Expressing doubt and certainty : The tag question and the ‘to’ particle in some Indian languages

• Published in: Language sciences (Oxford) 1991, Vol.13 (2), p.207-227
• Main Author: Nair, Rukmini Bhaya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0388-0001; 1873-5746
• DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(91)90015-S

A substantive universal found across the languages of the world is the tag-question. This paper attempts to detail some of the grammatical as well as pragmatic properties of this interrogative form, and examine its relation to a particle which is peculiar to many of the languages in the Indian subcontinent. This is the emphatic particle ‘to’ used in discourse contexts where speakers express their attitudes towards the propositional claims they are making. In other words, the paper studies the interrelation of an empirically attested universal—the question-tag—with an areal feature—the ‘to’ particle. It is argued that both presuppose some categorical assertion in a conversational context. Thus neither a tag nor the ‘to’ particle can attach to an open wh-question without resulting ungrammatically. However, both co-occur with assertive sentences and with each other. The paper makes special reference to the languages Bangla and Malayalam to show that there may be an epistemic continuum of belief states that speakers rely on when using tag questions as well as the ‘to’ particle. Tag questions cluster towards the middle of this continuum while the ‘to’ particle is distributed at various points along the continuum. Although the ‘to’ particle does not occur as such in Malayalam, it is claimed that there is a counterpart ‘enkil’ expressing conditionality that functionally resembles it in this Dravidian language. Finally, it is suggested that this very initial study of some of the pragmatic aspects of questions may have implications for the ways in which we view the connections between grammar and discourse within a sociolinguistic area.