Chapter 12 Huh? What? - A first survey in 21 languages

• Main Author: Baranova, Julija (auth)
• Other Authors: Enfield, N.J (auth), S. Gísladóttir, Rósa (auth), Drew, Paul (auth), Hoymann, Gertie (auth), Brown, Penelope (auth), Blythe, Joe (auth), Gipper, Sonja (auth), Magyari, Lilla (auth), Manrique, Elizabeth (auth), Rossi, Giovanni (auth), Floyd, Simeon (auth), Dingemanse, Mark (auth), Torreira, Francisco (auth), H. Kendrick, Kobin (auth), Dirksmeyer, Tyko (auth), C. Levinson, Stephen (auth), San Roque, Lila (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2013
• Subjects: Language; languages; Glider competition classes; Icelandic language; Interjection; Interrogative word; Mandarin Chinese; Phonetics; Sign language; Spoken language
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

Introduction A comparison of conversation in twenty-one languages from around the world reveals commonalities and differences in the way that people do open-class other-initiation of repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 1977; Drew, 1997). We find that speakers of all of the spoken languages in the sample make use of a primary interjection strategy (in English it is Huh?), where the phonetic form of the interjection is strikingly similar across the languages: a monosyllable featuring an open non-back vowel [a, æ, ə, ʌ], often nasalized, usually with rising intonation and sometimes an [h-] onset. We also find that most of the languages have another strategy for open-class other-initiation of repair, namely the use of a question word (usually "what"). Here we find significantly more variation across the languages. The phonetic form of the question word involved is completely different from language to language: e.g., English [wɑt] versus Cha'palaa [ti] versus Duna [aki]. Furthermore, the grammatical structure in which the repair-initiating question word can or must be expressed varies within and across languages. In this chapter we present data on these two strategies - primary interjections like Huh? and question words like What? - with discussion of possible reasons for the similarities and differences across the languages. We explore some implications for the notion of repair as a system, in the context of research on the typology of language use. The general outline of this chapter is as follows. We first discuss repair as a system across languages and then introduce the focus of the chapter: open-class other-initiation of repair. A discussion of the main findings follows, where we identify two alternative strategies in the data: an interjection strategy (Huh?) and a question word strategy (What?). Formal features and possible motivations are discussed for the interjection strategy and the question word strategy in order. A final section discusses bodily behavior including posture, eyebrow movements and eye gaze, both in spoken languages and in a sign language.