Abstract
Despite their central role in question formation, content interrogatives in spontaneous conversation remain relatively under-explored cross-linguistically. This paper outlines the structure of ‘where’ expressions in Duna, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, and examines where-questions in a small Duna data set in terms of their frequency, function, and the responses they elicit. Questions that ask ‘where?’ have been identified as a useful tool in studying the language of space and place, and, in the Duna case and elsewhere, show high frequency and functional flexibility. Although where-questions formulate place as an information gap, they are not always answered through direct reference to canonical places. While some question types may be especially “socially costly” (Levinson 2012), asking ‘where’ perhaps provides a relatively innocuous way of bringing a particular event or situation into focus.
References
Bednarek, Monika. 2014. ‘Who are you and why are you following us?’ Wh-questions and communicative context in television dialogue. In John Flowerdew (ed.), Discourse in context: Contemporary applied linguistics, volume 3, 49-70. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Search in Google Scholar
Bloom, Lois, Sudan Merkin and Janet Wootten. 1982. “Wh”-questions: Linguistic factors that contribute to the sequence of acquisition. Child Development 53(4): 1084-1092. Search in Google Scholar
Blu, Karen I. 1996. ‘Where do you stay at?’ Home, place and community among the Lumbee. In Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (eds), Senses of place, 197-227. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope. 2007. Principles of person reference in Tzeltal conversation. In N. J. Enfield and Tanya Stivers (eds), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural, and social perspectives,172-202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486746.009Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope. 2010. Questions and their responses in Tzeltal. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2627-2648. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.003Search in Google Scholar
Bruce, Les. 1984. The Alamblak language of Papua New Guinea (East Sepik). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Search in Google Scholar
Casillas, Marisa. 2014. Taking the floor on time: Delay and deferral in children’s turn taking. In I. Arnon, M. Casillas, C. Kurumada and B. Estigarribia (eds), Language in Interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark, 101-114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/tilar.12.09casSearch in Google Scholar
Casillas, Marisa, Susan C. Bobb and Eve V. Clark. In press. Turn taking, timing and planning in early language acquisition. Journal of Child Language. Search in Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 2003. First language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Search in Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. and Kate L. Lindsey. 2015. Turn-taking: A case study of early gesture and word use in answering WHERE and WHICH questions. Frontiers in Psychology 6. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00890 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00890Search in Google Scholar
Cysouw, Michael. 2004. Interrogative words: An exercise in lexical typology. Paper presented at Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory Workshop 3, 13 February. ZAS Berlin, Germany. Search in Google Scholar
Cysouw, Michael. 2007. Content interrogatives in Ashéninca Campa: Corpus study and typological comparison. International Journal of American Linguistics 73(2): 133-163. 10.1086/519056Search in Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J. 2010. Questions and responses in Lao. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2649–2665. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.004Search in Google Scholar
Englert, Christina. 2010. Questions and responses in Dutch conversations. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2666–2684. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.005Search in Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan M. 1970. Discourse agreement: How children answer questions. In R. Hayes (ed.), Cognition and language learning, 79-107. New York: Wiley and Sons. Search in Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan M. 1979. Children’s verbal turn-taking. In Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin (eds), Developmental pragmatics, 391-414. New York: Academic Press. Search in Google Scholar
Fedden, Sebastian. 2011. A grammar of Mian. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 10.1515/9783110264197Search in Google Scholar
Foley, William A. 1986. Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Search in Google Scholar
Giles, Glenda. No date. A guide to the pronunciation of Duna [and] Duna language lessons. Manuscript. Search in Google Scholar
Guirardello-Damian, Raquel. 2002. The syntax and semantics of posture forms in Trumai. In John Newman (ed.), The linguistics of sitting, standing and lying, 141-177. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.51.08guiSearch in Google Scholar
Haley, Nicole. 2002. Ipakana yakaiya - Mapping landscapes, mapping lives: Contemporary land politics among the Duna. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Search in Google Scholar
Hayashi, Makoto. 2010. An overview of the question-response system in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2685-2702. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.006Search in Google Scholar
Healey, Patrick G. T., Matthew Purver and Christine Howes. 2014. Divergence in Dialogue. PLoS ONE 9(6): e98598. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098598 10.1371/journal.pone.0098598Search in Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi and Friederike Hünnermeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Search in Google Scholar
Heinemann, Trine. 2010. The question-response system of Danish. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2703-2725. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.007Search in Google Scholar
Hendery, Rachel. 2012. Relative clauses in time and space: A case study in the methods of diachronic typology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.101Search in Google Scholar
Idiatov, Dmitry. 2007. A typology of non-selective interrogative pronominals. PhD dissertation, Universiteit Antwerpen. Search in Google Scholar
Kitzinger, Celia, Gene H. Lerner, Jörg Zinken, Sue Wilkinson, Heidi Kevoe-Feldman and Sonja Ellis. 2013. Reformulating place. Journal of Pragmatics 55: 43-50. 10.1016/j.pragma.2013.05.007Search in Google Scholar
Lang, Adrienne. 1973. Enga dictionary with English index. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Search in Google Scholar
