. disagreements are communicatively dynamic in that they replace the accord of the speech participants with discord. They arc more emphatic and obtmsive than the bland uncontroversial agreements. Tables 44 and 45 show that positive disagreements pair more appropriately with their targets than positive agreements. It can be suggested that the greater communicative dynamism of disagreements can be marked by using a corresponding echo responsive rather than the simpler and. possibly. less emphatic ie. The dynamics of interaction. in the sense of accord and discord or continuity and discontinuity. arc an important explanatory factor in accounting for the selection of an echo or nonccho responsive in Welsh. If the above interpretations arc acceptable. it would appear that there arc functional restraints on the ability of isomorphism to bring about language change. In the case of disagreements at least. the more complex echo rcsponsives arc protected from the competing simpler forms of nonccho rcsponsives by their suitability to convey a more emphatic discordant note in discourse exchange.

8. 2. 3 111e influence of the addressee

There arc a number of studies which use the status of the addressee to explain the way in which responders answer questions. Choi ( 1991: 418) lists works which claim that young children before two years of age use the cooperative principle when answering adults' questions. Choi is especially concerned with this phenomenon to explain why children acquiring a tmth-value system (or the AID system for Agreement or Disagreement as Choi refers to it) respond differently to tmc and false negative questions. For instance. a negative question such as is11 't this a cup? can have an implied negative proposition this is 1101 a cup. Choi's work shows that children arc able to use the truth-value system when they respond to a negative question whose implied negative proposition is true (asking is11 't this

lJi.rcn11r.w! 291

a cup? when it is not a cup) but are not able to respond to a negative question whose negative proposition is false (asking isn't this a cup? when it is a cup). Choi suggests children assume that the proposition in an adult's question is true and is relevant to the situation, and cooperate on this basis. We arc not here concerned with the details of Choi's arguments but only with the principle that the addressee can influence the answer (although, briefly. it can be added that Choi considers another influence here, namely: that adults do not ask negative questions whose propositions are false, and that unfamiliarity with such questions results in confusion when they are asked in elicitation experiments). Bald ( 1980: 182). in a corpus-based study of the English of adults in interviews. demonstrates that the usc of rcsponsives can be influenced by the addressee. His statistics show that .res occurs more frequently that no, especially after positive statements. and one factor which can explain this is that "the interview situation prompts the interviewee to agree rather than disagree with the interviewer ... There are differences of aims and subjects between this study and the studies of Choi (and others quoted there) and Bald. But the notion of the addressee influencing the speaker is of general relevance. and will be explored here as an explanation for the different choices of responsives with different discourse acts. We can contrast responses to questions asked by an adult with responses to questions asked by another child. The researcher supervising the recording session was instructed not to interview the children in order to elicit examples of their language. Nevertheless. the researcher was sometimes involved in the conversation for a variety of reasons: to establish the identities behind the children's voices at the beginning of the recording session: to display common courtesy while sharing the same space as other individuals - in particular. to respond to the children when addressed; to try to encourage quieter children to speak or to raise a flagging conversation: and to maintain order in the event of unruly or overboisterous behaviour. The analysis of rcsponsivcs distinguishes between responsivcs to an adult (mainly the researcher but sometimes a teacher) and responsives to a child (mainly the other partner in the play). Table 46 gives the percentages for the addressees of responsives. It shows that in the majority of cases the addressee is more often another child but in the case of the three year olds and. less so, the five year olds. the addressee is more often an adult. More significantly, Table 47 shows that the addressee is more likely to be an adult in the case of answers for all ages but, again, particularly with the three year olds and the five year olds. The majority of questions which arc answered have been asked by an adult. The children ask many questions of each other, but a great number of them have not been answered (this is a common observation in studies of child language and is seen in van Hckkcn-Roelofsen 1982: 458-459 who also quote a similar observation in Dore 1977).

292 Imemal ca11ses of variation Table 46. Addressees ofresponsives expressed in percentages

Ages lltree (807)

Four(756)

Five (2118)

Six (2473)

Seven (2678)

Child

20

66

45

63

72

Adult

74

24

47

28

19

Self

6

10

8

9

9

The percentages are based on the total number of responsives for each age (given in brackets above) Table 4 7. Addressees of discourse acts of responsi ves expressed in percentages

Ages

Answers

Disagreements

Agreements

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

(589)

(307)

(1022)

(1017)

(884)

Child

2

4

3

3

Adult

89

51

79

56

53

Self

9

45

20

41

44

Child

69

90

85

86

91

Adult

14

6

4

0

Self

17

9

9

10

9

Child

38

78

60

77

87

Adult

47

II

33

13

4

Self

15

II

7

10

9

The percentages are based on the total number of responsives for each age (given in brackets above)

Discourse 293

Table 47 also shows that most disagreements and agreements are made in response to other children rather than to an adult. These points about answers, agreements. and disagreements reflects normal classroom discourse as described in the work of Sinclair-Coulthard ( 1975) and Sinclair-Brazil ( 1982). Adult I child questions and child I child questions involve a difference in the status of the participants involved. The researcher is also located within a school environment and may, in the minds of the children, be identified with teachers. As addressees. adults and teachers arc superiors while other children arc equals. It should therefore be borne in mind that children may form their answers to suit an adult while their agreements and disagreements are aimed at their peers. In this light, there may be greater prescriptive pressure on pairing answers with their targets than on pairing them with agreements and disagreements.

8. 2.4 Age, discourse acts, and addressees

It is shown above that the occurrence of answers to questions asked by an adult arc more frequent with three year olds and five year olds than with the other ages. It is also found in Chapter 5 that the means for the appropriate pairing of responsives \Vith their targets are higher with younger children than older children. In the light of the differences of discourse which emerge in this chapter, we shall review the comparisons of the different ages. We shall now match the children for discourse acts (along with other matchings of background factors) and compare different ages. In order to avoid too much detail, we shall concentrate upon rcsponsives which are answers. The details arc given in Tables 48 and 49: both tables match for answers and Ll Welsh, but Table 48 concentrates upon designated bilingual schools while Table 49 looks at mixed unstrcamed schools. There are a total of 60 comparisons. and in 44 cases. children of a younger age have higher means than children of an older age. The analysis of age given in Chapter 5 also shows that the majority of the differences favoured younger children. In this respect. the introduction of discourse acts into the analysis makes little difference. In Chapter 5, there arc thirteen differences which are statistically significantly different. But the comparisons of ages which matches them for answers presented here shows that there are only three difTcrences which arc statistically significant at the 5% level (fives and sixes do better than sevens in mixed schools with the use of positive responsivcs - Table 49; and fours do better than sevens with the combined score for positives and negatives in mixed schools - Table 49). Two other comparisons approach the 5% level in Table 48 (designated bilingual schools - fours do better than sixes and sevens). These facts do not greatly alter the previous conclusion that older children have lower means, but the introduction of discourse acts into the analysis does reduce the number of differences which are statistically l!ignificant.

294 lntemal ca11ses ofvatiation Table 48. T-tcst comparison of the children's usc of answers over different ages

Numbers

Mean

St Dev

SE Mean

llrree

8

0.763

0.349

0.12

Four

10

0.9844

0.0449

0.014

Five

19

0.9445

0.0834

0.019

Six

25

0.890

0.146

0.029

Seven

26

0.900

0.223

0.044

Three

7

0.421

0.375

0.14

Four

8

0.389

0.385

0.14

Five

19

0.352

0.330

0.076

Six

22

0.268

0.260

0.055

Seven

22

0.295

0.268

0.057

lhrcc

9

0.678

0.349

0.12

Four

II

0.770

0.288

0.087

Five

21

0.653

0.266

0.058

Six

26

0.648

0.240

0.047

Seven

27

0.646

0.245

0.047

Rcsponsives

Age

Positive

Negative

Both

These comparisons arc matched for language (Ll Welsh), school (bilingual), and age (sec table). Statistically significant differences at the 5% level occur for positive responsivcs with four-year olds versus six-year olds; for negative rcsponsives, there are no statistically significant differences; and there are no statistically significant differences for positives and negatives combined.

Disco11rse 295 Table 49. T-test comparison of the children's use of answers over different ages Rcsponsives

Age

Positive

Negative

Both

Numbers

Mean

StDev

SE Mean

Three

II

0.891

0.159

0.048

Four

25

0.903

0.173

0.035

Five

33

0.9577

0.0703

0.012

Six

31

0.934

0.123

0.022

Seven

30

0.833

0.248

0.045

Three

II

0.638

0.307

0.092

Four

15

0.497

0.388

0.10

Five

30

0.515

0.319

0.058

Six

29

0.490

0.325

0.060

Seven

27

0.471

0.302

0.058

Three

II

0.746

0.233

0.070

Four

25

0.823

0.206

0.041

Five

35

0.777

0.213

0.036

Six

33

0.777

0.165

0.029

Seven

31

0.725

0.160

0.029

These comparisons arc matched for language (Ll Welsh), school (unstreamed), and age (sec table). Statistically significant differences at the 5% level occur for positive responsives with five-year olds versus seven-year olds, and six-year olds versus seven-year olds; for negative responsives with four-year olds versus seven-year olds; but there arc no statistically significant differences at the 5% level for positives and negatives combined.

296 /ntemal cau.res of variation

8.3 Semantics The previous section has been able to provide quantitative analyses in support of qualitative interpretations. This section draws attention to other influences which can also account for change or variation to Welsh rcsponsives from within the linguistic system itself. But they arc offered without statistics from the corpus. The discussion of Welsh rcsponsives in 3.4 underlines the role of semantics in determining the selection of either an echo or nonccho responsive. It should therefore be borne in mind that any unexpected pairings of responsive and target are not necessarily the result of change in syntactic rules but may be well-motivated selections which arc based on semantic distinctions. That is. nonecho responsivcs may be selected in a syntactic context which expects an echo responsive because they can convey the sorts of illocutionary forces which are outlined in 3.4.1 or to counter the truth value of the proposition of a target sentence as described in 3.4.2. On the basis of semantic distinctions. the responsive can be selected to focus on different aspects of the logical form of the sentence: an echo responsive can focus on the finite verb in the proposition. while a nonccho responsive can focus upon either its illocutionary force or its truth value. These remarks can also be related to the notion of focus which is sometimes used when discussing interrogation or negation: that is. we can refer to the focus of the negative clement or the interrogative clement within the sentence. Hocpclman ( 1983: 195), Hajicova (1983: 85-96) and Yadugiri (1986: 200) are examples of writers in the literature on questions who variously note that a question may focus on different parts of a sentence. Thus. to take an example from Hoepclman (1983: 195). the question did John meet Mm:v in the park? can be delivered in such a way that it presupposes that John met Mary and enquires whether the meeting took place in the park: that is. the focus of the question is on the park. The idea of focus can be exploited to discuss Welsh nonccho responsives which arc used in a context where assumed norms expect an echo responsive. Consider the following devised illustration: (3)

'r neuadd? mynd 'n ti ll)'t to the hall be+prcs+ 2sg you prog go 'arc you going to the hall?' l~vji·ge/1. Spcaker2: nage, i 'r to the library no 'no. to the library.' Speaker I :

Speaker 2 happens to be going somewhere but not to the place mentioned in the question. Thus, the answer can deny a part of the proposition but not all of it. As is emphasized by Hajicova ( 1983: 85-96), a minimal answer involving a responsive by itself is not enough in response to a focused question. Similarly, when a

Semantics 297

speaker chooses to provide a focused answer, an expansion on the responsive is provided. This interpretation connects with the discussion of fronted sentences (3.3.1) which focus on a constituent by fronting it to initial position:

(4)

A: i 'r neuadd wyt ti 'n mynd? to the hall are you prog go 'to the hall are you going?' B: nage, i 'r l~v.frge/1. no to the library 'no. to the library.'

It could be. then. that nonecho responsives can replace echo ones when the response focuses upon a part of the question and not all of it.

