There is a type of sentence that is becoming more and more widespread in the US. It used to be expressed more verbally, but now people have started adding it to their written communications, e.g. the SDMB, emails, etc.
Examples:
I want to see a movie, but I can’t find the theater?
I would go out with him, but I don’t like the way he dresses?
Anyway, there are several cases when a declarative statement is made, but pronounced using a question-tone-of-voice at the end of the sentence.
I thought this was a feature of American pronunciation (and initially, I thought this was more widespread among women), but, I guess, due to the informality of email and message boards, people started putting question marks at the end of declarative statements in written communication.
For the linguists out there: what type of sentence is this?
It seems to be something between a declarative statement and an interrogative question.
I want to see a movie, but [… do you understand the implications if I say that] I can’t find the theater?
I would go out with him, but […do you comprehend what it means if I says that ] I don’t like the way he dresses?
The part that’s being question-marked is some form of “and you get what that’s like, and how it has bearing, right? I don’t need to go into why that’s relevant?”
It’s bad enough to listen to it; now I can’t believe people are writing like that. There’s no name for it, probably because it’s a new phenomenon. When people talk like that it makes their IQ sound 15 points lower. I think the intonation is related to Valley Girl speak, not sure when the written version arose.
Somebody (I think it may have been Bill Bryson) christened it the “Universal Australian Interrogative” inflection, based on its prevalence in Australian soaps such as |Neighbours in the 1980s.
I hear people ending declaratives with a rising tone all the time. (“I went to the store? I bought some milk? I got back in the car? And came directly home.”) But you seem to be talking about something more than that. Both your examples involve a “but” clause. Was that intentional? Is that part of the phenomenon you’re talking about?
Can you find some examples of this usage online to point us to?
The examples you gave are part of the pattern. Someone might say:
“See, I went to the store? And there was this guy? And he asked me to give him some money? I mean WTF?”
Initially, people only spoke like that, but I see it more often now in writing.
A related form of this pattern is when an answer is given, with a question mark at the end: Question : “Why do old men wear their baseball caps that way?”
Answer: “They forget how to adjust the size?”
The answer could be rephrased as
“Could the reason be that they forget how to adjust the size?”
but this latter formulation is not as declarative as “They forget how to adjust the size?”
“They forget how to adjust the size?” seems to indicate that the speaker is more sure that that could be a possible answer, than if he were to ask “Could the reason be that they forget how to adjust the size?”
In the first type, the rising tone as if it were a question is a way (IMHO) of saying, “I’m at what grammatically sounds like the end of a sentence but I’m not really done so it’s not your turn to talk yet.”
The second example, a written question mark, is a completely different phenomenon, where the speaker (writer) is making a guess or a suggestion that is not intended to be an authoritative answer, as if it began with “Because. . .” Other similar usages tend to the same device used sarcastically:
“Why does Jolt Cola keep me awake at night?”
“It has the highest concentration of caffeine in any commercial soft drink?”
Here the writer is pretending to suggest a non-authoritative answer which in fact is obvious to anyone except the person who posed the question.
It’s not just Valley Girls who have apparent question marks at the end of declarative sentences. An old friend of mine spent part of his Army time in Germany. He met and married a German girl, and he stayed there a couple more years after the Army let him go. When he came back? Most of his sentences sounded like questions? He didn’t pronounce his words like Dr. Z, but everything sounded like questions?
I have a friend who theorizes that this habit comes from speaking to people whose first language isn’t English. Every sentence is therefore subconsciously ended with an interrogative meaning “did you understand what I just said?”. The Aussies, being the greatest backpackers of the past, brought it home with them and from there it spread. (Not sure how it got to the Valley though).
I should have said, he came up with this after having lived in Japan for many years, and ended up speaking English like this, despite not hanging round with Aussies or Valley Girls.
I’ve always interpreted most examples of this usage as simply signalling “I’m not finished with what I’m saying yet.” Once they end a declarative on a downward moving tone, then they are signalling “That’s all I had to say.”
This holds in natural conversation in general, as far as I can tell.
This is also attributed to southern women and has been for a long time. There is nothing specifically non-native or non-English speaking about it.
IIRC, someone, maybe Deborah Tannen in one of her books, explains this as a softening of declarative statements made by women so that they don’t seem to come on as being forceful or overbearing. It’s a learned behavior and so can presumably be unlearned, but I can see how it would be very difficult to do so. If we’re seeing it more in print today that’s merely because more people put more casual writing before the public.
I agree that it’s very irritating for those who aren’t used to it. At least it’s usually literate, and that makes it less irritating than many posts that people put up on the Net.
I think the question mark is the only way to do it. A literal “translation” would be something like “I would have thought the answer is obvious–‘because they don’t exist’–but since you are asking the question, I must assume either you are missing the obvious or you know something I don’t. Charitably, I will assume you are not missing the obvious. So I am left with no recourse but to answer, tentatively, ‘because they don’t exist,’ with the hope that you’ve got some better answer than that in mind. If you don’t, I warn you, you are under threat of being stupid for missing the obvious.”
An interesting article from the Guardian - Word Up.
I’m not sure if anyone has considered the natural speech inflections of a language like Welsh. To my untrained ear, the thick Swansea accent of my wifes second cousin (and family) seem to follow the same pattern. Of course that may be because they want to make sure that we understand what they are saying…frequently English seems like a foreign language.
Bill Cosby had a routine (My Dad’s Car) about driving his dads car and not leaving any gas in it when he brought it home. His dad takes him outside and shows him the gas cap:
Dad: What’s that?
Bill: That’s a gas cap?
Dad: Are you sure of it?
Bill: Yeah.
Dad: Then say it like you’re sure of it.
Bill: That’s a gas cap, dad.
etc…
From the time I heard that routine (at the age of 9ish) I will ask an uptalker if they are sure of what they are talking about, usually by asking “Are you asking me or telling me?” Yes, my kids will probably stop talking to me when they start bringing this home…