Summary Details
| Query: |
Re: Summary: 'No' and 'Man'
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| Author: | dave gough | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Discourse Analysis
Pragmatics |
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| Summary: |
Thanks for all the responses. It was really something to get ideas of such quality and in such numbers. 1. 'No' My initial query was: South African English use of 'No' - does this occur in contexts such as: A.How are you? B.No, I'm fine. in other English varieties/other languages? Confronted with such examples, vistors to the country often comment that in SA English, 'no' means 'yes'. This, of course, is not true. 'No' would be the response to the question 'Do you have the time?' if the speaker didn't have the time. * Generally: A couple of people commented that 'no' definitely does NOT mean 'yes' in these contexts. What it does is rather to negate the possibility of a negative belief concerning the answer to the question. In the example above, for instance, B. is negating A.'s possible belief that B. is not well. Why South Africans hold that the possibility of such negative beliefs is so strong they have to be denied remains to be seen. * 'no' in other varieties of English The use of 'no' in the types of examples cited anyway is NOT recorded according to the responses in: - Australian English - American English - English English It IS recorded in: -Nigerian and Ghanaian English There DO appear to be RELATED (but not identical) discourse uses of 'no' and similar particles in other varieties of English. Few English responses actually dealt with this usage at all. By far the majority were on 'man' * 'No' in other languages 'No' does seem to be used in a variety of other languages in the same way as in SA English. Similar uses are recorded in: - The Scandinavian Languages - German ('doch' - similar but not identical) - Cameroon French - Bangkok Thai ('plaw' - lit. 'empty') - Spanish? It also occurs, incidentally, in Afrikaans. 2. 'Man' My question here related to the use of 'man' to express a negative emotional involvement of the speaker of some sort - irritation, impatience or annoyance. Examples given were: Man it's hot today Hurry up mom, man Man, I can't this right * English A huge response that showed that 'man' is used similarly in: - American English (both 'black' and 'white') - Scottish English - Tyneside English (in north east of England) - Jamaican English - Welsh English - An 'Americanism' found in other varieties of English. The American English usage at least does not necessary carry negative sentiment and is 'a more general tag ... over which any kind of emotional intonation can be laid'. Example b. above, an example which typifies SA usage, was found to be odd ('weird') by American respondants. The reason for this is that 'man' although an interjection still appears to 'have the flavour of a term of address so that 'mom, man' sounds like two forms of direct address in a row'. It seems, then, that 'man' in SAE does not bare the feature 'term of address' at all in such contexts. The only instance in which similar usages were given was in Tyneside English. ('Shut up man Geoff' 'Those kegs are too tight man Mary'. Here though, the actual term of address occurs finally as opposed to the use of 'man' finally in SAE. This needs to be explored further, but of further interest: - There is a distinctly 'American' use of 'man' in SAE that is not like the South African use of man ('Cool man' type of utterances). - Other SA examples of man: - Daddy, man! (5 year old daughter after I stood on her toe) - Man, David, I don't mean that (Wife and self in 'altercation') - No man, that's not right. - Man! This bloody computer is giving problems. - SAEnglish 'man' alternates between shwa and full vowel in all contexts. (In SAE shwa occurs as a vowel in stressed contexts - 'sit' can have shwa for eg): Related usage in currant American English is the use of 'dude'. * Other languages Related uses of 'man' include: - Dutch - Swedish ('boy' is used in a similar way) - Norwegian -?German use of 'etwa' may have similar function -German ('usually to indicate weariness') -Spanish -?Lhasa Tibetan ('mi' - 'person') Interestingly in Dutch the 'double address form [ as in 'Hurry up mom, man'] is impossible (just "schiet op, man" must do).' Some interesting stuff came out as you can see. Just for your interest, on further SA English item: - 'Sorry' for 'I beg your pardon'e.g. A drops something without knowing. B picks it up and calls out to A 'Sorry, you dropped something' Anyway thanks to: helen adamson geoffrey sampson elin haf gruffyd jones celso alvarez caccamo mai kuha mark donohue marek przezdziecki scott delancey mats eeg-olofsson dom watt hilde hasselgard nicole nelson jane a. edwards sren harder charlie rowe nobue mori adiego lajara bruce connell krisadawan hongladarom frank bramlett deborah milam berkley douglas s oliver larry trask kristine hasund paul boersma m. lynne roecklein judy l. delin benji wald stephen p. spackman john verhaar randall major + the person who wished to be anonymous for the references. |
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| LL Issue: | 8.585 | |
| Date Posted: | 25-Apr-1997 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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