8.4 Overall summary and conclusions This study has had two main aims. namely. to develop a comprehensive analysis of the Welsh responsive system and. using this analysis to represent the perceived norms of adult Welsh. to describe and explain the use of responsives by young children in a corpus of spontaneous speech. In order to produce an analysis of the perceived norms of adult Welsh, the study passed through a number of stages First. Chapter 1 established a general view of the semantic and formal characteristics of answering systems based on published descriptions of some of the world's languages and much-appreciated help from informants who provided details about other languages. This survey revealed two sorts of semantic systems. a singular polarity-based system and a mixed polarity and truth-value system (which, for convenience, has been referred to as the truthvalue system). The survey also revealed two types of formal systems, the nonecho system and the echo system. The survey suggested that there were no pure examples of semantic and formal types: a particular language may favour one semantic system or one formal svstem. but there were many instances of the same language ~sing the alternative ~·stem to some extent. Sc~ond. a linguistic description of Welsh responsivcs was established in 1.3 and Chapters 2, 3 and 4. This description showed that the perceived system of responsives is a complex area of Welsh grammar. Chapter 1. 3 established that Welsh is basically a polarity-based system which uses both echo and nonecho responsives, and Chapter 2 described the forms Qf Welsh echo responsives. Chapter 3 outlined the appropriate choice of either an echo or non-echo responsive. It was shown that the two systems arc not free choices but that the selection of either an echo or nonccho responsive is controlled by aspects of sentence-grammar, discourse and semantics. The echo system is based mainly on the finite verb and has subsystems in terms of verbal (full echo

298 /ntemal causes of variaticm

and substitute) and perfect: their selections arc determined by characteristics of morphology and types of finite verbs. There arc other echo rcsponsivcs involving certain nominals and adjcctivals but. in performance at least. these arc minor ones. Chapter 4 described the types of discourse acts that rcsponsivcs can fulfill. These include not only polar answers but also agreements. disagreements, response questions and corrections. Third. Chapter 5 attempted to formalize the grammar of mood and rcsponsivcs within an explicit theoretical framework. This chapter emphasized grammatical differences between rcsponsives and VPlcss sentences. It characterized rcsponsivcs in terms of a feature specification on the Complcmcntizcr. and claimed that the selection of types of rcsponsives is controlled by the focus of C and another feature specification on I. The formalization in this chapter reveals the complexity of the grammatical system of Welsh rcsponsivcs. It suggested a simple generalization: the default responsive is the nonecho responsive; the echo responsive is only used when the interrogative feature in C focuses upon I. The account of the children· s usc of rcsponsivcs was also presented in stages. First, in Chapter 6. variation in child usage was identified by applying the analysis of Welsh rcsponsivcs to a description of the corpus of school children· s performance. This chapter showed that there arc two main areas of variation: in respect of positive responsivcs. the nonccho ie is a competitor to the echo rcsponsives, both verbal and perfect; in respect of negative responsivcs, the ncgator na is an even stronger competitor to the negative versions of all types of responsivcs. Second, Chapter 7 and this chapter sought to identify sources of variation and, where possible, to explain them. Chapter 7 did so in terms of externally-motivated change which reflected the influence of English on Welsh. Here it was found that the bilingualism of both Ll speakers of Welsh (Welsh-English bilingualism) and L2 speakers of Welsh (English-Welsh bilingualism) is a major cause of variation. It was shown that L2 Welsh speakers deviate more from perceived norms than Ll Welsh speakers. This is not an unexpected development and was attributed to the notion of negative transfer. which is widely exploited to explain the influence of speakers' Ll on their L2. Of particular interest. however, was the observation that deviations from assumed norms were also found amongst L l Welsh speakers. In terms of externally-motivated change. this was explained partly in terms of dominance and accommodation. But of relevance here was school type which showed that designated bilingual schools in more English-speaking communities varied more than mixed schools in stronger Welsh-speaking communities. Trends of differences also emerged with age and sex: there was a tendency for older speakers to deviate more than younger ones, and older girls adhered to the perceived norms more than older boys. Third, the current chapter has outlined well-known internal sources of change and variation, and it has been shown that a tendency to isomorphism promotes the development of ie and, especially, na as generalized responsives. But more interesting has been the emergence of discourse as a source

Overo/1 s11mmary a11d collclllsiolls 299

of variation. Using the description supplied in Chapter 4, it has been shown that agreements encourage variation more than do disagreements and answers. It was seen that the latter arc also intended in this corpus mainly for adults, and the status of the addressee arises as a possible influence on the pairing of targets and responsivcs. Another intriguing speculation was based on the underlying semantics of sentences which suggested that the focus of a question or answer on different parts of the logical and syntactic form of a sentence may also influence the selection of a responsive. Throughout this study, the description of responsives in adult Welsh has been based on noncorpus studies. and their usage has been presented in terms of perceived or assumed norms. In several places, a word of warning has been offered to the effect that the apparent innovations in the usage of the children may, in fact, reflect adult usage which has not hitherto been described. There are several references to this possibility in studies of the use of responsivcs in other languages. Reference has been made in 7.2.2 to the experimental study of college students by Baik-Shim ( 1993 ). which examined responses to negative questions. It will be recalled that Korean is said to usc a truth-value system. Amongst their results, Baik-Shim found that Korean speakers were less than proficient performers in terms of the assumed norms for Korean. In reviewing explanations for the performance of Korean speakers. Baik-Shim ( 1993: 54) consider whether the perceived lack of proficiency may reflect ordinary usage: "Koreans, too, may give answers following the positive-negative strategy while communicating with other Korean speakers. Although further studies need to be done to confirm our belief, observations of language usc in real-life contexts lead us to believe that this is what is reflected in our data." Choi (1991: 417) makes a similar comment about Korean children· s usc of an elaborated response rather than a responsive in answering negative questions in comparison with English- and French-speaking children: "Such a result may reflect the response pattern of Korean adult speakers. That is. although it is widely assumed that Korean uses the AID [Agreement/Disagreement - or truth value) system. it may be that the ER [elaborate response) strategy is used frequently for FN questions rnegative questions whose negative proposition is false) by adult speakers in their colloquial speech." These are opportune reminders that. so often in studying child language, we have to usc models of adult speech which arc not necessarily based on real adult language but on the subjective approach of reference grammars. Until extensive corpus-based descriptions emerge, they are all we have but it is prudent to treat them cautiously . . An attempt has been made to explain the innovations in the children's language in terms of internally- and externally-motivated change: evidence for externallymotivated change was analysed in Chapter 7 and evidence for internallymotivated change has been discussed in this chapter. There are echoes of this separate treatment in wider discussions of change and variation. Amongst lay

300 llllemal causes of variation

views, there may be a tendency to adopt an either-or approach out of linguistic pride: speakers of a borrowing language may feel happier to proclaim internallymotivated change; and speakers of the language which appears to be producing the changes may be more prone to emphasize externally-motivated change. However, for methodological and theoretical reasons. the literature on change and variation pursues the task of determining how to distinguish between internallyand externally-motivated change. McMahon ( 1994: 210) offers some discussion on the approaches to distinguish the two. McMahon (1994: 210) is prudent enough to mention the difficulty of distinguishing sources of change and variation. More forthrightly. Dorian ( 1993) writes at length on the dangers of a dichotomous approach. The separate treatment of internally- and externally-motivated change or variation in this volume has been undertaken for case of presentation alone. It should be clear from Chapters 7 and 8 that Welsh is open to both internal and external causes of change. It is not unusual to come across a view of change which is based on a multiplicity of causes in the literature. More interesting. however. is to develop the view that various causes can be said to be mutually supportive. There arc two aspects of such an approach. On the one hand, following Thomason-Kaufman ( 1988: 17) it can be said that " ... a language accepts foreign structural clements only when they correspond to its own tendencies of development.·· Both the internal and external agencies of change are promoting ie and na as generalized responsivcs. On the other hand. and more intriguingly, the influence of English can be interpreted as coming to bear not directly on the Welsh linguistic system but on the sociolinguistic context in which Welsh is used. Bilingualism can be seen as an agency which weakens attitudes to the consensus norms of communities where Welsh is used, and this weakening allows latent change to occur. In other words. ie and na have always been potentially available as potential general rcsponsives, but consensus norms have held their development in check. (In view of the greater use of na as discussed above. these consensus norms have been more effective in containing ie.) We have already examined. in Chapter 7. changes in norms due to the influence of English through speaker contacts. What is now being suggested is that the attitudes of Welsh speakers to the traditional consensus norms change because of greater experience of English-medium interaction. There occurs a process of acceptance of different grammatical conventions which results in the abandonment of traditional norms and the acceptance of internal causes of innovation. In this way, the influence of English on the sociolinguistic context of Welsh facilitates internally-motivated change. In considering different explanations and rehearsing the arguments for each one, Chapter 7 and this chapter show that linguistics and sociolinguistics can together reveal the array of factors that could be influencing the Welsh answering system. The overall picture which emerges suggests that Welsh is surrounded by innovatory influences. There is no simple account for the trends of usage which

01'erall .fllmmary and concl11sions 30 I

this study has revealed in the children's use of responsivcs, and rather than to attempt to decide whether the changes are either external or internal, it is more reasonable to acknowledge that both sources of causation could be influencing the language. Contemporary speech communities in Wales are undergoing demographic change, and it remains to be seen how the vernacular Welsh of today's youngsters will balance, on the one hand, conservative restraints and, on the other hand, innovations which arc promoted internally and externally.

Appendix I. Conventions in the corpus examples The orthography is used to spell spoken forms; the spellings, however, are based on vernacular pronunciations, e.g. cal for formal cael 'get, receive'. The phonemic values of letters and digraphs in the examples are as follows: a b c ch d dd e f

tal

IT

fbi

g ng h

lkl lxl /dl lfJ/

/c, E/ /vi

j I II

Iff lgl

Ill

IIJ, IJg/ /hi /i, I, j/

0

/o, 'J/

p ph r rh s

/p/ /f/ /r/

ldr,l

/1/ Iii

n

lml In!

lrl

/s/

sh si I th ts u w y

!JI !JI /I/

/9/ !If/ /i- if /u, u, w/ /a, i - i, 1 - t/

The following vowel digraphs represent diphthongs: ci ai oi wy

lei/ fail

!:Ji! lui/

iw ew aw ow

/iu/ /ru/ /au/ lou/

yw uw yw eu

/iu - iu/ /iu - iu/ /au/ lei- ei/

au ac oc wy

/ai- ail /a:i- ail /o:i- o:i/ /u:i- u:i/

Commas indicate another value, and - indicates dialect variants. These listings arc not rigorous phonemic analyses. but they will guide a reader who is not familiar with Welsh. The circumflex is used in some word contexts to indicate a long vowel. Phonetically, trt may be [rh]. Awbery (1984: 274-276) and Jones G.E. ( 1984) provide useful introductory outlines to the phonetics of Welsh and, in the case of Awbery in particular. the orthography. For those who read Welsh, an extensive account of the orthography is available in Thomas P.W. (1996: 747-798). Upper case letters before utterances indicate different speakers; this identifies exchange boundaries, and helps to distinguish corpus examples from devised examples. Names of individuals and places in the data arc denoted by an initial letter in upper case followed by a dash to preserve confidentiality, e.g. T -. Special conventions are as follows:

#

indicates the omission of a sound , a syllable or even a word, e.g. 'na for yna 'there', 'di for wedi 'after' and 'ti for n:vtti 'you arc'. at the beginning of a word denotes an unfinished word; at the end of an utterance, it denotes an unfinished utterance.

304 ConvetJtions in the corpus e:camples

indicates nondeliberate repetition of one word; any numerals indicate the number of words repeated if more than one. indicates unusually long pause in mid-utterance. [ ] connecting whole or parts of utterances denote overlapping speech. ( ) surround obscure or doubtful data: numerals within them give number of beats; orthographic material represents what is thought to be said. (( )) surround analyst's comments on the data or the situation. { } indicate old material after revisions in mid-utterance. yy indicates verbal pause. ymm indicates verbal pause. oo represents paralinguistic noise, usually exclamatory. ee represents paralinguistic noise, usually exclamatory.

Appendix II. Conventions in the interlinear glosses 1, 2, 3 addr adv afT aux comp con det exp fem hab imp imperfv impers inf Joe masc neg pas past past part perf perfv pi pol prcd pres pro pt q q-tag sg

first. second, third person addressee particle marker of an adverb of manner affirmative particle auxiliary verb complementizer conjunctive pronoun determiner experiential aspect (used by Matthews-Yip 1994 for Cantonese) feminine habitual imperative imperfective impersonal infinitive locative masculine negative particle past imperfect past tense past participle perfect tense or perfect aspect perfective plural politeness particle predicative adjective or predicative noun marker present tense used when the copula is contracted to pronominal subject particle interrogative particle question tag singular

Appendix III. Additional examples of responsives The main purpose of this appendix is to give further examples of the types of formal and semantic responsive systems which have been established in the main text. The emphasis is on illustrating the responsive forms, and no attempt is made to establish a proper answer, in particular, whether counter responsives and negative answers need to be accompanied by sentence answers and I or other explanations. (I)

(2)

(3)

Amharic. Leslau ( 1962: 147). a. mdkina mc7ndat yil:Jial? 'does he know how to drive a car?' b. awon yal:J/al. 'yes, he knows.' c. .ralldm ayca/am. 'no, he docs not know.· d. makina mandai attal:alam? 'don't you know how to drive a car?' e. awon alal:alam. 'no. I don't know.' (lit. 'yes, I don't know.') f. yalliim al:Jialluh. 'yes, I know.' (lit. 'no. I know.') Cantonese, based on Matthews-Yip ( 1994: 314-315), answers to meih 'not-yet' questions. a. louhbaan j(m-jo meih? boss leave-perf not-yet 'has the boss lcfi yet?' b. Jaii-.JO Ia. leave-perf pt 'yes, she's lefi.' c. (julmg) meih a. (still) not-yet pt 'not yet.' Chaha, Leslau (1962: 147-148). a. naga gahaya titan-sa we? 'will you come tomorrow to the market?' b. iink aUin-sd. 'yes, I will come. ' c. bd ancdn. 'no, I won't come.' d. nagd gtibdya atcdn? 'won't you come to the market tomorrow.'