Lang, Adrienne. 1975. The semantics of classificatory verbs in Enga (and other Papua New Guinea languages). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Search in Google Scholar
Levelt, Willem J. M. and Stephanie Kelter. 1982. Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology 14: 78-106. 10.1016/0010-0285(82)90005-6Search in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2010. Questions and responses in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2741-2755. Search in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2012. Interrogative intimations: On a possible social economics of interrogatives. In Jan P. de Ruiter (ed.), Questions: Formal, functional, and interactive perspectives, 11-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139045414.003Search in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. and David Wilkins (eds). 2006a. Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486753Search in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. and David Wilkins. 2006b. The background to the study of the language of space. In Stephen C. Levinson and David Wilkins (eds), Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486753.002Search in Google Scholar
Loughnane, Robyn. 2009. A grammar of Oksapmin. PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/4788 Search in Google Scholar
Mackenzie, J. Laclan. 2009. Content interrogatives in a sample of 50 languages. Lingua 119: 1131-1163. 10.1016/j.lingua.2007.12.005Search in Google Scholar
Mallory, J. P. and D. Q. Adams. 2006. The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Search in Google Scholar
Preacher, Kristopher J. 2001. Calculation for the chi-square test: An interactive calculation tool for chi-square tests of goodness of fit and independence [Computer software]. http://quantpsy.org. Search in Google Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 2005. Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages. In Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson and Robin Hide (eds). Papuan pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 15-65. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Search in Google Scholar
Rumsey, Alan. 2002. Men stand, women sit: On the grammaticalisation of posture verbs in Papuan languages, its bodily basis and cultural correlates. In John Newman (ed.), The linguistics of sitting, standing and lying, 179–211. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.51.09rumSearch in Google Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold M. and Arnold M. Zwicky. 1985. Speech act distinctions in syntax. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Volume I: Clause structure, 155-196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Search in Google Scholar
San Roque, Lila. 2008. An introduction to Duna grammar. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Search in Google Scholar
San Roque, Lila and Robyn Loughnane. 2012. Inheritance, contact and change in the New Guinea Highlands evidentiality area. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia: Special Issue 2012 Part II, 397-427. Search in Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.1972. Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D. Sudnow (ed.), Studies in social interaction, 75-119. New York: Free Press. Search in Google Scholar
Schegloff , Emanuel A. 1996. Some practices for referring to persons in talk-in-interaction: A partial sketch of a systematics. In Barbara Fox (ed.), Studies in anaphora, 437-485. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.33.14schSearch in Google Scholar
Schmerse, Daniel, Elena Lieven and Michael Tomasello. 2013. Error patterns in young German children’s wh-questions. Journal of Child Language 40: 656-671 doi:10.1017/S0305000912000104 10.1017/S0305000912000104Search in Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter. 2001. Interrogative constructions. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher and Wolfgang Raible (eds), Language typology and language universals, 1010-1028. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110194265-014Search in Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2010. An overview of the question-response system in American English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2772-2781. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.011Search in Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya and N. J. Enfield. 2010. A coding scheme for question-response seqeunces in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2620-2626. 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.002Search in Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, N. J. Enfield, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Makato Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoymann, Federico Rossano, Jan P. de Ruiter, Kyung-EunYoon and Stephen C. Levinson. 2009. Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106(26): 10587-10592. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903616106. 10.1073/pnas.0903616106Search in Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, N. J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson (eds). 2010. Question-response sequences in conversation across ten languages. [Special Issue] Journal of Pragmatics 42(10). 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.002Search in Google Scholar
Tyack, Dorothy and David Ingram. 1977. Children’s production and comprehension of questions. Journal of Child Language 4: 211-224 doi:10.1017/S0305000900001616 10.1017/S0305000900001616Search in Google Scholar
Ultan, Russell. 1978. Some general characteristics of interrogative systems. In Joseph H. Greenberg, (ed.). Universals of human language, Vol. IV, 211-248. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Search in Google Scholar
van Putten, Saskia. 2014. Information structure in Avatime. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Search in Google Scholar
Wilkins, David P. 2002. The concept of place among the Arrernte. In Luise Hercus, Flavia Hodges and Jane Simpson (eds), The land is a map: Placenames of indigenous origin in Australia, 24-41. Canberra: Pandanus Books. Search in Google Scholar
Wilkins, David P. 2006. Towards an Arrernte grammar of space. In Stephen C. Levinson and David P. Wilkins (eds), Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity, 24-62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486753.003Search in Google Scholar
Zhang, Sihong. 2014. Evidentiality in Ersu. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon (eds), The grammar of knowledge: A cross-linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Search in Google Scholar
© 2016 Lila San Roque
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
