145
unsurprising. By orienting an interrogative utterance away from the hearer and toward the
speaker, language is employed to indicate emotivity and no response is necessarily expected.
More traditional types of rhetorical questions (i.e. Sadock’s [1971]
queclaratives) are
also expressed by the combination of
ekan/eken and interrogativity.
(213)
O’sha inson o’z-i Insof nima-lig-i-ni bil-ar-mi-kan? (Uz)
That man self-3 fairness what-
NMLZR
-3-
ACC
know-
AOR
-
Q
-
EMOT
‘Does he know what fairness is?’ ≈ ‘He doesn’t know what fairness is.’
13
(214)
Sonda siz-diŋ buygïğ-ïŋïz-ğa kim qarsï kel-di eken? (Kaz)
Thus you-
GEN
order-2
PL
-
DAT
who against come-
PST EMOT
‘If that is so, who would go against your command? ≈ ‘No one would go against your
command.’
14
Both the introspective and queclarative varieties of rhetorical questions are clearly emotive, as
both
express emotion and, as they expect no response, are speaker-, rather than hearer-oriented.
It appears to be rare, cross-linguistically, that rhetorical questions are formally marked
and can be said to constitute a sentence type. Johanson (2000, 2003) mentions that Nogay and
Uyghur, in
addition to Uzbek and Kazakh, employ cognates of
ekan/eken to produce rhetorical
questions. Faller (2002) notes that in Cusco Quechua, the combination of evidential markers and
interrogativity can result questions for which the speaker does not expect a reply. This result is,
essentially, a rhetorical question:
(215)
Pi-ta-chá Inés-qa watuku-rqa-n?
who-
ACC
-
EVID
Inés-
TOP
visit-
PST
1-3
‘Who could Inés have visited?’
13
2010. Haqida.uz Form, 4 Oct. Accessed 13 Mar 2011.
forum.haqida.uz/forum/textversion.html?t258-7
14
Nazarbayev, Nursultan. “Prezidenttiŋ tikeley efiyri: alğasqï nätiyželer men tužïrïmdar.”
Abai.kz. Accessed 1 Mar 2011. http://abai.kz/content/prezidenttin-tikelei-efiri-algashky-
netizheler-men-tyzhyrymdar
146
It is worth
noting that in Quechua, some analyses treat evidentiality as the pragmatic result of a
secondary feature borne by certain morphemes; Adelaar’s (1977) treatment of so-called
evidential forms as
validationals is remarkably similar to the confirmative analysis employed
here.
Aside from the Turkic languages described by Johanson (2003) and Cusco Quechua, the
only other languages that appear to formally mark rhetorical questions are American Sign
Language (ASL) and Quebec Sign Language (LSQ), both of which belong the French Sign
Language family, which form rhetorical questions by combining question lexemes with marking
for polar
questions
15
. What is noteworthy about rhetorical questions in these languages is that
they require an immediate response from the speaker as seen in (216), from Hoza et al. (1997, 1):
(216)
rh/wh
DO-DO, IX
i
BIG-HEAD ENTER…
What did he/she do? S/he had the nerve to barge right in there…
Although formally different from Turkic and Quechua rhetorical questions, ASL and LSQ
rhetorical questions share the properties of being formally marked (by the presence of polar
question marking), speaker-oriented (in as much as it is the speaker,
and not the hearer who is
expected to respond), and employed for the purpose of expressing emotivity (as indicated by the
use of the pejorative BIG-HEAD in the response).
The lack of information regarding the formal marking of rhetorical questions may have
less to do with typological rarity and more to do with a lack of recognition of this sort of
phenomenon when it arises. If we treat the phenomena in Uzbek and Kazakh as prototypical of
15
Many thanks to Nassira Nicola for pointing out the relevant ASL literature, and for explaining
the related Quebec Sign Language phenomena.
147
the center of the Eurasian evidentiality belt, it is likely that genetically
and areally related
languages will exhibit similar phenomena.
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