308 Additional example., of responsives

c.

aliin-stJ.

f.

e anl:tin. 'e, I won't come.'

'I will come. '

(4)

Danish, based on Allan-Holmes-Lundskrer-Nielsen (1995: 446-47). a. har du Ires/ "Den grimme relling "? 'have you read "The Ugly Duckling"?' b. ja, del her jeg. 'yes, I have.'

c. nej, del har jeg ikke. d.

(5)

'no, I haven't.' har du ikke Ires/ "Den grim me relling "?

'haven't you read "The Ugly Duckling"?' e. jo, del har jeg. 'yes, I have. ' f. nej, del har jeg ikke. 'no, I haven't.' Dutch, based on Donaldson (1996: 49-50). a. hen/ u ooil in Amslerdam geweesl? 'have you ever been in Amsterdam before?' b. ja.

'yes.' c.

nee, nooil.

d.

hen/ u ook nog nooil in Nederland geweesl?

'no, never.' 'have you never been in Holland before?' c. }awe/, vier jaar geleclen. 'yes, four years ago.' f.

(6)

nee.

'no.' German, Eckhard-Black-Whittlc (1992: ll9). a. inleressieren Sie sich filr Compuler? 'are you interested in computers?' b. ja.

'yes.' c. nein. 'no.' d.

inleressieren Sie sich nichlfilr Compuler?

e.

doch.

'aren't you interested in computers?' 'yes.'

Additional e.tamples of responsives 309

f.

(7)

nein. 'no.' Gwa, Painter (1975: 19). a. a ana ci? he has-gone q 'has he gone?' b yeeye. 'yes (he has gone).' c daahi. 'no (he has not gone).' a? d a hewe he not-went q 'hasn't he gone?'

e

(8)

(9)

aima.

'he has gone.' • daahi, a ana. lit. 'no, he has gone.' e yeeye (ci bewe). lit. 'yes (he has not gone).' Harari, Lcslau (1962: 147-148). a. gls tidl@niix? 'will you come tomorrow?' b. i icligiix. 'yes, I will come.' c. me. idigumex. 'no, I will not come.' d. gls tidlgumexl? 'won't you come tomorrow?' c. I idigumex. 'yes. I won't come.· f idigiix. 'I will come.' Hausa, Kraft-Kirk-Greene (1973: 67-68). a. ka tafi jiyci? 'did you go yesterday?' b. i. 'yes.' c. ii 'a. 'no.' d. Kcincle bci tci diiwo ba? 'isn't Kande back?'

310 Arlrlitional examples of responsives

e.

i (bci til diiwo ha). 'no, (she has not come back).·

f.

ii 'a (til di"iwo).

'yes, (she has come back).' (10) Hebrew, Pope (1976: 121). a. ha 'im hu ha? 'is he coming?' b. ken. 'yes.' c. lo. 'no.' d. ha 'imlm /o ba? 'isn't he coming?' e. /o. 'no (he isn't).' f. lm ken ha. 'yes, he is.· (11) Hidatsa, Pope (1976: 122). a. no data for positive question supplied. b. e. 'yes.· c. reca c. 'no.' d. no data for negative question supplied. e. e. 'no [lit. 'yes, I didn't).' f. reca c. 'yes [lit. 'no, I did'].' (12) Korean, Kim (1962: 28-29) and Choi (1991: 408). a. kikat coa hasimniKa? 'do you like it?' b. ne, l:oa hamnita. 'yes, I do.' c. ani_vo, an coa hamnita. 'no, I don't.· d. kikat an l:oa hasimniKa? 'don't you like it?' e. ne, an coa hamnita. 'no, I don't.· f. aniyo, coa hamnita. 'yes, I do.' (Kim 1962: 28-29)

Additiot1al examples of respo11sives 311

mace, coa hamnita. 'yes. I do.· (based on observations in Choi 1991: 408 and data in Kim 1962: 28-29) Mandarin Chinese, based on Yip Po-Ching-Rimmington (1997: 106), answers to affirmative-negative questions. a. tii mlngtiiin lcii bu /ai? 'iss/he coming tomorrow?' b. lili. come 'yes.· c. bri hii. not come 'no.· Mandarin Chinese, based on Yip Po-Ching-Rimmington (1997: 106), answers to affirmative-negative questions. a. mir iin(jing) hri iinjing? 'is it quiet there?' b. iinjing quiet 'yes.· c. hri iinjing. not quiet 'no.· Mandarin Chinese. based on Yip Po-Ching-Rimmington (1997: 106), answers to affirmative-negative questions: verb I adj. hri 'not' verb I adj .. a. yinluing yuan hri yuan. 'is the bank far [from here)?' b. hl!ll yuan. 'yes.· c. hri hi'm yuan. 'no.· Mandarin Chinese. based on Yip Po-Ching-Rimmington (1997: 107), answers to questions containing meiyou or younu?iyou 'have not'. a. Ill chl/eyiw meiyiJu? 'did you take your medicine?' b. chile. 'yes.· c. mei you. 'no.' mei(.vou) chi. 'no.' g.

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16)

312 Aclclitional examples of re.vpotuive.v ( 17) Navajo, Pope ( 1976: 129). a. ch 'eehish diniya? 'are you tired?' b. aoo ·. ch 'eeh deya. 'yes, I am tired.· c. dooda . doo ch 'eeh deyaada. 'no. I'm not tired'. d. doosh ch 'eeh din~vaada? 'aren't you tired?' c. aoo ·. doo ch 'eeh c/eyaada. 'yes. I'm not tired. • f. dooda. ch 'eeh deya. 'no, I'm tired.· (18) Norwegian, based on Marm-Sommcrfclt (1967: 53-54). a. heter duPer? 'is your name Peter?' b. ja. 'yes.' c. nei. 'no.' d. heter du ikke Per? 'isn't your name Peter?' e. jo. 'yes.' f. nei. 'no.' (19) Soddo, Leslau (1962: 147-148). a. niigti tamiitaw? 'will you come tomorrow?' b. I iimiitaw. 'yes, I will come.' c. yiillii ltimiila. 'no, I will not come.' d. niigii IJI/Jmiita? 'won't you come tomorrow?' e. yiillii iimiitaw. lit. 'no. I will come.' f. aw ltimtita. 'm1•, I won't come.' (20) Swedish, based on Holmes-Hinchcliffc ( 1994: 486-87). a. ska vi gci pci bio ikvtil? 'shall we go to the cinema tonight?'

Additional examples of responsives 313

ja, del ska vi. 'yes, we shall.' c. nej, del ska vi inle. 'no, we won't.' d. liinker du inte ga pii bio? 'aren't you thinking of going to the cinema tonight?' c. jo, del gor jag fakliskl. 'yes, I am actually.' f. nej. 'no.' (21) Tigrinya, Les1au (1962: 147-148). a. sarah yabiizhakka dayyu? 'do you have too much work?' b. 'awwa yahiizhanniyyu. 'yes, it is too much for me.' c. yalltin aybt1zhannan. 'no, it is not too much for me.' d. sabah aylamassa 'an dixa? 'won't you come tomorrow?' e. 'amassa ' 'abba. 'I will come, on the contrary.' f. yalliJn aynu1ssa 'an. 'no. I will not come.' (22) Yoruba, 01adcjo (1993: 320). a. o ko wa si i/e-iwe Janna, ahi o wa? 'you didn't come to school yesterday, did you?' b. beeni, n ko wa. 'yes, I didn't come.' b.

Appendix IV. Examples of formal answering systems

Negative question

Positive question Sentence Answer:

Positive

Negative

Positive

Negative

English Hebrew

yes ken

no /o

yes ken

no /o

Japanese Hidatsa Amharic Navajo Hausa

hai e a won aoo'

iie recac yalltim dooda

iie recac yalltim dooda

hai e awon aoo'

I

ii'ii

ii'ii

1

French German Tigrinya

oui ja 'awwa

non nein ytilldn

si doch V 'abba

non nein ytilldn

Korean Harari Gwa Soddo

ne

aniyo I mace

ne

v v

I

yeeye

1

aniyo me daabi ytillti

yallti

mv

~k

btl

v

e

Two-form system:

Three-form system:

1

yeeye

Four-form system Chaha

This selective typology concentrates on the responsive forms and does not take account of accompanying items which a proper answer would require.

Notes

1.

2.

3.

According to Greene ( 1972: 59), this term was first applied to Celtic researches in a historical study by Watkins C. (1963: 43) to refer to the Welsh equivalents of yes-no answer words. It was adopted and refined by Greene himself and also used by Thomas C.H. (1973/4: 281-283). Hausser (1983: I 0 I, 122-13 9) uses the term as a label for a fourth mood in addition to declarative, imperative and interrogative. Hauser's responsive mood characterizes elliptical answers to both yes-no questions and wh-questions. We shall, however, return to a consideration of a responsive mood in respect of Welsh in Chapter 5. Standard reference grammars on languages have whole chapters devoted to questions, but discussions of answers frequently have to be tracked down via the index. However, informative and illustrated treatments are available, and I have found the following works variously useful as sources of data and I or analysis: Akiyama (1979), Baik-Shim ( 1993 ), Bald ( 1980), Bauerle (1979), Berninger-Garvey (1981), Boslego (1984), Choi (1991), Choi-Zubin (1986), Gui'lmundsson (1970), lwanicka (1976), Kim (1962), Leslau (1962), Oladejo (1993), Painter (1975), Pope (1976). Szwedek (1982), Takashima (1989). and Yadugiri (1986). Works which reflect a logician's interest in answers have also been useful but less relevant to addressing matters of form: Hiz (1978) and Kiefer (1983) arc convenient sources for a number of articles. Taken together, these accounts help to build up a universal view of responsive systems against which the study of Welsh can be placed. I know what it has taken for me to develop an understanding of Welsh, a language which I use daily and study professionally, and I could not hope to match that achievement over several languages. The general points in this chapter, then, arc offered as a contribution to the study of responsives and, clearly, not as a definitive and exhaustive study. Their main aim is to supply a general framework against which Welsh rcsponsivcs can be considered. In theoretical discussions of the semantics of questions, the general relationship between yes-no questions and their sentence answers is used to explain the meaning of positive questions. By this approach, it is claimed that is it raining? means 'is it raining or is it not raining?'. and that it is answered by choosing one of the equivalent statements. That is, the meaning of a question involves, in part, the selection of one of two propositions: one negative and the other positive. Not surprisingly, this view of yes-no questions is referred to as the propositional approach. Other possible labels arc disjunctive and alternative, given the disjunctive relationship between the two propositions as alternative answers. Bauerle ( 1979) traces the propositional approach through Hamblin (1973), Egli (1976), and Karttunen (1977a, 1977b). It is a common explanation which is also discussed in Iwanicka ( 1976) and

318 Notes

4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

Hoepclman ( 1983 ). Some scholars question whether disjunctive questions can really be the source for yes-no questions. Bauerle ( 1979: 66) claims that real disjunctive questions like will Peter cmne or not? cannot be answered by yes and no but only by elliptical statement answers he will and he will not and arc thus different to simple yes-no questions. Bolinger ( 1978) also challenges the disjunctive explanation. These matters arc more relevant to a consideration of questions. and they will not figure further in the discussion. Pope (1976: 71-78. 113-117, 125-129) offers discussion of nonsentcntial negation. Such as Allwood-Andcrsson-Dahl (1977), Cann (1993), ChierchiaMcConneii-Ginct ( 1990), Hurford-Heasley ( 1983), and Lyons ( 1995). Boslego (1984: 74) supplies data on Thai which indicates that a particle chciy, glossed as 'right' or 'it is tme·. and its negative version may [neg] chciy may be added to declarative sentences. But there is insufficient data to indicate whether these are options or not, although the overall impression is that their addition is optional. These items arc of particular importance in the Thai responsive system. as is shown later in this chapter. Similar views are found in Lyons (1995: 141) who says that propositions can be associated with what is believed or doubted as well as with what is known. Allwood eta/. (1977: 47) says that "we can characterize an important part of the meaning of a sentence by formulating the conditions the world must meet for the sentence to be true (in other words, we say in what worlds the sentence is true)". Cann ( 1993: 15) makes a similar point about "what the world must be like" for propositions to be tmc. This is a common interpretation which is found in Hocpclman (1983: 194 ), Pope (1976: 68), Choi (1991: 407), and Quirk eta/. ( 1985: 808). Most accounts point out that positive questions can be neutral in respect of the sentence answer which they expect. i.e. it can be positive or negative. But Pope (1976: 71-78) and Quirk et a/. (1985: 808) note that when certain words are used in positive questions they can be "biased" towards either a positive or negative sentence answer. A good example of this in English is found with assertive and nonassertivc items such as the some and any series of words, and the contrast between alreac~v and yet: (i) (ii) (ii)

did someone I anyone call last night? do you live somewhere I anywhere near Dover? has the boat left alrea~v !yet?

