1887
Volume 35, Issue 4
  • ISSN 0378-4177
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

This article proposes a new categorization of confirmation-seeking question tags, based on how the use of such tags is restricted in relation to the preceding clause, the anchor. The focus is on a category labelled grammatically-dependent question tags (GDQTs). Earlier research has claimed that almost only English has such question tags, but this article presents and compares data on GDQTs from more than ten languages, and suggests a hierarchy for features of grammatical dependence in question tags: polarity < tense < number/person < (semantic) gender (possibly also < verb substitution). The GDQT structures vary in different ways: all GDQT languages have negative GDQTs, but not all have positive GDQTs; verb substitution is not always applied and constant polarity instead of reversed polarity is also found.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/sl.35.4.02axe
2011-01-01
2025-02-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/sl.35.4.02axe
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error