Here's a question to which I do not know the answer, inspired by dialogue in British novels: if a man is asked, "What did you do last night?" and he replies, "I went to the pub, didn't I?" what do professional linguists call that "interrogative" response?

satguru

I'd call it the 'moronic', but that's not the technical term. It's the twin to the 'idiotic' where someone replies to something like "Who's that beautiful lady over there?" and they reply "It's me mother in law, innit". Probably has roots in Old English, but sadly far from dead in New English. Jan 17 06, 8:45 AM

lanfranco

Hmmm. I'm still looking for the technical term, but I appreciate your comments, satguru. It would appear that this usage shows up most often in a particular British demographic. And I almost never run into it here in the U.S. I wonder why. Jan 17 06, 10:11 AM

satguru

I can say it's used both in German and the similar Yiddish, such as 'nicht wahr' and 'shoyn', which is used in New York Jewish communities as 'already'. But I don't think that's how it came over here, but I'm looking into it. Jan 17 06, 11:39 AM

loominitsa

This type of short questions are called tag-questions or disjunctive questions and they expect a confirmation rather than an answer from the interlocutor. Jan 17 06, 1:20 PM

lanfranco

Thank you, loominitsa, although I get the impression from many examples that I've seen that no response at all is actually expected -- that the usage is so customary that it's almost unconscious. I going to comment, in response to satguru's last post, that the German "nicht wahr?" has always seemed to me to be correctly translated as "isn't that so?" or "right?" (as in, "don't you agree?") and to be rather more polite, and less belligerant, than the English example I gave. There may, however, be situations in which that is not so. As for Yiddish, the book "The Story of English" by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil does note that many Cockney expressions have Yiddish roots, owing to the formerly fairly substantial Jewish presence in the East End. Jan 17 06, 1:54 PM

satguru

Well I will certainly own up to noshing on beigels, and avoiding snidey operators, as that's where half my own roots are from as well. Jan 17 06, 7:04 PM

gmackematix

These clauses are quite similar to the habit among some Tyneiders of raising to an interrogative pitch at the end of a reply. Such replies often carry with them a tone of surprise that you were impertinent or stupid enough to ask such a question. Jan 17 06, 9:31 PM

lanfranco

That's more or less the impression I had, gmack, that there was a slight belligerence or hostility involved, though one that was almost automatic in certain situations. But do you mean "Tynesiders" or "Geordies"? Jan 17 06, 9:54 PM

gmackematix

I believe both Geordies and Mackems do it, and it's not just Tynesiders. Wearsiders do it as well. Jan 19 06, 9:11 PM

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