It is claimed that assertive items like someone, somewhere and already favour a positive sentence answer more than do nonassertive items. Positive questions are discussed in this study as neutral ones.

Notes 319

10. A rhetorical question is the ultimate example of a negative question being used in this way, as only a positive answer is possible. They are discussed at length in Pope ( 1976: 36-67). 11. Explanations which amount to truth value interpretations arc found in: Lcslau ( 1962) on the Ethiopian languages Amharic, Harari and Soddo; Alciyama (1979: 487-488), Choi (1991: 407-409) and Baik-Shim (1993: 46) on Korean; and Oladejo (1993: 320) on Yoruba. Other accounts of languages which usc responsives in this way can be vague and unclear. Kim ( 1962: 27), for instance, talks of "the status of the fact" and "the relationship between the fact and the form of the preceding stimulus sentence''. 12. Discussion on answerhood can be found in Athanasiadou (1994), Bauerle (1979), Belnap (1982: 168-177), Bcrninger-Garvcy (1981: 403-409, 412313, 417), Hajicova (1983: 92-94), Hausser (1983: 139), Hausser-ZaefTerer (1978: 340-341, 349-352), Hintikka (1978: 180-186), Iwanicka (1976: 6775), Kiefer (1983: 3-5), Moeschler (1986), Philips (1987: 88-89), PoggiCastclfranchi-Parisi (1981), Pope (1976: 111-112, 121-122, 124), and Yadugiri (1986). Other labels arc found in the literature for the various parts of an answer. Bauerle ( 1979) is the source for my use of sentence answer, but he uses "catcgorial answer" as a generic label for yes, no, and answers to witquestions. Hausscr-ZacfTcrcr ( 1978: 340-341) use "minimal or nonredundant" answer to refer to a responsive alone. and "redundant answer" to refer to a full sentence answer alone without pronominalization. Elliptical sentence answers and full sentence answers with pronominalization arc referred to as "partially redundant". They also allow for combinations of these. Pope (1976: 112) uses "minimal answer" to refer to the minimal number of parts which are needed to adequately answer a question. The expression "supplementary sentence" is also used in the literature to refer to sentence answers. The account has not mentioned responses to yes-no questions which do not supply what the questioner seeks. Thus. given a question like does Aliriam Percival-Smythe live nearby?, we exclude responses such as: (i)

a. why ask me? b. blowed if I know. c. no idea.

(ii)

a. /'mnot saying. b. mind your own business.

(iii)

I don 'I know any Nfiriam what's-her-name.

In (i), the speaker has no knowledge or belief about the truth conditions. In (ii), the speaker has the knowledge or belief but does not want to impart it. In the case of (iii), the speaker responds to a presupposition which is behind the question. This response indicates that the speaker is really in the "don't

320 Nott•s

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

I R.

know'' category. Discussion of responses in this wider sense can be found in Berninger-Garvcy ( 1981 ). Goffman ( 1976 ), and Poggi et a/. ( 1981 ). The term echo is extensively employed in this study to discuss rcsponsives, and in this sense it may be novel in comparison with the descriptions of the answering systems of the major codified languages. But the same term is used on a similar basis. as in Quirk et a/. (1985: 835-838) and Radford ( 1988: 462-466). to refer to utterances which repeat part or all of a previous utterance in interactive discourse. A particularly common example of this type of echoing is provided by questions, which arc known as echo questions for obvious reasons. They arc referred to in this study in 3.3.6 and 4.3. I am very grateful to Nadin Rcshkc for checking my glossing of the German examples. I remain entirely responsible for any errors of interpretation which may emerge here. Two points may help to interpret some of these examples. Dodds (1977: 8, 21) says that intonation alone can change a declarative into an interrogative; or the particle apa can introduce a question. Dodds ( 1977: 23) notes that kah and lah are affixes which can be used to emphasize words: the former is used in questions and the latter oficn in statements. The data and explanations arc based on Whitney (1956: 40, 62-63) and Aaltio ( 1975: 23-24). For economy of presentation, I have translated the Finnish verb form into the English present simple verb, but the progressive and the future arc also equivalents of the Finnish pattern. For simplicity of presentation, han has been rendered as 'he· but it can also represent 'she·. The illustrations in the text concentrate upon the usc of repetition. But Finnish can also use kyllii. niin and joo (or }1111) as invariable words for affirmative answers - joo or }1111 are particularly colloquial. There would appear to be restrictions on the usc of niin. as it is appropriate for (59c) but not for (59c). I am extremely grateful to Virpi YHinnc-McEwcn who made detailed comments on these examples and on other aspects of Finnish. Any inaccuracies in their treatment here arc due to me. I must thank Dick Skerrit and Michcal 6 Flaithcarta for explaining Irish rcsponsivcs to me in considerable detail. This example provides an oversimplified view of the main process of verb-based rcsponsives in Irish. and docs not take into account the complexities of the copula or those dialects which usc personal forms of the verb. Any imperfections in the highly simplified version that I have reproduced here are all my fault. From the accounts in Gros and Press. it would appear that dialectal. stylistic and syntactic factors influence the usc of this type of responsive, and the account given here merely indicate its availability in some variety of Breton at least. I am indebted to Janig Stephens who kindly helped me with the Breton data in this section. I am entirely responsible for its presentation here.

Notes 321

19. I am very grateful to Carl James for first bringing Portuguese responsives to my attention, and to Ian Roberts for further discussion. I am particularly indebted to Terry Shortall who supplied me with Brazilian Portuguese illustrations, and to Heloisa Salles who provided detailed comments. I am entirely responsible for any faults in the way that the material has been presented here. For some speakers, repetition of the verb may be more frequent in positive rcsponsivcs, and niio by itself may be preferred in negative responsives. Some speakers place niio after the verb - e.g. vou niio - and this pattern is retained in full in negative responsives. 20. I am grateful to Professor Ian Press for introducing me to rcsponsives in the Slavic languages. I must record my gratitude to Alena Czerna who provided the Czech data and patiently explained the Czech system of responsives, and also to Vladimir Porubcan who kindly checked my interpretations and illustrated the differences between Czech and Slovak. Professor Gareth Jones kindly supplied me with the Russian data and helpful comments. Any errors in the presentations of both sets given here are due to me. The account of the verb in Czech is simplified for the purposes of this study; it makes only passing reference to the contrast of perfective and imperfective, and ignores the formation of participles, word order. and the marking of gender. But the presentation, as it stands. clearly demonstrates the repetition of verbal expressions. wholly or partly, to provide responsives. Examples (79m--o) of the Russian data involve a periphrastic pattern and show that it is not the finite auxiliary (buclete 'you will be') which is repeated but the nonfinite main verb. Further, the main verb in the responsive undergoes changes of aspect (imperfective ~ perfective) and finiteness (nonfinite ~ finite): thus ostavat'sja (stay+impv) ~ ostanus' (stay+perfv+pres +I sg). 21. I am very grateful to Indra Sinka for supplying these examples and for explaining them to me. I am entirely responsible for their presentation and interpretation here. Various degrees of omission arc possible in these sentences, as the parentheses in the examples suggest. More explicit illustrations of the omissions can be given by the following renderings for examples (SOb) and (Sib): (i)

a. jii, es paliksu gan. b. jii, es paliksu. c. jii, paliksu gan. d. jii, palikliu. yes stay+ 1sg+fut indeed 'yes, I am staying indeed.'

322 Notes

(ii)

a. b. c. d.

es paliksu gan. es paliksu. palikSu gan. pa/iksu. stay+ lsg+fut indeed 'I am staying indeed.'

Omissions are also possible in the question itself. which can occur as: (iii) a. vai lu b. vai c. lu

paliksi? paliksi? paliksi? d. paliksi? q you+2sg stay+2sg+fut 'are you staying?'

Where the finite verb alone remains in an answer. Latvian gives the appearance of a verb-based echo system. 22. Baik-Shim (1993: 44) list the form ye as the positive responsive and aniyo as the negative one. Choi (1991) gives very few illustrations of Korean apart from listing the responsive forms. They are different to those of Kim (1962) and Baik-Shim (1993): ing is listed instead of Kim's positive form, ne, and ani occurs instead of aniyo. 23. Gu6mundsson (1970: 345-346), drawing on NE"D 6.2.50, and Bald (1980: 178-179) note that sixteenth century English had a more complex four-form answering system than modern English for answering positive and negative questions, involving the forms yes, yea, no and nay. Bald gives a quotation from Sir Thomas More which contains the following examples: (i)

(iii)

a. b. a. b. a.

(iv)

b. a.

(ii)

b.

ys an here/ike mete to translate holy scripture into englishe nay is not an herelyque mete to translate holy scripture into english no if an heretique false~y translate the newe testament into englishe ... be hys bookes worthy to be burned ye if an here/ike falsely translate ... be not his bokes well worthy to be burned yes

As can be seen, nay and yea are used to respond to positive questions and no and yes are used to respond to negative questions. Sir Thomas More's tone in

Notes 323

the quotation supplied by Bald is prescriptive and, as the latter suggests, the four-form system may have been part of conservative usage even when More was writing. 24. Other dialects use zero realization and the negator dim 'not' respectively for interrogation and negation in fronted clauses: (i)

(ii)

Sioned

~v

'n aros? is prog stay 'is it Sioned who is staying?' dim fi yw 'r broblem. not I is the problem 'it's not me who is the problem.'

In formal styles, the particles ai (an interrogative particle in fronted sentences) and nicl'not' are used: (iii)

(iv)

ai Sioned ~V 'n aros? q is prog stay 'is it Sioned who is staying?' nid fi yw 'r broh/em. not I is the problem 'irs not me who is the problem.'

There arc considerable differences between formal and informal styles of Welsh, and realizations of mood and polarity provide extensive variation of the sort which is illustrated by the above examples. Fronted clauses arc discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3. 25. An oft-quoted feature of Welsh is the systematic changes which initial consonants of words undergo in certain grammatical contexts or following certain words. The changes. or mutations, arc as follows, along with their traditional names (the radicals arc the basic initial consonants before mutation):

324 Notes Soft

Radical I'

Aspirate

Nasal

(p]

h

(b]

[t]

d

(d]

"'''

[nJh] [Qh]

t~gh

[!Jh]

p/1

(f]

,,,

[0]

ch

[x]

c

(k]

g

[g]

""

h

[b]

f

(v]

m

[m]

no change

cl

(d]

dd

(a]

[n]

no change

g

[g]

dropped

"fig

[!)]

no change

II

[i]

I

[I]

no change

no change

m

[m]

f

[v]

no change

no change

rh

!rl

r

[r)

no change

no change

The grammatical contexts and words which trigger the mutations, such as the negator na, arc too numerous to list here. Interested readers can find a detailed account of the Welsh mutations in Ball-Mtiller ( 1992). 26. An outline of X-bar syntax and the IP can be found in Radford (1988: 303313, 508-515). 27. Detailed analyses of the paradigms can be found in Jones M. ( 1970), JonesThomas (1977: 72-113), Fife (1990), and Thomas P.W. (1996: 79-124). 28. A detailed description of aspect in Welsh can be found in Jones M. ( 1970) and Jones-Thomas (1977: 114-145). For the aims of the analysis being presented here, the system can be outlined selectively as follows: bod 'be'

Subject

Perfect

(i) mae (ii) mae (iii) mae is

Gwyn Gnyn Gnyn

wedi wedi after

bod 'be'

Progressive

Verbnoun

bod be

yn yn prog

gweithio gweithio gweithio work

.

(i) ='Gwyn has sung. (ii) = 'Gwyn is singing.' (iii) = 'Gwyn has been singing.' The main aspectual markers are wedi andyn, and they are accompanied by a form of bod, either a finite form like mae 'is' or the nonfinitc form bod 'be'. The form wedi can be translated as 'after' and is a preposition. There are a number of lcxemcs of the form yn in Welsh, the characteristics of which are beyond the scope of this study. It is difficult to give aspectual yn a literal translation in this context.

Notes 325

29. Thorne (1993: 361) suggests that the choice of the perfect responsive in the vernacular is confined to varieties of northern Welsh; he also states that it is found in earlier Biblical prose. 30. Discussion of Welsh auxiliaries is available in Jones M. (1970), JonesThomas (1977: 72-113, 298-302). and Fife (1990). For the purposes of this study, it is useful to usc the terms periphrastic and compound to refer to different sorts of verbal patterns in Welsh. Periphrastic is used to refer to a verbal pattern which contains a finite modal auxiliary verb: (i)

mi all Jolm nofio. pt can+fut+ 3sg swim 'John can swim.'

