1.
Y/N questions:
+. A Y/N question is an interrogative construction (such as, “ Are you
ready?”) that expects an answer of either “yes” or “no”.
+ In y/n questions, an auxiliary verb typically appears in front of the subject-
a formation called subject-auxiliary inversion.
Three varieties of Yes-No questions
- There are three types of yes/no questions: the inverted question, the
inversion with an alternative (Which may require more than a simple yes
or no answer), and the tag question.
Are you going (inversion)
Are you staying or going? (inversion with an alternative)
You’re going, aren’t you? (tag).
- In an inverted question, the subject and the first verb of the verb phrases
are inverted when that verb is either a modal or an auxiliary verb or with
the verb.
She is leaving on Wednesday. (statement)
Is she leaving on Wednesday? (question)
- The question itself may be positive or negative. A positive question
appears to be neutral with regard to the expected response- yes or no. A
negative question seems to hold out the distinct possibility of a negative
response.
Are you going? (Y/N)
Aren’t you going? (N)
The Use of Y/N questions in Polls and surveys
- Often used in surveys to people’s attitudes with regard to specific ideas
or beliefs. When enough data is gathered, those conducting the survey
will have measure based on population.
Typical examples of survey questions:
Are you in favor of increasing library funding? _Yes_No
Do you support re-electing this candidate?_Yes_No
Examples of Yes-No questions:
Homer: “Are you an angel?
Moe: “Yes, Homer. All us angels wear Farrah slacks.”
-“ The Simpsons”
Principal Mcgee: “Are you just going to stand there all day?
Sonny: “No ma’am. I mean, ye ma’am. I mean, no ma’am.
WH- questions: Wh questions are questions are question starting with WH-words
including: What, when, where, who, whom, which, whose, why and how
1. What: used to ask about things
Ex: What are you doing?
2. When: used to ask about time
Ex: When will the meeting start?
3. Where: used to ask about places
Ex: Where’s my bag?
4. Who: used to ask about people
Ex: Who do you love the most in your family?
5. Whom: used to ask about people (object of verb)
Ex: Whom did you see in the morning? I saw Mr.Mark my English
teacher.
6. Which: used to ask about choices
Ex: Which one do you choose? The left or right?
7. Whose: used to ask about possession
Ex: Whose pencil is this?
8. Why: used to ask about reasons/causes
Ex: Why did it happen? I didn’t understand.
9. How: used to ask about manner/process
Ex: How can you explain this problem?
How to form WH- questions?
1. With an auxiliary
Wh-word + auxiliary + subject + main verb…?
What do you for a living?
Why should we read books?
When is she coming?
2. Without any auxiliary
Wh-word + main verb…?
What happened to Peter?
Deep structure and surface structure
*Deep structure?
- In transformational and generative grammar, deep structure is the
underlying syntactic structure- or level-of a sentence.
- Abstract representation that identifies the ways a sentence can be
analyzed and interpreted.
* Properties of Deep structure
Four important properties:
1. Major grammatical relations
2. All lexical
3. All transformations
4. Semantic
Examples and observations
Chomsky had indentified a basic grammatical structure in Syntactic
structures(1957) that he referred to as kernel senetences. Reflecting mentalese,
kernel senetences were where words and meaning first appeared in the complex
cognititve process that resultted in an utterance. (In aspects of the Theory of
Syntax, 1965).
Deep structure is a representation of the syntax of a senetence (By P.H
Mathhews, Oxford University press, 2007).
Surface structure
- Transformational and generative grammar, is the outward form of a
sentence.
- Corresponds to the version of a senetence that can be spoken and
heard.
Examples and observations
“The surface structure of a sentence is the final stage in the syntactic
represenatation of a sentence, which provides the input to the phonological
component of the grammar. (By David Crystal, A dictionary of Linguistics and
Phonetics, Wiley 2011).
Surface structure cues and stratergies of the sentence often provides a number
of obvious cues to the underlying syntactic representation. One obvious
approach is to use these cues and a number of simple strategies that enable us
to compute the syntactic structure. (By Trevor A. Harley, The psychology of
Language: From Data to Theory, 4th d. Psychology Press, 2014.)
