Cagliari, Italy 15-18 September 2003
ALT V Conference
Claude Hagège
Whatted we to interrogative verbs?
claude.hagege@free.fr
Interrogative verbs (IVs) are not a widely recognized class in linguistic typology, to say the least. This might be because they are rare, as stated by Weinreich (1963: 121). However, being rare does not mean being non-existent, pace Donegan and Stampe, who claim (1983: 339) that „there are no operand interrogatives“; in there view, therefore, while languages can say „What did he read? - A book“, they cannot say „*WH-Verb he a book? – Read“.
The present paper‘s aim is to contribute, based on a sample of 235 languages, to the knowledge of IVs. It turns out that 8% of this sample exhibit IVs. The latter are defined as a subtype of verbs that possess the general properties of this class, although the question asked in sentences where IVs appear does not concern an agent, a patient, an adverbal argument or a dependent element (adjective or adnominal genitive), etc., but, curiously enough, the process itself. IVs function as predicates of full interrogative sentences, which, besides the IV, mostly contain at least a subject or theme, and often several other constituents, depending on the language. When the grammar requires the use of person and/or TAM markers on the verb, these appear on IVs just as they can appear on any other verbal subtype. As for the range of semantic contents, those found, so far, in IVs are „be or do what?“, „say what?“, „undergo what?“, „be or go where?“, „be caused to be or do what?“. Other meanings might of course be discovered.
Leaving aside languages in which a morpheme, if added to certain verbs, may make them interrogative, as in Koasati, two main cases are observed. The first one is represented by languages in which the IV is, or may be, a member of a V1+V2 series. In Rundi, for example, this structure is the only one in which an IV appears, while elsewhere it is one of two possible structures, the other one exhibiting an IV which appears on its own. Among languages belonging to this second category, two types are found: in one of them, words used as IVs do not have other uses (examples are Chinese, Riau Indonesian, Hua, Palauan, Dyirbal); in the second type, IVs have other uses as well, examples being Jamul Tiipay (in which several verbs may be used with interrogative force in questions but indefinite force in statements), and Turkish (in which some words may be used as adjectives, adverbs or IVs). The „do what?“, „do how?“, etc., meanings of the IV standing for V1 or V2 in the V1+V2 structure often refer to the reason why, the manner in which, etc., the process denoted by the other verb is effected.
With the second case, we get closer to IVs proper. It is represented by languages in which IVs may not appear in V1+V2 series, but only in sentences which have no other predicate. Here again, there are two possibilities. According to one of them, the words used as IVs may also appear as members of other classes (examples are Tunisian Arabic, Israeli Hebrew, Koyra Chiini, Tahitian or Tagalog). According to the other possibility, the words used as IVs, although they may be derived from demonstratives, indefinites or nouns (the same may be true of the first case above), have no other use than as IVs; this is observed in Comox, Lavukaleve, Pitjantjatjara, or Kayardild. The latter languages may be considered to exhibit the most solid type of IVs.
The fact that IVs are both a genuine subtype of verbs and, nevertheless, crosslinguistically rare raises the problem of rare or non-existent question words. In no language described so far can one say, for example, „*WH-Modal~Verb he read?“ - „Wants to“. Interrogative relators have never been mentioned either: if the relator where a preposition, for instance, one should be able to say, in some language, something like „*he worked WH-PR John?“, the answer being „for“, or „with“, or „because of“, etc. The reason for these gaps is not, as might be surmised, that languages avoid WH-words whose appropriate responses are restricted to members of a closed class. If this were true, why don‘t we find many more languages with IVs, given that verbs are an open class? One of the reasons might be, precisely, that in order to express the theoretically infinite number of questions on states and actions, it is much more economical to split the questions into an interrogative word „who?“ or „what?“ + one of the two verbs with a generic meaning, i.e. „be“ and „do“.