The discontinuous cooccurrencc of the finite verb all 'can' and the vcrbnoun nofio are traditionally said to form a periphrastic pattern. Compound is used to refer to a verbal pattern which contains a finite form of hoc/ 'be'. an aspect marker. and a vcrbnoun: (ii)

mae Jolm yn nofio. be+ pres+ 3sg prog swim 'John is swimming.' Or 'John swims'.

The occurrences of a finite form of hoc/ 'be· and an aspect marker are characteristic of so-called compound tense patterns (aspectual patterns arc outlined in note 28). Labels involving periphrastic and compound are based on traditional practice. They have no theoretical significance but simply serve to idcnti(v and name patterns in Welsh which are relevant to this study. 31. This comment is adequate for the purposes of this study. But there are different views on using gwneud as an auxiliary with these verb lexcmes in periphrastic patterns. We cannot explore the descriptive details adequately without following a lengthy detour from the specific aims of this study, and the following comments are necessarily brief. The use of gwneucl as an auxiliary is out of the question with c{vlai 'should. ought to'. as this verb only has finite forms. But there arc uncertain views about its occurrences with cael 'have. receive', gallu 'can' and meclru 'can'. Jones M. (1970: 146) attests rare occurrences, but Jones-Thomas (1977: 106) and Fife (1990: 238-239, 302) arc more circumspect. However. the significant point is that gwneud, whether plainly acceptable or questionably so, is not a straightforward alternative for these inflected verbs: it introduces differences of meaning which are based on the subject as a dynamic agent. If the meanings which can be associated with the original examples are maintained, gwneud definitely does not occur as a carrier auxiliary.

326 Notes

32. The membership of the class of verbs which can use the future tense with present reference is very small. But it is difficult to pin down definitively. I have provided common examples which could occur in the vernacular. But if one allows for stylistic variability within the vernacular by speakers with an adequate stylistic repertoire, it is credible to include a verb like deal/ 'understand' in this class. as in:

fod y bob/ ne11:vdd wedi pr_rnu 'r hen c~v. deallaf the old house perf buy undcrstand+fut+ lsg be the people new 'I understand that the new people have bought the old house.' The more formal stylistic nature of this verb is reinforced in the above illustration by the use of the null subject and the full form of the inflection. as opposed to the more colloquial deal/a' i 'I understand'. But deal/ 'understand' in this use is likely to be confined to the first person. and, in ciTcct, there is no opportunity for the usc of responsive forms based on it. 33. Judgement as to which verbs can occur in a simple pattern with AI I ASAI in these uses is difficult because of variation due to region and age. In those dialects with which I am most familiar. these uses arc mainly conveyed by a compound verbal pattern with hod 'be·. inflected for AI I ASAI, and the progressive marker yn. as already suggested in the text, thus: (i)

(ii)

'n fvcldech chi aros am ei/iad? you+pl prog wait for second be+ AI 'would you wait for a second?' gweilhio idc~vn' chi fasech for+3pl work be+ASAI you+pl prog 'would you work for them again?'

·,

nhw they

eto? again

And, as already indicated in the text. the bod forms arc repeated as the rcsponsives. But some speakers may be able to use AI I ASAI in simple patterns more productively: in southern dialects the verb gweud 'say, tell' (which is dweud in northern dialects) is a likely candidate for this pattern and it can be used as a responsive:

gyjfrous? fod criced yn chi (iii) a. wedech cricket pred exciting say+ AI+ 2pl you+pl be 'would you say that cricket is exciting?' b. gwedwn. say+AI+lsg 'yes.·

Noles 327

c. na wedwn. neg say+ AI+ I sg 'no.'

It needs an extensive survey of Welsh on the ground to sec how many verbs can behave like hoffi I licio 'like', and to establish where and by whom they are used. 34. Thomas P.W. gives the examples A gymenl'ch chi un ara/1?- Cymera' i, diolch ynfawr 'Will you take another one?- I will take, thank you', which illustrates politeness, and A ddarllenech chi ddyddiadur rhywun ara/1? - Na ddarllenwn i 'Would you read someone else's diary?- I would not read', which illustrates strong denial. He also suggests that cyd-destun defodo/ 'ritualistic context' call for the use of the echo responsive, and gives an interesting example from the service for the ordination or consecration of a bishop in the L(vfr Gweddi Gyjfredin 'The Book of Common Prayer' (page 349): Yr Archesgob: A ymddygwch chwi yn addfis:vn ac yn drugarog er mwyn Crist i 'r tlawd a'r anghenus ac i bob dieilhr diymgeledd? Ateb: Mi a ymddygaffelly, tns:v gymorth Duw 'The Archbishop: Will you behave gently and mercifully for the sake of Christ towards the poor and the needy and every stranger lacking succour? Answer: I will behave so, with God's help' (my translation]. This is a pcrformative speech act whereby the response performs the act of accepting the obligation laid by the question (compare the usc of echo rcsponsivcs in English in ritualistic contexts referred to at the close of 1.2.2). 35. The outline of the distribution of tenses over simple patterns and periphrastic patterns reflects common usage in the dialects: both patterns are commonly used with the future and perfect tenses, and gwneud as a substitute responsive occurs with the future tense. But the analysis can be extended by considering a particular past time use of AI and ASAI which is reported in Jones M. (1970: 127-129) and Jones-Thomas (1977: 86. 90) which, unlike their other uses, is not fulfilled by equivalent compound patterns. It conveys the lack of dynamic agency of both animate subjects (unwillingness) and inanimate subjects in negative sentences (sec also note 49): (i)

(ii)

(iii)

ai 0 ddim. go+pas+ 3sg he not 'he wouldn't go.' 0 ddim aros. nai stay do+pas+ 3sg he not 'he wouldn't stay.' 'r car ddim cychuyn. nai start do+pas+ 3sg the car not 'the car wouldn't start.'

328 Notes In the above illustrations, the forms ai and nai have been used. but other forms - such as nythe or nyse for nai- arc variously encountered in the dialects. Typically, this usc of AI and ASAI occurs in periphrastic patterns with the auxiliary verb gwne11d 'do' rather than simple finite verb patterns, although the morphophonemically irregular verbs may occur in simple patterns. Such examples refer to the nonfulfilment of an action. When examples of this type are rendered as questions. Welsh speakers whom I have consulted as informants variously report that they would either usc na by itself or na nai (nythe, nyse or equivalent form) 'would not do· as a negative responsive. On this basis, it can be argued that simple verbs with this usc of AI and ASAI behave in the same way as their occurrences with ITH: substitute or full echo responsive. But it may be that this usc of the imperfect and pluperfect forms is more characteristic of older speakers. In this respect. there is a related consideration. For both animate and inanimate subjects, northern and southern dialects have alternative expressions involving compound tense patterns which show bod 'be· in the imperfect tense and the verb lcxcmcs pal/u 'refuse' in the south and naca11 'refuse', which is contracted to 'call, in the north: (iv)

oedd John yn pa/111 I 'call mynd. bc+pas+ 3sg prog refuse go 'John refused to go I John wouldn't go.' (vi) oedd John yn pa/111 I 'call aros. be+pas+ 3sg prog refuse stay 'John refused to stay I John wouldn't stay.' (vii) oedd y car yn pa/111 / 'call cyclm:vn. bc+pas+3sg the car prog refuse start 'the car refused to start /the car wouldn't start.'

These expressions can also be converted into questions. It can be seen that they contain bod 'be'. which is a central and productive responsive, and it should be borne in mind that these patterns may be ousting gwnerul both as a carrier auxiliary and a responsive in the sorts of examples which have been discussed here. Clearly. however, more detailed research is needed to gain a fuller picture of the use of the finite lexical verbs and gwnerul in this usc with AI and ASAI. 36. Goffman ( 1976: 260) makes these distinctions but he uses different labels: ratified participants who arc specifically addressed (addressee), ratified participants who arc not specifically addressed (listener), and unratified participants (ovcrhearer). 37. In passing, I can add that I have come across this usage in the Welsh of a speaker originally from the Llansilin area in north cast Wales, based on the

Notes 329

38. 39. 40.

41.

third masculine singular form o I fo (not being familiar with this use of o I fo, I did not recognize myself as the addressee). A discussion of the use of this system in young children's Welsh can be found in Jones G. E. (1988). Thorne (1993: 357) and Thomas P.W. (1996: 524) give a much tighter rule for plural nominals, stating, in effect, that the responsive must be plural. There arc four sets if we also consider the forms sydd and its contracted variant sy which arc used in sentences where the subject has been fronted. But this set is not relevant to a discussion of responsives. It is not within the aims of this study to analyse eisiau 'needs' patterns in detail but we can briefly refer to an explanation for the choice of a definite and indefinite responsive along the following lines. There is an alternative pattern for eisiau 'needs' as follows: (i)

(ii)

a. mae etstau hu:vd gan be+prcs+3sg needs food 'Gwyn wants food.' b. oes. bc+pres+ 3sg 'yes.' c. nac oes. neg be+pres+ 3sg 'no.' a. mae gan Gu:vn be+pres+ 3sg with 'Gwyn wants food.· b. oes. be+pres+ 3sg 'yes.' c. nac oes. neg be+pres+ 3sg 'no.'

Gu:vn. with

eisau bu:vd. needs food

The pattern in (ia) follows the regular syntax of a Welsh clause of normal word order, namely, a finite verb, followed by a subject NP, followed by the remainder of the predicate - in this case a prepositional phrase. In the formallanguagc, ar 'on' is the prepositional form which would be selected. But gan 'with, by, from' occurs in northern dialects. The subject NP is indefinite and, as the discussion in the text makes clear, an indefinite responsive is used. The pattern in (iia) is a variant of (ia) - in this case, the prepositional phrase precedes the NP. But the same rules for forming the responsive apply. It can be argued that the variant pattern in (iia) is the source for the patterns

330 Notes

in the text through the deletion of the preposition: mae gan Gwyn eisiau h11:vd =:> mae G11:vn eisiau h11:vd. This pattern now resembles a regular clause with a definite subject, and a definite responsive is thus possible. But the indefinite responsive associated with its related patterns continues to be used. 42. Further contractions in rapid speech: a) b) c)

dropping of the initial y, schwa. of the northern forms to give dw, dy etc.: in both the north and the south. o 'sis contracted to 's; for those forms whose final consonant is phonetically similar to the initial consonant of the following subject pronoun, the contraction can be so severe that only the final consonant remains. and this elides with the pronoun: wyl be+pres+ 2sg vc~vn

be+pres+ 1pi yc~vch

be+pres+2pl V~VII

be+ pres+ 3pi

11:vt be+ pres+ 2sg y'n be+pres+ I pi y'ch be+pres+2pl y'n be+pres+ 3pl

li you ni we chi you nhw they

li you ni we chi you nhw they

=>

li

=>

IIi

=>

chi

=>

nhw

For some speakers, this can even occur with ma ·and ma 'n: ma be+pres+ 3sg ma 'n be+pres+ 3pi

fe he nhw they

=> fe => nhw

43. Both writers suggest that na tends to be used when accompanied by other expressions (such as an additional sentence). Morris-Jones (1913: 423) says "it may be used alone, but is generally followed by a neg. part., as na. nid hynny 'no. not that"'. Fynes-Clinton (1913: 389) says "When the answer consists of more than a mere negative. na:. by itself, is often used alone to express 'no'. e.g. [gvmwch chi chwanag?- na, dw i wedi cael digon] 'will you have some more?' - 'No, I have had enough"'. (The material in square brackets is my rendering in the conventional orthography of the notation which is used by Fynes-Clinton.) It can be seen from the examples in (63) in the body of the text that the children can use na unaccompanied by either a sentence ans\ver or additional sentence. But the significance of the observa-

Notes 331

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

lions by Morris-Jones and Fyncs-Clinton is that they show that na can occur as a generalized negative responsive. Verbnoun is the term in traditional Welsh grammars for the nonfinite form of the verb. Formally, it is equivalent to the plain infinitive in English but can occur in contexts where English would use a participle or the to infinitive. Quirk eta/. (1985: 501-653) give a discussion of the differences between adjunct, conjunct, and disjunct; and Jones B.M. (1986: 221-278) describes their occurrences in the Welsh of five year olds. Interested readers might like to consult Jones-Thomas (1977: 289-295), Watkins T.A. (1977), Fife (1986), and Fife-Poppc (1991) if further details are required. Such reduced patterns arc sometimes referred to as minor sentences (e.g. Bloomfield 1935: 71, 176) or, more appropriately, sentence fragments (e.g. Bloch 1946; Lyons 1977, 2: 589). Discussion can be found in Lyons (1977, 2: 725-786; 1995: 234-257) and Chierchia-McConncii-Ginct (1990: 170-187). for instance. Lyons (1977, 2: 749-751) describes three distinctions by Hare (1970) which can be introduced by the devised English examples below, and which arc relevant to illocutionary force and truth value. They are given here without comment. Commitment (i) (ii)

a. b. (iii) a. I say b. I say c. I say

Mood

it is so so be it it is so so be it

Proposition you are quiet that you are quiet that you are quiet that you are quiet that you are quiet that you are quiet

Using a simplified version of Lyons's ideas, it can be said that these examples indicate three aspects of the more abstract meaning of a sentence: the basic proposition as in (i) -you are quiet (which is also present in the other examples); the mood of the sentence as in (ii) - it is so indicates a factual statement (formally, a declarative) while so be it indicates a command (formally, an imperative such as be quiet); the speaker's commitment to the mood of the sentence such as, for factuality, I say as in (iii).

