I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that a common aspect amongst all languages is the tendency to raise the pitch of your voice slightly when asking a question. Especially at the end of a question sentence.
If I’m wrong about this raised pitch being common amongst all languages, at the very least do all languages change their tone slightly to indicate that a question is being asked?
I guess there needs to be some way to indicate what is and isn’t a question. Perhaps a higher pitched voice reflects uncertainty. Is this something deep rooted in humans, or just an arbitrary choice when language developed?
English doesn’t even go up at the end of sentences for all questions, just yes or no ones.
Sorry; maybe try again and think of some other cases?
Could you give some specific examples of questions in English that would not be asked with a rising tone at the end?
What’s your name? How old are you? Where are you from?
They seem to have a rise-drop, at least when I say them.
“How old are you?” is interesting because the rise is on the third-last word (“old”). But “How old is your daughter?” has the rise in the first syllable of daughter.
That’s just emphasis. You can tell because you can shift it to another word.
- What’s your name? (more pointed)
- How old are you? (as if it’s now suddenly of concern)
- Where are you from? (maybe the person has an unusual accent)
- Where are you from? (more pointed)
- How old is your daughter? (shifting from discussing someone else’s daughter)
I wonder if it’s more because we frame the question by altering the structure to indicate the appropriate response.
We could just as well ask “you are from where?” Or “your name is what?” That matches the expected sentence structure of a response, and the natural pitch rises.
I’m totally with you. I think it is somewhat speaker dependent, but that is how I would say those questions.
What’s your NAme
How OLD (are you)?
Where are you FROm?
You would never say
"What’s YOUR name?
“How old are YOU?”
“Where ARE you from?”
?
Do you really pronounce those with a higher pitch? Or do you pronounce them louder?
EDIT: that is a genuine question given that a lot of people conflate stress (louder; more dB) with pitch (higher tone; more Hz), and the examples provided hint prosodic stress, not prosodic intonation, since in English prosodic stress is often used for emphasis.
Do you really think thats true?
Do you really think thats true?
“Rhetorical” questions - like this one - are specially interesting because, while they follow the syntax of a genuine question, they’re pragmatically assertions. You’re implying “this is not true”, even if you’re phrasing it as a question.
And that phrasal pitch contour that you see in yes/no questions is dictated by the pragmatical purpose of the utterance, so if the “question” is not actually a question, it doesn’t get it.
They don’t.
