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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 34:3 (2024) ► pp.447–472

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Polar answers

Accepting proposals in Greek telephone calls

 | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
 | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 25 May 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.22020.pav
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine the forms and functions of answers to proposals for joint action, implemented through polar interrogatives, in Greek telephone calls. Our analysis indicates a distinct functional distribution of three types of accepting answers to such proposals. Particle-type answers do ‘simple’ acceptance of the proposal, i.e. they only display the respondent’s willingness to take on the proposed action and nothing else, while repetition-type answers display the speaker’s epistemic/deontic stance towards additional aspects of the proposal. With a third type of responses, speakers accept the proposal in a mitigated manner. Our findings align with Enfield, N. J., Tanya Stivers, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Katariina Harjunpää, Makoto Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoymann, Tiina Keisanen, Mirka Rauniomaa, Chase Raymond, Federico Rossano, Kyung-Eun Yoon, Inge Zwitserlood, and Stephen Levinson. 2019. “Polar Answers.” Journal of Linguistics 55 (2): 277–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar conclusion that particles serve as pragmatically unmarked polar answers. They do not, however, evince the prevalence of this type of answer to proposals to the same extent as to epistemically oriented polar interrogatives.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Polar answers
  • 2.On ‘proposals’ and their answers
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Theoretical delineations
    • 3.2Polar interrogatives in Greek
    • 3.3Data
  • 4.Coding categories and distribution
    • 4.1Linguistic formats of polar interrogatives for proposals for joint action
    • 4.2Types of responses
    • 4.3Distributional information
  • 5.Analysis of answers to proposals for joint action
    • 5.1Particle-type answers
    • 5.2Repetition-type answers
    • 5.3Other-type answers
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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Alvanoudi, Angeliki
2025. Pragmatic and prosodic aspects of the negative directive ðe mu les? (‘tell me’) in Greek conversation. In Multimodal Communication from a Construction Grammar Perspective [Constructional Approaches to Language, 38], ► pp. 285 ff. DOI logo

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