332 Notes

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

Hare referred to these components of meaning respectively as the phrastic, the tropic, and the ncustic. They arc not necessarily overt in the structure of the sentence, as the above illustrations may suggest, but arc abstract clements in its logical form. Lyons suggests that the speaker's commitment (neustic) and the mood (tropic) arc both involved in the phrase it is the case that which prefixes the formulae of propositional calculus, although he adds points which argue for their separate existence. Sentences like these involve "an affected participant as subject'' (Quirk et a/. 1985). They occur with verbs which can take the same noun phrase in the affected role as subject or as object: mae 'r car wedi cychwyn 'the car has started' or mae Sioned wedi cyclmyn y car 'Sioncd has started the car'. Sentences which contain an affected subject arc also referred to as ergative sentences (as in Radford 1988: 374). Fuller discussion of roles, illustrated with English data, is available in Quirk eta/. (1985: 740-754). It is useful to usc the expression "inanimate volition" in the context of the current study to refer to uses of the future tense in Welsh. But a more careful presentation, which is beyond the scope of this work, would want to discuss thematic roles, especially ergative sentences, in more careful terms. IntroductOI)' discussion is available in Radford (1988: 372-392). Quirk et a/. ( 1985: 893-894 ), in their typology of formal types of ellipsis in English, refer to this type of ellipsis in English as final ellipsis. Briefly, they analyse English clauses such as he will wash the dishes, in terms of subject, he, operator, will, and predication, wash the dishes. and final ellipsis refers to the omission of the predication. Williams S.J. (1959) gives an account of the conventions of formal Welsh. Ball (1987) and Thomas-Thomas (1989: 74-81) give accounts of spoken Welsh. Thomas P.W. (1996: 84-90. 518-521, 537-555) gives a comprehensive description of preverbal particles over formal and informal styles. In general, it is descriptively adequate to say that a preverbal negative particle without an accompanying medial ddim is untypical of spontaneous spoken Welsh. But such patterns arc attested in two contexts: in certain southern dialects as in an example like nagy 'n ni 'n aros 'we are not staying' and, in all dialects subject to the stylistic repertoire of the speakers, in noun clauses as in an example like gan na ddaw Sioned wedyn 'because Sioned will not come afterwards·. This study cannot pursue a detailed discussion of these matters as it would involve a lengthy description of the complexities of the realization of negation in Welsh. Informative accounts of negation in a Welsh dialect can be found in Awbery (1988, 1990). Welsh mutations arc briefly described in note 25. The preverbal ncgator ni is one of a number of items which can cause a mutation. But it causes two mutations. Verbs beginning with [p t k] undergo the aspirate mutation, while the

Notes 333

54. 55.

56.

57.

58.

other consonants listed there undergo the soft mutation. Thus, cei becomes chei and bydd becomcsfil(/c/. In formal styles, at least, the negative noun clause complcmentizer and the responsive negator are diiTcrent before vowels: nad and nac, respectively. The set of features which are presented here arc partly similar to the traditional moods, and Hausser (1983: 101. 122-139) also uses the term responsive for a fourth mood in addition to declarative, imperative and interrogative. Hauser's responsive mood. however. characterizes elliptical answers to both yes-no questions and wh-qucstions. The view that verbs which are inflected for tense originate in a post-subject position was first proposed for Welsh in Jones-Thomas (1977: 19-26). A more recent account of this approach can be found in Rouvcrct (1994: 5190). Accessible examples arc Akiyama (1979). Berningcr-Garvey (1981), Choi (1991 ), Choi-Zubin (1986 ). Steffensen (1978), and van Hckken-Roelofsen (1982). Other studies concentrate upon learning English as a foreign language through formal teaching. such as Takashima ( 1989), Baik-Shim (1993) and Olad~jo (1993). and will not be considered here, although they are referred to in Chapter 7. Bald ( 1980) presents a corpus-based study of the adult use of yes and no in English and is also occasionally referred to in this study. Choi ( 1991) sets up four stages on the basis of a study of English-speaking, French-speaking and Korean-speaking children. In the first stage, children respond in order to complete an exchange either by using a responsive or by copying part of the initiating sentence. In this stage. neither strategy supplies a proper semantic answer by adult standards. In the second stage, children begin to supply proper answers to positive questions either by using a responsive or by providing an elaborate response (that is, a correct predicate or sentence which supplies the information required by the question). It is a characteristic of this stage that the elaborate response is used extensively. For negative questions. both responsivcs and elaborate responses are used, with the latter being more extensively used by Korean children. When they used responsivcs. both Korean and English children appear to use the polaritybased system (which Choi refers to as the PIN system for Positive and Negative). In the third stage, the responses to positive questions continue to provide proper semantic answers with the development that the responsives are used much more than the elaborate responses. But the main characteristic of the third stage lies in the way that negative questions are answered. For those questions whose implied negative propositions arc true. both Korean and English children use the truth-value system (or the AID system-for Agreement and Disagreement). English, of course, is primarily a polarity-based system and it is a distinctive feature of stage three that these young children

334 Notes

59.

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

should usc rcsponsivcs differently in comparison with adult usage. That is, they address the implied proposition in the question and not the polarity of the sentence answer. But for negative questions whose implied negative proposition is false. the children continue to use responsivcs on the basis of the polarity-based strategy or they use an elaborate response. At stage four, the features of the adult systems of the various languages begin to emerge. This is only an outline of Choi's interpretations of her data and there are many points. including cross-linguistic differences over the three languages, which arc discussed in the original work. Bald's data is based on corpus material from the Survey of English Usage, University College London and a computerized version from the Survey of Spoken English at Lund University. Bald ( 1980: 179) describes his data thus: "For the investigation we selected five texts which consisted of approximately 5,000 words each of surreptitiously recorded unscripted conversation between disparates, interviews of senior university staff with students or staff applicants." Well-known treatments of language contact are to be found in Lehiste ( 1988) and Weinreich (1974). Discussion of language contact specifically within the context of bilingualism can be found in Appel-Muyskcn ( 1987). Beardsmore (1986). Hoffmann (1991). and Romaine (1995). Trudgill (1986) provides a discussion of dialects in contact. In Wales, and England, children compulsorily enter primary school at age five and leave for a secondary or middle school at age eleven. An infant school covers the age range five to seven (and then children can move to a junior school where they stay until age eleven). But parents can optionally send their children to primary or infant school at age four, and some schools accept children at age three. The original project. entitled Concept and language development. was located in the Department of Education. University of Wales, AbcryshV)1h, where it was directed by Professor C.J. Dodson. It was funded by the Welsh Office and collected data over three years from 1974 to 1977. The essential difference between mixed schools and designated bilingual schools is that the former have not been specifically established by the Welsh Office to usc Welsh as a medium of instruction. As such, the label nondesignated bilingual school would be appropriate for them. It so happens that the label mixed was used as a label in the original research project which collected the data. and this labelling has been carried over into this study. These are: English-medium streams which are English-medium classes in streamed mixed schools; bilingual project schools which arc schools with an English-speaking intake which took part in a project in the 1970s which promoted bilingual teaching; and English-medium schools which are schools in which the teaching is entirely through the medium of English.

Notes 335

65. An example of its l~sc in a Welsh context can be found in Sharp eta/. (1973), and further dtscusston of this method is available in Baker ( 1985). 66. In the original project, strength of usc was calculated in quantitative terms as follows. First. a potential score for language choice varied according to the perceived influence of the class of interlocutor on the child: immediate family members were scored 10 each, friends were scored six, neighbours and grandparents were scored two. Second, the actual score can be assigned to a language as follows: if it is exclusively used, a full score is given; if the encounters arc bilingual. the score is halved; if a language is not chosen, the score is zero. The use of Welsh and English were each measured out of a total score of 40. This not only helps to establish the Ll but also the extent and strength of its usc. It can be emphasized that this approach docs not establish the first language on the basis of linguistic ability in terms of control of grammar or discourse (which could claim to assess performance and, more ambitiously. competence). 67. This reflects a popular belief that the L2 Welsh of English speakers becomes a model for Ll Welsh speakers. This explanation is popularly proclaimed for errors in the Ll Welsh of young schoolchildren in designated bilingual schools which arc also attended by L2 speakers. It is commonly believed that the L2 learners of Welsh influence the Ll speakers and not the other way round. 68. It is not known what proportion constitutes a sufficient proportion. In this corpus. there arc L2 speakers in unstrcamcd mixed schools which have different proportions of Ll and L2 speakers. But, whereas they provide a desirable contrast with L2 speakers in designated bilingual schools, their numbers arc so low that comparisons become unreliable. 69. A study of this type of influence could be based on a comparison of native Welsh speakers who arc monolingual and other native speakers who are bilingual. But it is difficult to achieve such a comparison both in practice and in principle. Welsh children rapidly become bilingual to some extent at an early age. The search for monolinguals would have to concentrate upon very young children and the comparison would thus tend to involve very young monolingual children and older bilingual children, and become complicated by factors of language acquisition and development. Further, such a study would need a prior assessment of the competence of Welsh speakers in both languages in order to determine when monolingualism ends and bilingualism is achieved. 70. At the time of preparing the final draft for this work, the people of Wales were asked to take part in a referendum on a modest devolution of power from the central parliament in London to a democratically-elected assembly which was to be located in Cardiff, the capital of Wales. English-medium campaigning for and against the assembly divided itself into a yes vote and a

336 Notes

no vote. In strict grammatical terms. Welsh-medium campaigning should have divided itself into an ydw 'I am' and nac ydw 'I am not', based on a question which roughly asked 'do you agree that Wales should have an assembly'. Wisely, the campaigners on both sides opted instead to talk about an ie vote and a na vote, thus mirroring the influence of isomorphic simplicity which we have seen in the children's language. For those readers who arc interested, after centuries of dependence, the ie campaign won a narrow but historic victory on the basis of a simple majority amongst those who voted, and made me very happy.

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StefTensen, Margaret S. "Satisfying inquisitive adults: some simple methods of an1978 s\vering yes/no questions", Journal of child language 5: 22136. Stevens. Catrin Afeilhrin: hones mruliad ysgo/ion meithrin 19 71--1996 1996 [Nurse: the history of [Welsh-medium) nursery schools). (text in Welsh with the final chapter in English) Llandysul: Gomer. Stubbs. Michael Discourse analysis : the sociolinguistic ana(vsis of natural 1983 language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Szwedek, Aleksander "Some problems of yes-no answers''. Papers and studies in 1982 contrastive linguistics 15: 5-11. Hideyuki Takashima, "How Japanese learners of English answer negative yes-no 1989 questions: a case of language transfer", IRAL 27: 113-124. Maggie Tallerman, 1996 "Fronting constructions in Welsh", in: Robert D. Borsleylan Roberts (editors), 1/re syntax of the Celtic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas. Alan R. 1992 "The Welsh language", in: Donald Macaulay (editor). 1l1e Celtic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 251-345. Thomas, Beth "Differences in sex and sects: linguistic variation and social 1988 networks in a Welsh mining village", in: Jennifer CoatesDeborah Cameron (editors). Women in their speech commrmilies. London: Longman, 51-60. Thomas. Beth-Peter Wyn Thomas Cymraeg, Cymrcig, Cymreg [Welsh, Welsh, Welsh]. 1989 Caerdydd [Cardifi]: Gwasg Taf. Thomas. Ceinwen H. "The verbal system and the responsive in a Welsh dialect of 1973/4 south-east Glamorgan", Studio Celtica 8/9: 271-286. "Registers In Welsh", IJSL 35: 87-115. 1982 Thomas, Peter Wyn Gramadeg y gymraeg [The grammar of Welsh). Caerdydd: 1996 Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru [Cardiff: University of Wales Press].

