Is the tone of voice used in English to ask a question present in all languages?

[KarlGauss]

In English, we can make virtually any statement into a question by changing the way we say and emphasize the words.

So, for example, we can transform the declaration, "It's raining outside" into the question "It's raining outside?" simply by raising the 'note' of the word "outside". Maybe 'note' is the wrong term, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Is this universal among spoken languages?

[Euryphaessa]

I've been learning a very little bit of Italian, and changing intonation seems to be the way you ask any question (as opposed to using interrogatory words like how, when, why, etc.). Make a statement, but raise the intonation.

To quote Miss Swan from MadTV, "Question go UP at the end!"

[yabob]

Hell, it doesn't work in ENGLISH as well as it used to.

It seems to me that I used to be able to ask questions this way reliably. These days, "It's raining outside?" turned into a question by intonation is likely to get you a response like "Well that's OK. I have an umbrella", to which you have to amplify with "No, I'm asking. Is it raining outside?"

See a phenomenon called "uptalk" or "high rising terminal":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

I don't know if that bears any of the responsibility, or if something else is making people "intonation deaf".

[Arrogance Ex Machina]

Most of the time it's not used in Finnish, but I could imagine it being used when offering something and asking if you want some, as in "Bread?" or "Water?". Wikipedia's Finnish pages note that even that is a recent thing. For something like asking whether it rains outside, asking a proper question would be far more natural than trying to turn a statement into a question with intonation.

[Gagundathar]

Living languages may be distinguished from dead languages by their ability to add and subtract from their lexicons based upon cultural changes.

Change am be good, Twencen geezers!

[Animastryfe]

Mandarin uses very similar intonation as English when asking questions. I think Japanese does as well.

I despise uptalk. Too many people at my university use it.

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by Gagundathar

Living languages may be distinguished from dead languages by their ability to add and subtract from their lexicons based upon cultural changes.

Change am be good, Twencen geezers!

10-4!

[Larry Mudd]

Originally Posted by Animastryfe

Mandarin uses very similar intonation as English when asking questions.

One of the hardest things about trying to learn Mandarin is avoiding the impulse to use a rising tone at the end of a sentence, because this almost always changes the meaning of the ultimate word.

[Max the Immortal]

Originally Posted by yabob

Hell, it doesn't work in ENGLISH as well as it used to.

It seems to me that I used to be able to ask questions this way reliably. These days, "It's raining outside?" turned into a question by intonation is likely to get you a response like "Well that's OK. I have an umbrella", to which you have to amplify with "No, I'm asking. Is it raining outside?"

See a phenomenon called "uptalk" or "high rising terminal":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

I don't know if that bears any of the responsibility, or if something else is making people "intonation deaf".

To me at least, "uptalk" does not sound the same as asking a question. I find it odd that some people describe it as such.

[Eliahna]

We who speak Australian English are infamous for our rising inflection? Apparently we go up at the end of every sentence? Foreigners find it very annoying? Adam Hills says we're all just too insecure to make a statement?

[OldnCrinkly]

A statement can be a question when you change your inflection in Arabic.

[KarlGauss]

Thanks . . . and thanks for the link (which links to some other interesting ones).

Part of the motivation for my question (assuming it was answered in the affirmative, plus/minus a few exceptions) was to then ask: where does the phenomenon come from? Are our human language centres 'hard-wired' to understand the changed intonation (and to use it in the first place)? In fact, I think dogs may possess something similar ('You want to go the park' ==> no response vs 'You want to go the park?' ==> hysterical jumping and running on the spot scratching the hell out of the floor)

[Johanna]

Many languages use enclitic particles to signal a question, instead of intonation.

Classical Arabic uses the prefixes a- or hal in front of a declarative phrase to make it a question.

The other interrogative particles I know of come after the phrase:
Japanese ka
Malay ka
Mandarin Chinese ma
Turkish mi

[Johanna]

By the way, the Chinese interrogative particle ma is not pronounced with a rising intonation, but with a flat neutral tone.

