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Developing a Comparative Model of Predicted Associations for Invariable Question Tag Types in British English and European Portuguese

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Constructional and Cognitive Explorations of Contrastive Linguistics

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Abstract

The present chapter scrutinises invariable question tags in British English and European Portuguese from a contrastive point of view. Most previous research focuses on variable question tags and, if contrastive, compares other languages. This study shows that invariable question tags are more frequent and varied in European Portuguese than in British English. Furthermore, the results reveal that, while some invariable question tags appear across the two languages, others are registered only in one of them, despite the existence of equivalent expressions in the other. Additional asymmetries emerge concerning linguistic features of invariable question tags across the two languages. Based on the significant correlations between invariable question tags and their features, a model of predicted associations is put forward.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Swales (1990: 228–9) defines “move” as a “discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative function in a written or spoken discourse”.

  2. 2.

    The examples were extracted from either ICE-GB or the European Portuguese component of C-ORAL-ROM. In the British English examples the citation <S1b-062 #137: B> corresponds to mode (S = spoken), section (1), subsection (b), text number (062), turn (#137), subtext (1) and speaker (B). Turns are given without punctuation and the only prosodic detail provided in this corpus is the marking of pauses <,> and longer pauses <,>. Likewise, in the European Portuguese examples, the annotation <CORALRpfamdl01> stands for the represented language (‘p’-Portuguese), the text type, that is, field (‘fam’-family) and subfield (‘dl’-dialogue) to which each text belongs and the serial number that identifies each text in its subfield (01). There are several conventions for prosodic tagging, namely: // signals conclusive prosodic break, / non conclusive break, and ? (optional), which marks a break of an utterance with an interrogative value.

  3. 3.

    This study targets invariable tag questions in European Portuguese, and, thus, Brazilian Portuguese was not considered. Between the two varieties there are some parallelisms, but some disparities as well. For more information, the reader is referred to Duarte (1985), Silva & Macedo (1992), Recsky (2006), Freitag (2008), Freitag et al. (2017), Carvalho & Kern (2019), among others.

  4. 4.

    It should be noted that the characterization of a TQ as either variable or invariable can be challenging (Allerton, 2009; Axelsson, 2011b; Hoffmann et al., 2014; Mithun, 2012; Tottie & Hoffmann, 2006, among others).

  5. 5.

    In EP, this construction is also named “interrogativas apêndice” (Barbosa et al., 2020; Peres, 2013).

  6. 6.

    Cruz-Ferreira (1981) distinguishes three types of TQ with ser (‘be’): variant tag with ser in the anchor, an invariant não + ser? with the same grammatical features of the anchor, and não é?, ‘a dummy tag’, in which é is a fixed morph and not an inflected form (Cruz-Ferreira, 1981: 344). However, the distinction between the three types is not without problems, in particular when the anchor verb is in the simple present. We will leave this issue for future research.

  7. 7.

    The most common VTQ in Standard BE and American English (Gómez González, 2014, 2018)—isn’t it?, can also be used in the same manner as não é?, that is, as an ITQ in some colloquial varieties of English – (i) – such as Welsh, Malaysian, Indian or Hong Kong (Achiri-Taboh, 2015: 51; Criado Peña, 2016; Trudgill & Hannah, 1994).

    1. (i)

      John doesn’t eat fish, isn’t it? (Achiri-Taboh, 2015: 51).

  8. 8.

    The ITQ né? is more common in Brazilian Portuguese. For more information about this ITQ, refer to Recksy (2006).

  9. 9.

    This label refers not only to cases of simple past with a terminative value (or ‘Pretérito Perfeito’ in Portuguese terminology), but also instances of the simple past with an imperfectum value (or ‘Pretérito Imperfeito’ in Portuguese terminology).

  10. 10.

    For an analysis of the association between functional types and types of answer, see Gómez González and Silvano (2022).

  11. 11.

    For estimating feature importance, variable Metapolarity is eliminated from the model since it is constructed from Polarity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Karin Aijmer, Karin Axelsson, Nicole Dehé, Lachlan Mackenzie, António Leal and Nicolas Hurst for their constructive comments, and to the USC Statistical Consulting Service for their helpful contribution to this work. The research was supported by the Spanish National Research Agency (FFI2013-40517-P; 2019-PN145; PID2019-105678RB-C21; TED2021-130283B-C21) and the Xunta de Galicia (GRC2015/002 GI-1924; ED431C 2019/01; XUGA 431C 2023/15). The usual disclaimers apply.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Purificação Silvano

  2. English and German Department, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain

    María Gómez González

Authors
  1. Purificação Silvano
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  2. María Gómez González
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Purificação Silvano .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Annalisa Baicchi

  2. Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Cristiano Broccias

Appendices

Appendix 1: Variables and Values Used in the Empirical Analysis

A. Dependent variables

  1. 1.

    ITQ types in BE and EP

B. Independent variables

Bi. Grammatical

  1. 1.

    Language

    1 = European Portuguese

    2 = British English

  2. 2.

    TQ position

    1 = final

    2 = medial

    3 = initial

  3. 3.

    Metapolarity

    1 = reversed (1 = positive-negative, 2 = negative-positive)

    2 = constant (3 = positive-positive, 4 = negative-negative)

    3 = neutral (5 = positive-neutral, 6 = negative-neutral)

  4. 4.

    Polartiy

    1 = positive-negative

    2 = negative-positive

    3 = positive-positive

    4 = negative-negative

    5 = positive-neutral

    6 = negative-neutral

  5. 5.

    Anchor mood

    1 = declarative

    2 = interrogative

    3 = imperative

    4 = exclamative

  6. 6.

    Truncated anchor

    1 = no

    2 = yes

  7. 7.

    Clause type

    1 = simple

    2 = complex-coord

    3 = complex-sub

    4 = not applicable

  8. 8.

    Anchor type of subject

    1 = noun

    2 = pronoun

    3 = null subject

    4 = quantifier

    5 = clause

    6 = not applicable

  9. 9.

    TQ type of subject

    1 = null subject

    2 = pronoun

    3 = not applicable

  10. 10.

    TQ tense

    1 = present

    2 = continuous (present/past)

    3 = not applicable

  11. 11.

    Anchor tense

    1 = present

    2 = past

    3 = future

    4 = perfect (present/past)

    5 = continuous (present/past)

    6 = gerund

    7 = conditional

    8 = imperative

    9 = infinitive

    10 = subjunctive (all tenses)

    11 = not applicable

Bii. Stance

  • 1 = epistemic

    2 = attitudinal

    3 = textual

    4 = deontic

Biii. Dialogic

  1. 1.

    Answer

    1 = no

    2 = other reply

    3 = self reply

Biv. Contextual

  1. 1.

    Genre

    1 = Private dialogues

    2 = Public dialogues

    3 = Monologues

Appendix 2: Contingency Tables

See Tables 19 and 20.

Table 19 Grammatical features of ITQs in BE
Full size table
Table 20 Grammatical features of ITQs in EP
Full size table

Appendix 3: Comparison of Equivalent ITQs in BE and EP

See Table 21.

Table 21 Features of equivalent ITQs types in BE and EP
Full size table

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Silvano, P., González, M.G. (2024). Developing a Comparative Model of Predicted Associations for Invariable Question Tag Types in British English and European Portuguese. In: Baicchi, A., Broccias, C. (eds) Constructional and Cognitive Explorations of Contrastive Linguistics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46602-1_10

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