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Thomason, Sarah G.-Terrence Kaufman 1988 Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thorne, David A. 1993 A comprehensive Welsh grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter 1974 The social differentiation of English in Nomich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1986 van Hekken, Suus M.J.-Wim Roelofsen "More questions than answers: a study of question-answer 1982 sequences in a naturalistic selling", Journal of child language 9; 445-460. Wason, P.C. 1959 "The processing of positive and negative information", Quarterly journal ofexperimental psychology II: 92-107. Watkins. Calvert 1963 "Preliminaries to a historical and comparative analysis of the syntax of the old Irish verb", Celtica 6: 1-49. Watkins, T. Anvyn 1977 "Trefn yn y frawddeg Gymraeg" [Order in the Welsh sentence], Studia celtica 12/13: 367-395. "Welsh", in: Martin 1. Ball-James Fife (editors), 111e Celtic 1993 languages. London: Routledge, 289-348. Weinreich. Uric! 1974 Language contact: problems and findings. The Hague: Mouton. Whitney, Artur H. 1956 Finnish. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited. Williams, Stephen Joseph Elfennau gramadeg cymraeg [Elements of the grammar of 1959 Welsh]. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru [Cardiff: University of Wales Press]. Adaptation in Williams. S.J. (1980). A Welsh grammar, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Yadugiri, M.A. 1986 "Some pragmatic implications of the usc of yes and no in response to yes-110 questions", Journal of pragmatics 10: 199-210. Yip Po-Ching-Don Rimmington 1997 Chinese: an essential grammar. London: Routledge.

Index Aaltio 320 ability 224 accent 269 acceptance 134 acconunodation 268, 269-272, 274, 298 acknowledgement 140, 141-144, 145-146, 156,159,164,186,283,284,285,2 87 acquisition, foreign language 266, 271 formal264 naturalistic 264, 269 responsives 200-20 I second language 266, 271 address 77-78 addressee 71-75, 116,200,211,230,230235,290-293,299 adjacency 190-191 adjective 26, 30, 45-47 adjunct (see adverbial) adverbial (see also clause) 178-179 adjunct I 0 I, 179 conjunct 20, 10 I, 179 disjunct 17, 18-19,20, 101, 179 advice 211 afiinnative-ncgative (see question) agc64,66, 70,202-204,239,244,245248,249,274,293-295,298 agreement 16, 18, 53, 68,71-79, 112, 123, 129, 129, 130, 133-138, 141, 142, 145, 156, 157-158, 164, 174, 186,279,283290,285,299 agreement-disagreement (see answering system) ai (see particle) Aitchison vi, 239 Akiyama 200,201,267-268,274-275,317, 319,333 Allan et a/ 308 All wood eta/ 318 Amharic II, 307,315,319 analogical extension277, 279, 280-282 analogy vi, 70, 274, 277 anaphora (see also discourse; target for responsive) 186 answer 112, 129, 130-133, 144, 156-157, 164,186,282,283-295,299

additional 5, 16, 179 counter 17 hesitant 2 negative 7 proper 16-1 7 qualified 3, 17, 19 sentence 1-3,34-35, 179,278 elliptical 2, 35, 49, 148 full2 answerhood 17 answering system formal types 41-42 echo 17,22-36 four-form 42 nonecho 17, 18-22 three-form 42 two-form 4, 42 semantics vi, 1-17, 277, 296-297 agreement-disagreement 13-14, 134, 290 mixed 93 polarity-based 4-8, 50,200-201, 297 positive-negative 13-14 tmth value 8-14, 200, 290, 297 Anwyl 58, 102, 120 Appcl-Muysken 334 approvall18-120, 133, 134 ascriptive (see sentence) Ash-Myhill 268 aspect (see also verb) 53, 56-58, 64, 89, 101, 110-111, 177-178, 189, 195,206, 219,282 assent 18, 130 assertiveness 79-83, 318 Athanasiadou 319 Austin 116,213 auxiliary(seea/soverb) 116,173,193 Awbery vi, 303, 332 back channel 14 I Baik-Shim II, 14,267,299,317,319, 322,333 Baker 335

352 /nde:c Bald 12,21,41,96-97,99, 129,145,165, 203,283-284,285-286,291,317,322322,333,334 Ball 249, 332 Ball-Muller 324 Bauerle 2, 6, 7, 19,317,318,319 Beardsmore 334 Belnap 319 Berninger-Garvey 200, 317, 319, 320, 333 beth 'what' (see also question) 114 beth am 'what about' (see question) bias, negative 37 positive II, 37 question 8-9 bilingualism (see also schools) vi, 238, 239, 240,298 Blacklaw28 Bloch 331 Bloomfield 131,239,268,331 bod'be'45-46,56-58,60-61,62,64-65, 65-66,70-71,79-87,85-86,89,98, 104, 151, 153, 169, 174, 180, 181-184, 193,213-215,222,224,235-237,282 Bokamba II, 267 Bolinger 318 Boslego 9, 27, 317, 318 Breton 22, 28, 29-30 Brown-Gilman 77 Burton 129 Byrne-Churchill 19 C (see Complementizer) cael 'have' (see also verb, auxiliary, modal) 60-61,66-67,67-70,153,194,222225,223 calll30, 141, 145 Campbell vi Carm 318 Cantonese II, 26,38-39, 51, 307 carrier (see verb) cataphoric (see discourse) Celtic languages 28-30, 51 census figures vi Chaha 21, 28, 41, 93, 125,307-308,315 change (see also variation)

external238, 239, 239-274, 298, 299301 interna1238, 239, 277-301 Chierchia-McCotmell-Ginct 7, 116,212, 318,331 children's responsives in languages other than Welsh 200-20 I in Welsh 200-299 Choi-Zubin 275,317, 333 Choi2-1,8,38,41,200,275,290-291, 299,311,317,318,319,322,333-334 clarifying function 97 clause, subordinate 12-13, 142, 203 adverbial103, 104-107,216,217,244 conditional 121 noun 103-104, 180-181, 186, 191 clitic 122 clywed'hear' 62-65,71, 194 code 148 coelio 'believe' 62-65, 71 collective noun (see subject) command (see also imperative) 123, 134, 137-138, 140, 143,211 comparative construction (see also sentence) 161-164 comparative studies 241 complement 10 I, 178 Complementizcr (see complementizer) complementizer v, 148, 185-197,278, 298 Complementizer Phrase 185 compound tense (see verb) conditional (see clause) confirmation 134 conformity 270-271 confusion 274 congruence 134 interactive 289-290 conjunct (see adverbial) conjunctive (see pronoun) constative 116,212 constituents, post-subject 177-179, 186 sentence 10 1 contradiction 126, 134 cooperative principle 290-291 coordinated modification 159-161, 186 copular (see sentence; question)

Index 353

Corder 266, 274 coreference 172 corpus (see also database) vii, 245 naturalistic 239 correction 129, 144, 156, 159, 164, 186, 283,284,285 correlative construction (see also sentence) 161-164 Coulthard 14-15, 129 CP (see Complemenlizer Phrase) credu 'believe' 62-65, 71 Crystal v Czech 31-32,35,51 Danish 37, 308 data 93 experimental 200, 242 missing 205 naturalistic 199, 200 database (see also corpus) vi-vii , 199200 Davison 116 declarative (see mood) definiteness (see also responsive) 79-84, 220-221,235-237,282 deixis 71-77 demonstrative (see sentence) denial 18, 134, 174 direction 211 disagreement 18, 69, 112, 129, 130, 133138, 145, 146, 156, 157-158, 164, 186, 283-289,283-290,299 discourse v, vi, 36, 129-145, 298 act (see also acknowledgement; agreement; answer, correction; disagreement) 129-145, 155-167, 186, 277,282-295,298 elicited 130 unelicited 130 analysis 93-100 classroom 129, 134,293 context, anaphoric 7, 138-139, 155, 172 cataphoric 139 endophoric 94 exophoric 94 interactive 96-1 00

noninteractive 96-98 situational94-96, 108, 110, 143 lexlual94, 96-100, 108, 110 exchange 72-75, 129 direct 73 interpolation 73, 230-235 question-answer 132 self- 74 meetings 129 roles 71-72 therapy sessions 129 disjunct (see adverbial) disjunctive (see question) dod 'come' 67-70, 153, 194 Dodd et al20 Dodds 22-23, 320 dominance vi, 268, 270, 271, 274, 298 Donaldson 308 Dore 291 Dorian 238, 239, 300 Dunn-Yanada4, 11 Durrell20 Dutch 37, 20 I, 308 dylai 'should' (see also verb, auxiliary, modal) 60-61,222 dynamic agency 327-328 echoing (see also answering system; question; responsive) 22 Eckhard-Black-Whittle 308 efallai 'perhaps' 47-49,203,216,244 Egli6,317 eisiau 'needs' 79,83-84,214,282 elicitation lest 70 ellipsis (see also answer; sentence fragment) 2, 17, 19, 107-111, 113, 147-184, 188-191 domains 18 9-190 VP I, 147, 186 emotion 55, 68, 174 emphasis (see also response and responsive) 102, 173, 174, 178, 189 contrastive I 02 empty categories 185 endophoric (see discourse) endorsement 134

354 lnde.t English 1-19,35-36, 165,201,240,253, 266,267-268,315,322,333 African II, 267 Old21 ergative 332 errors (see performance) exchange (see discourse) exclamatory surprise 12 9 existential (see sentence) cxophoric (see discourse) extraction site 122 features 187-197 analysis 278-282 specification 298 Ferguson 271 Fife 62, 324, 325, 331 Fifc-Poppc 331 Finnish 24-25, 5 I first language 263, 263-273, 274 contextual measure 263-264 strength of usc 263-264 Welsh 263-273 Firth 148 focus 102,277,279,296-297,299 foreigner talk 271-272 French 13, 18, 19-20,21-22, 36-37, 38, 41, 42,49, 51, 124,201,315 Fyncs-Ciinton 49, 68, 88-89, 174, 280, 330-331 Gaelic 28-29 ga/111 'can' (see also verb, auxiliary, modal)

60-61,222-225 generic (see pronoun and reference) German 20-21, 37, 308-309, 315 Giles 269 Giles-Coupland-Coupland 269 Giles-Smith 269 Giles-St. Clair 269 Giles-Taylor-Bourhis 269 Goffinan 320, 328 Greene 22, 55, 70, 88, 93, 151,280,317 Gregor 102 Grevisse 13, 37 Griswold-Griswold 200, 243, 283 Gros 29-30

Gul)mundsson 21 , 41 , 317, 322 Gwa II, 28, 41, 93, 125, 130, 141, 309, 315 gwaeth 'worse' 45-46 gwe/cl'sec' 62-65,71,102,194 gwiw 'filling' 45-46 gu71e11d 'do, make' 58-60, 64, 65-66, 6667,67-70, 116-118, 124, lSI, 152, 153, 153, 154, ISS, 193, 196,222,223 glsybod 'know', 62-65,71, 194 Haiman 278 Hajicovli 296, 319 Halliday 131 , 14 8 Hamblin 317 Harari 11,28,41,93,125,309,315,319 Hare 331 Hausa II, 266-267,309-310,315 Hausser 317,319,333 Hausser-ZaciTcrer 319 Hebrew 310,315 Hidatsa 310,315 Hiz317 Hoepelman 7, 9, 296,318 hoffi 'like' 62-65, 71 Hoffinamt 334 Holmcs-llinchcliiTe 312 homonymy 181 Ilurlord-Heasley 318 lmymch 'perhaps' 47-49 I (see Inflection) imm 'right' 124, 143 Icon programming language 200, 243, 283 ie 'yes' (see also nonecho responsive) 240,

277-282 Illinois 267 illocutionary force liS, 116-124,211-212, 296 imperative (see mood) incomplete learning 274 indeterminacy (see also target for responsive) 99, 106 indicative 187 Inflection v, 53, 148, 279, 280, 298 Inflection Phrase 53, 185

buie:c 355

interaction 129, 263 interactive (.~ee congruence; discourse) interference 266,268,271,274 interlocutor 263, 284, 286, 290-293, 299 interpolation (see discourse) interrogative (see mood) interview 284,286,291 intimacy (see also pronoun) 230 lP (.~ee Inflection Phrase) Irish 28, 29 isomorphism 277-282, 290, 298 Iwanicka 2, 317, 319 James C. 271 James C.J. 20 Japanese 4-5, 10-11, II, 13-14, 37-38, 42,134,201,266,267-268,274-275, 315 Jespersen 122, 130-131, 239 JonesB.M. vii, 83,129, 134,159-160, 211,237,272,331 Jones G.E. 329 Jones M. 62, 324, 325, 327 Jones-"Iltomas vi, 46, 62, 324, 325, 327, 331, 333 Judge-Healey 21, 36 juncture 175-176 Karttunen 7, 317 Kiefer 317,319 King vi, 38, 88, 129,280,310,317,319, 322 Kintikka 319 Korean 9, II, 38, 41, 42, 201, 267, 299, 310-311,315,319,322,333-334 Kraft-Kirk-Greene 267, 309 Labov 15 Labov-Fanshel 129 Labov-Harris 268 Langendonck II , 12 language background 253-273 contact vi, 239-274 death vi decay vi decline vi Latin 21,22