[Larry Mudd]

Originally Posted by Johanna

By the way, the Chinese interrogative particle ma is not pronounced with a rising intonation, but with a flat neutral tone.

So, this is why I had such a hard time making myself understood cannabis.

[hibernicus]

Originally Posted by Johanna

Many languages use enclitic particles to signal a question, instead of intonation.

Classical Arabic uses the prefixes a- or hal in front of a declarative phrase to make it a question.

The other interrogative particles I know of come after the phrase:
Japanese ka
Malay ka
Mandarin Chinese ma
Turkish mi

Finnish ko
Bulgarian li

The answer to the OP is "yes and no" for Japanese. If you do use the interrogative particle ka, you don't need a rising intonation. But you can make a question out of a phrase by using rising intonation.

Kore wa nan desu ka? (no rising intonation): What is this?
Kore wa? (with rising intonation): And what about this?

[Animastryfe]

Originally Posted by Larry Mudd

One of the hardest things about trying to learn Mandarin is avoiding the impulse to use a rising tone at the end of a sentence, because this almost always changes the meaning of the ultimate word.

Actually, you are probably right. This is odd. I am ethnically Chinese, and my first language is Mandarin, yet I consider my native language to be English. I had just considered this question a bit more, and it seems that my mind just adds the rising intonation to the end of mandarin question sentences.

I know that the Japanese language uses 'ka' at the end of sentences to signify a question, but I think in this case the rising intonation is still usually used, at least based on my experience.

[pulykamell]

Originally Posted by hibernicus

Finnish ko
Bulgarian li

Also, Serbo-Croat li, Polish czy, Slovenian ali.

[Johanna]

...and British wot

[shijinn]

Originally Posted by Animastryfe

... and it seems that my mind just adds the rising intonation to the end of mandarin question sentences. ...

i do that too. it would be interesting to know if monolingual Chinese do not do that.

[naita]

In Norwegian you have to change the word order. Tone is insufficient.

"Det regner ute!"
"Regner det ute?"

[JKellyMap]

Originally Posted by KarlGauss

Thanks . . . and thanks for the link (which links to some other interesting ones).

Part of the motivation for my question (assuming it was answered in the affirmative, plus/minus a few exceptions) was to then ask: where does the phenomenon come from? Are our human language centres 'hard-wired' to understand the changed intonation (and to use it in the first place)? In fact, I think dogs may possess something similar ('You want to go the park' ==> no response vs 'You want to go the park?' ==> hysterical jumping and running on the spot scratching the hell out of the floor)

Good question. But might dogs be smart enough to learn the proper response to a rising intonation, just as humans (in an appropriate linguistic community) do?

That is, the dog test might not be enough to settle the "nature" vs. "nurture" aspect.

But if you can show me that an overwhelming percentage of more-or-less independent languages (let's say, separated at least by Indo-Euro-level clades) do use rising tone for interrogatives, then we might have some basis to suspect "nature".

But, lots of evidence among responses in this thread to imply that this is NOT the case.

[ratatoskK]

I have heard that in Russian, when asking a question, the rising intonation is in the middle of the sentence, and the latter part is lower.

[septimus]

(In traditional English, "Why are you going?" doesn't rise in tone, while "Are you going?" does. The former already contains a question word.)

In Thai, statements are turned into yes/no questions by appending a word or phrase like the equivalants of "or not", "or", or, most commonly, ไหม . The words "or" and "not" have respectively rising and falling tone. But the most common questioning word, ไหม, has rising tone.

That word transliterates as mai, just as does the word for "not", ไม่. The only difference is the tone. I've wondered if the word ไหม, (meaning "or not?") evolved by tone-shift from ไม่ ("not").

Women append the polite word ค่ะ (kha, falling tone) to answers, and the word ค๊ะ (kha, rising tone) to questions. Lacking any expertise I can only guess that this may conform to OP's hypothesis.