Latvian 34, 5I Lehiste 334 Leslau 21, 28, 41, 307, 309, 312, 313, 317, 319 Iexeme (see verb type) texis v, 240 licio 'like' 62-65, 71 Lingala I l linguistic system 239, 277, 300 listener 71-75, 143, 200, 230-235 Llansilin 328 logical form v, 13, 93, 115-126,296 longitudinal study 245-246 loops 114, 133 Lund 334 Lyons 6, 75, 118, 120, 318, 331, 332 Mackey 266, 274 Malay 22-23, 51 Mandarin II, 25-26, 40-41, 51, 311 Marrn-Sommerfelt 312 Martinet37 Matthews-Yip 26, 38-39, 307 McMahon 238, 239, 268, 277, 300 medium of teaching 253 mednt 'can' (see also verb, auxiliary, modal) 60-61, 222-225 Milroy J. 239,268, 269 Milroy-Milroy 269 Minitab 242, 243, 283 minority language vi modality 47-49 modifier (see responsive) Moeschler 319 mood 2, 43, 80, 135, 149, 185,333 declarative 5, 116, 139, 140 imperative (see also conunand) 102, 116, 123-124, 140, 187,202,210-213, 223,243 interrogative (see also particle; question) 296 A-nol-A 26 Morgan Llwyd 55 morphology v morphophonemics65-70, 151,153,183184

356 Index Morris-Jones 46, 49, 53, 58, 88-89, 102, 280,330-331 movement of verb (.fee verb) Mruliacl Ysgolimr Meitlrrin 254 mutation 167-171, 177, 181, 186 mutual intelligibility 271 mynd'go'61-10, 153,194,222 na 'neg' 45, 68, 87-89, 89, 113, 201-202, 203,209,211,218,219-220,240,243, 277-282 nacci11 'refuse' 328 nage 'no' (see also noneeho responsive) 125-126,210 Nantgarw68, 85,168, 174, 183 naturalistic (see acquisition; corpus; data) Navajo II, 12,312,315 Neg 148, 188 negation (see also answer; bias: na: polarity, question) 25, 45, 78, 79, 86-89, 296,317 Negative Phrase 185 negative transfer 266, 298 NegP (see Negative Phrase) neustic 332 110 (see abo English) 203-204, 240 nominals 45-46 Nordenstam 269 norms, community 269 consensus 270-271, 300 perceived 299 Norwegian 37, 312 number 53,77-79,89,123,220-221,227230

otTer 116 ok 124 Oladejo II, 266,313,317,319,333 oni (see particle) onid (see particle) operator 148 orthography 303 o'rgora11 'alright' 124, 143 overhearer 73, 74 Painter28, 130,141,309,317

pa/111 'refuse' 328 Palmer 148 pam 'why' 121 paradigm 220-221 paradigmatic uniqueness 151, 153 paralinguistic form 96, 114, 115, 141 pardon (see question) Parry-Williams 240 particle, interrogative a I 02, interrogative ai I02 interrogative oni(cl) I02 interrogative onicl I02 preverba1102, 167-171, 177, 180, 185 predicatival J'" 177 peers 269 performance errors 120, 235 performative 36, 116, 327 periphrastic (see verb) permission 224 person 2, 53,71-77,89, 123,220-221, 230-235 Philips 319 phonology 240 phrastic 332 physical possibility 224 Poggi et al 319, 320 polarity (see also answering system; negation; responsive) 2, 4-14,43, 5051,80, 125, 131, IJ4, 144-146, 158159, 159, 167-171, 175, 180, 182, 185, 186, 187-188,201-202,203, 278,284-290 derivational 4 lexical4 sentence 4 politeness (.fee also pronoun) 62, 68, 138, 174 Pope 8, 10, 12, 13-14,41, 133-134, 145, 285,289,310,312,317,318,319,319 Portuguese 30-31,35,51 positive (see bias; polarity; question) positive-negative (see answering system) possessive (see sentence) pragmatics 14-17, 94 predicate 149 predication 148

lncle:c 357 prediction 116, 118-120 preposition 123 prescription vii, 84 Press 22, 29-30 prestige 270, 271 preverbal (see particle) prodrop (see subject) proform4, 17,102 promise 116 pronominalization 2, ISO, 172, 272 pronoun (see also subject) 194 conjunctive 163 exclusive 76 generic 230 inclusive 76 intimate 77-78, 230 nonintimate 77-78 polite 227 possessive 122 pre posed 122, 180 resumptive 122-123 proposition 5-7, 131 propositional content 2, 5-7, 116, 119-120, 146, 164 propositional logic 5 prosentence (see responsive) prosodies 95, 140, 141, 145, 174 quantifier 4 query 140 question 112, 121, 129, 129, 130, 130, 140, 282,283,283 affirmative-negative 26 alternative 131 beth 'what' 116, 120-123, 203 beth am 'what about' 120-121 conducive 131 content 131 copular 39 deliberative 120 direct 130 echo203,216,217, 113-114,138-141, 244,320 factual 120 information-seeking 15, 120, 122, 138139 interpretation of

alternative 317 disjunctive 317 propositional 317 negative 8-14,25,28,36-41,49,50-51, 144,266-267,299,333-334 tme and false 290-291 nexus- 131 open 131 pardon 133, 203, 114-115, 220, 244 polar 131 positive 4-8, 37 response 138-141, 142, 145, 156, 158, 164, 186, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288 rhetorical 319 suggestion 122, 131, 133,216,217,244, 203 supplement 130 tag 131, 144 wh- 131, 140 X- 122, 130, 133, 203, 205, 244 yes-no 1-17, 130, 138-141, passim Quirk et a/6, 7, 8, 18, 19, 80, 140, 320, 145, 148, 179,318,331,332 Radford 140, 147, 320, 324, 332 reaction signals 18 recommendation 123, 211 redundancy 277, 279, 280 reduplication 164-165, 186 reference, generic 77 refusals 134 register 36-37 reit 'right' 124, 143 rejection 134 request 15,62,123 residue 149 response, elaborated 299 emphatic 55, 68, 126 exclamatory 96, 146 unclicited 134 responsive I , 17-91 , passim as a feature 187 as n grammatical function 17-18 as target 1 11-113 counter28, 37-41,51,124-126 default 193, 298

358 /11de:c echo 22-36, 44-49, 53-91, 93-127, 192193,205-220 definite 82 finite 89 ful158-71, 101, 125 indefinite 82, 213-215 invariable 213-215 nominal89 perfect 53-58,89, 101, 113, 125, 194195,203,206,213,213,244 substitute 58-71, 101, 125, 151, 154, 223 types 193-197 variable 213-215 verbal56,89, 113,125,206,220-237 emphatic 169-170 fom1s 17-42, 43-49 negative 43, 45, 209-210 nonecho 17, 18-22,24,30,32, 34,4344,56,93-127, 192-193,203,215220 and clausal constituents 18-22 as conjunct 20 as disjunct 18-21 as modifier 19 as nominal 19 as prosentence 19-20 et ~1110logy 21-22 polarity-based 4-8, 266-267 positive 208-209 semantics 1-17,50-51, 115-126,278, 296-297 truth-value 8-14, 266-267 types 204 rlwicl 'necessity' 45-46, 98 Richards 47, 55, 58, 73, 74, 102 Roberts 70 roles (see also discourse) participant (thematic) 332 Romaine 249, 334 Rouveret vi, 185, 196, 333 Russian 31, 32-34, 51 Sadler vi sampling 241 sanction 118-120

schools 245, 246-248, 249-252, 253-263, 253,254,272,274,298 bilingual 253 mixed, streamed 253 mixed, unstreamed 253 preschool254 scoring 241-24 3 Searle 116 second language 274 Welsh 263-266 semantics (see also answering system; responsive) linguistic 5 sentence, comparative 186 complex 142 coordinated 131, 161-164, 175, 186 copular ascriptive 177 existential 236 correlative 186 demonstrative 102-103,203,216,217, 244 finite 101-102, 108 fronted word order 43-44, 47, 78, 101-102, 122, 192,202,216,217, 244,297 nonnal word order 10 I, 202, 244 lragment 179, 218-219, 243 auxilinryless 107-111, 149,202,218219 subject-only 163 verbless 107-111, 149,202,218-219, 223 minor 331 possessive 236-237 VPiess 129, 130, 147-184, 185-197,298 sex 239, 244, 249-252, 258-263, 274, 298, Sharp et al 335 shilling 71, 72, 75 Shocky 271 simplification vi, 277,279-280,281-282 Sinclair-Brazil 129, 141,293 Sinclair-Coulthard 129, 134, 293 situational (see discourse; target for responsive) social values 138 sociolinguistic context 239, 300

Index 359 Soddo21,42, 312,315,319 syntactic analogues 224-225 speaker (see also variation) 16,71-75,200, syntactic category 17 211' 230-235 syntactic form v, 93, 101-127 speaker contact 268, 269-272, 274 Szwedek I, 317 speaker variables 239 tag 90-91 , 194 Specifier Negative Phrase 148 Takashima 10, 266, 317, 333 speech act 118-120 Tallemtan 185, 192 speech conununities 272 target for responsive 93-127, 202-205, 243 Stainer-Russell 36 general anaphoric (see also textual statemcnt5, 116, 134, 135-137, 140, 145, chunk) 98-100, 131, 135 204,285-286 indeterminate 132 positive 283, 291 responsive as target (see responsive) statistics, comparative 241-274, 288-289, situational 134,202,216,217,244 293-295 specific anaphoric 98-127, 132, 135 comparisons, matched 244 textual chunk 203,216,217,244 descriptive 199-238,284-287,291-293 tense 53,53-58,62,65-66,89, 151, 180, status 270, 271 194,206,225-227,279 Ste!Tensen 200, 20 I, 333 future 116-120 Stevens 254 imperfect 121, 327-328 stranding 148 perfect 151, 153, 186, 194, 244 streaming (see schools) pluperfect 121, 327-328 strength of use of language 268 tcntativity 62, 121 of Welsh 264,272-273,274 text (see discourse; target for responsive) Stubbs 129 Thai 9, 27, 51,318 style 53-54, 58, 59, 67, 79, 90, 102, 122, Thomas A.R. vi 123, 167-171, 178, 180, 186, 192,323 ll10mas B. 249 subjcct71-72, 75,79-83, 101, I 10, 149, Thomas C.H. 22, 45, 55, 58, 59, 60, 68, 77, 159-160, 164, 171-177, 180, 186 85, 93, 102, 130, 131, 151, 168, 174, a!Tected 332 178, 183,317 collective noun 78, 227 Thomas P.W. vi, 55, 60, 68, 88, 99, 138, nominal 171 129, 174, 194,280, 327, 329, 332 overt 55 "lbomas-Thomas 86,332 plura178 Thomason-Kaufman 300 plural noun 227, 230 prodrop 34, 123, 171-177, 181, 182, 186, l110me vi, 325, 329 threat 116 190 ties, strong 269 pronominal 171, 172-177 weak 269 subjunctive 54, 65-66 Tigrinya 21, 28, 41, 93, 125, 313, 315 subordinate language vi traditional grammars of Welsh vii, 53, 58, subordination 19-20,48, 103-107, 18083, 93, 102, 218 181 tropic 332 substitution 19 Trudgill 249, 269-271, 334 suggestion (see also question) 211, 223 truth condition 7 summarizing function 96-97 truth value (see also answering system; surprise 140, 146 responsive) 5-14, 50-51, 115, 124-126, Swedish 37,312-313 131,296 synonymy 224-225

360 l11dex University College London 334 unreality 62, 121 unwillingness (see volition) van Hekken-Roclofsen 200,201,291, 333 variable (see responsive; speaker) variation (see also change) 64 dialectal 66 intemal vi speaker 66 verb 24-25, 26, 28-35, 44-45 compound tense pattem 60, 65-66, I 53, 224-225,327 finite (see also types) v forms 181-184, 186 inflectional paradigms 62-65 main 101 movement 195-197 periphrastic pattem 59, 65-66,70, 116, 224-225,327-328 simple 62, 70, 116, 327-328 types 53, IS I, 186, 222-225 auxiliary 59-60, 101, 108, 110, lSI, aspectual 60, 222 carrier 61, 70 lnoda]60-6J, 151,223-225 lexical62-70, 193 irregular 65-70, 222 regular 65-70, IS I, I 52, 222

verbnoun 123-124,210-213,331 vocative 141 volition 118-120, 327-328 VP ellipsis (see ellipsis; sentence) Wason 7 Watkins C. 130, 131, 317 Watkins T.A. vi, 331 wedi (see aspect) Weinreich 334 West Flemish II, 12 wh-words (see also beth 'what' and question) 131 Whitney 320 Williams S.J. 53, 58, 97, 100, 102, 138, 332 willingness (see volition) word borrowing 240, 268 word order (see sentence) X-bar syntax v, 53, 184-197 Yaduguri296,317,319 ye.f (see also English) 203-204, 240 Yip Po-Ching-Rimmington 25-26, 40, 311 Y" (see particle and aspect) Yoruba 11,266,313,319

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