[hogarth]

Originally Posted by Johanna

...and British wot

I thought the British used "innit" for questions.

[Balthisar]

Originally Posted by shijinn

i do that too. it would be interesting to know if monolingual Chinese do not do that.

They don't. Chinese use tones as part of the pronunciation. If you said "ma" with a rising tone, you probably wouldn't be understood. With the wrong tones, it's impossible to order pijiu (beer) in a bar -- I've tried.

Many times I don't know something is a question unless I hear "ma" at the end, or there's another question word. For what it's worth, not all questions in Mandarin (maybe most questions?) don't end with "ma"; instead there's another interrogatory word in the sentence that makes it a question. "Ni shi na ge ren?" Basically, "what's your nationality?" shows (a) my bad understanding of tones because I do know how to type them, and (b) that "na" is the question word, not "ma" at the end.

As for rising tones in English denoting questions, one of the characteristics that will mark you as being from southern Ontario (Canada) is your tendency to finish declaratory sentences with a rising, question-like tone. It's not the "aboot" or the "hoose" or the "Chesterfield" that gives it away; it's sounding like you're asking questions all the time!

[cjepson]

Originally Posted by naita

"Det regner ute!"
"Regner det ute?"

Yeah, well so's yer mom.

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Originally Posted by Max the Immortal

To me at least, "uptalk" does not sound the same as asking a question. I find it odd that some people describe it as such.

Agreed.

Also, without any context, "It's raining outside?" doesn't make any sense as a question. It would only make sense if it was, say, confirming implied rain. In which case there would be much less ambiguity.

[even sven]

Fulfulde, a west African language, does not. Fulfulde uses "na" as a question word (along with the equivalents of who, what, where, when, how and why). The "na" is usually fairly flat. In fact, it sounds a lot like the mandarin "ma".

[cwthree]

Originally Posted by Johanna

Many languages use enclitic particles to signal a question, instead of intonation.

Classical Arabic uses the prefixes a- or hal in front of a declarative phrase to make it a question.

The other interrogative particles I know of come after the phrase:
Japanese ka
Malay ka
Mandarin Chinese ma
Turkish mi

Persian uses the auxiliary word "aayaa" at the beginning of yes-no type questions (aayaa fardaa miravi / Are you going tomorrow?).

[shijinn]

Originally Posted by Balthisar

They don't. Chinese use tones as part of the pronunciation. If you said "ma" with a rising tone, you probably wouldn't be understood. With the wrong tones, it's impossible to order pijiu (beer) in a bar -- I've tried.

Many times I don't know something is a question unless I hear "ma" at the end, or there's another question word. For what it's worth, not all questions in Mandarin (maybe most questions?) don't end with "ma"; instead there's another interrogatory word in the sentence that makes it a question. "Ni shi na ge ren?" Basically, "what's your nationality?" shows (a) my bad understanding of tones because I do know how to type them, and (b) that "na" is the question word, not "ma" at the end.

...

i don't use 'ma' with a rising tone. i could use the rising tone with 'pijiu?' while proffering a beer to a friend. while i would not phrase it this way (or even use the interrogative), i could ask, "ni zhe li you mei you mai pijiu?" with a rising tone.

i think you meant to type, "ni shi na guo ren?". otherwise you'll be asking, "Are you that man?"

as for other interrogative words, here are a few:
who - shui
when - ji shi
why - wei shen me
what - shen me
how - zen me
where - na li

[Balthisar]

Originally Posted by shijinn

i think you meant to type, "ni shi na guo ren?". otherwise you'll be asking, "Are you that man?"

Oops, yup!

[Noone Special]

In Hebrew, it's possible and normal to ask a question by inflection - yored geshem in a flat tone: "it's raining"; yored geshem? with a rising tone at the end: "Is it raining?"

It's also possible to build a question using an initial ha'im - ha'im yored geshem, where the end of the last word may or may not rise, is clearly a question.

[hibernicus]

Originally Posted by cwthree

Persian uses the auxiliary word "aayaa" at the beginning of yes-no type questions (aayaa fardaa miravi / Are you going tomorrow?).

We do that in English too: aayaa going tomorrow?

[guizot]

Originally Posted by septimus

(In traditional English, "Why are you going?" doesn't rise in tone, while "Are you going?" does.

Right--only a yes-no question follows the pattern which the OP is taking about, but the OP seem to imply that that is the only intonation pattern for asking a question in English.

Also, consider the following:

Do you want coffee or tea?

This can be asked with two different intonation patterns, which have two completely different meanings. If you ask this question without any fall in intonation, it simply asks the interlocutor whether s/he wants something to drink, providing two possibilities. If you ask the question with a sharp falling intonation on the word tea, then the question implies that the interlocutor must chose between coffee or tea, (and cannot, for example, have both).

There actually are three very different general intonation patterns in English for asking a question. Also, there are a variety of ways to stress and intone non-yes-no questions to illicit specific information. The very fact that a dialect of English such as Yiddish-influenced English employs specific question intonation patterns (non-syntactic questions, related to what Noone Special mentions above.) more than other dialects should answer the OPs questions pretty clearly.

[KarlGauss]

Originally Posted by guizot

. . . but the OP seem to imply that that is the only intonation pattern for asking a question in English.

I hope that's not how people have been taking it, because I didn't mean in that way. My point (and statement) was merely that "in English, we can make virtually any statement into a question by changing the way we say and emphasize the words."

[LawMonkey]

Originally Posted by ratatoskK

I have heard that in Russian, when asking a question, the rising intonation is in the middle of the sentence, and the latter part is lower.

Where you put the intonation depends on what you're emphasizing in the question. So if you ask (and damn me for not having Cyrillic here) "Gdye moi slon?", with the tone on the "gdye", you're asking "Where is my elephant?" But if you put the tone on "moi," it becomes "Where is my elephant (as opposed to all of these other elephants that aren't mine)?"

Also, the tone itself is different--it's more of a rising-falling thing. Sounds sort of indignant.

[LawMonkey]

Had also meant to say that there's a particle (li) that can be used to indicate a yes-no question, in which case I don't believe the intonation needs to change.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by KarlGauss

I hope that's not how people have been taking it, because I didn't mean in that way. My point (and statement) was merely that "in English, we can make virtually any statement into a question by changing the way we say and emphasize the words."

Okay, I see. It was the follow-up ("Are our human language centres 'hard-wired' to understand the changed intonation"), because the implication is that intonation is "hard-wired" specifically to indicate interrogation.

But we can see from the many tonal languages, where it's a semantic marker, that there's nothing specifically interrogative about it for the human brain. Obviously tone is something that all (developmentally normal) humans perceive. It's just one of the many contours human uitilize to shape the sounds they produce. I think, from everything I've seen, that universalities in language are more about what language does, rather than how language does it.

[dnooman]

Originally Posted by yabob

Hell, it doesn't work in ENGLISH as well as it used to.

It seems to me that I used to be able to ask questions this way reliably. These days, "It's raining outside?" turned into a question by intonation is likely to get you a response like "Well that's OK. I have an umbrella", to which you have to amplify with "No, I'm asking. Is it raining outside?"

See a phenomenon called "uptalk" or "high rising terminal":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

I don't know if that bears any of the responsibility, or if something else is making people "intonation deaf".

This phenomenon annoys the Hell out of me. "I thought you were going to bring it" is a declarative statement and should end in a period. "I thought you were going to bring it?" Is still a declarative statement, with improper punctuation. Even when the voice goes up at the end to signify a question, the words still make a declarative statement. Declarative statements should not yield answers!

[Interconnected Series of Tubes]

Originally Posted by dnooman

This phenomenon annoys the Hell out of me. "I thought you were going to bring it" is a declarative statement and should end in a period. "I thought you were going to bring it?" Is still a declarative statement, with improper punctuation. Even when the voice goes up at the end to signify a question, the words still make a declarative statement. Declarative statements should not yield answers!

I thought languages were supposed to change and evolve over time?

[yabob]

Originally Posted by dnooman

This phenomenon annoys the Hell out of me. "I thought you were going to bring it" is a declarative statement and should end in a period. "I thought you were going to bring it?" Is still a declarative statement, with improper punctuation. Even when the voice goes up at the end to signify a question, the words still make a declarative statement. Declarative statements should not yield answers!

Well, "rising intonation = question" is a well established convention in spoken English. It seems to me that NOT recognizing it is something relatively new. And, yes, written dialog may indicate it by placing a question mark on the grammatically declarative sentence to convey the speaker's intent.

[spqrobert]

Originally Posted by yabob

Hell, it doesn't work in ENGLISH as well as it used to.

It seems to me that I used to be able to ask questions this way reliably. These days, "It's raining outside?" turned into a question by intonation is likely to get you a response like "Well that's OK. I have an umbrella", to which you have to amplify with "No, I'm asking. Is it raining outside?"

See a phenomenon called "uptalk" or "high rising terminal":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

I don't know if that bears any of the responsibility, or if something else is making people "intonation deaf".

I've noticed this phenomenon, too. I think it has to do with the emphasis on written tests in the US school system. I remember in my elementary school the teachers absolutely forbade the students from speaking to each other and ran their classrooms more like military barracks than the training ground for citizens in a free society. I remember very well taking fill-in-the-blank tests on SMALL TALK, like, "How are you?" or "Is it raining outside?" without any opportunity to actually practice it. I also remember notes from my teachers like, "Do this in your free time, not on the school's time" when I would eschew filling in the blanks and write something freely. And I went to school just before it was common to have a personal computer, AND before No Child Left Behind, which, from what I've read, has only increased the use of written tests. I always remember elementary school accusingly when I meet these tone-deaf people, who are the majority of people in the US in my experience. I am so sure the main reason is the school system that whenever I hear a politician criticizing the teachers' unions I vote for them.

[Kiyoshi]

Originally Posted by ratatoskK

I have heard that in Russian, when asking a question, the rising intonation is in the middle of the sentence, and the latter part is lower.

Greek is similar. At the end of a question, the pitch goes up, then down.

[Freakenstein]

Originally Posted by Arrogance Ex Machina

Most of the time it's not used in Finnish, but I could imagine it being used when offering something and asking if you want some, as in "Bread?" or "Water?".

In My experience it's been used seldom and only in one word sentences making the whole word higher than in normal speech ( and You gotta raise Your eyebrows ).

If the tone slides up, it's only in questions like 'Whaaaaattt?!?!?!?!?'

[HoneyBadgerDC]

Ever notice how a dog or cat will tilt their head just like a human when they are wondering about something?

[njtt]

Originally Posted by Johanna

Many languages use enclitic particles to signal a question, instead of intonation.

Classical Arabic uses the prefixes a- or hal in front of a declarative phrase to make it a question.

The other interrogative particles I know of come after the phrase:
Japanese ka
Malay ka
Mandarin Chinese ma
Turkish mi

Or the English huh.

[Leo Bloom]

Originally Posted by Noone Special

In Hebrew, it's possible and normal to ask a question by inflection - yored geshem in a flat tone: "it's raining"; yored geshem? with a rising tone at the end: "Is it raining?"

It's also possible to build a question using an initial ha'im - ha'im yored geshem, where the end of the last word may or may not rise, is clearly a question.

I've always thought that using ha'im was a more forceful thing, absolutely declaring the whole sentence is a question. Sort of like a lawyer asking a witness "is it the case that....?"