Why do all languages share the same intonation for questions?
Why do all languages share the same intonation for questions?
I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that a common aspect amongst all languages is the tendency to raise the pitch of your voice slightly when asking a question. Especially at the end of a question sentence.
If I'm wrong about this raised pitch being common amongst all languages, at the very least do all languages change their tone slightly to indicate that a question is being asked?
I guess there needs to be some way to indicate what is and isn't a question. Perhaps a higher pitched voice reflects uncertainty. Is this something deep rooted in humans, or just an arbitrary choice when language developed?
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English doesn't even go up at the end of sentences for all questions, just yes or no ones.
Good catch - WH-questions tend to have a pitch drop instead.
Now thinking, Portuguese and Italian seem to follow the same pattern as English.
Same for German.
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Could you give some specific examples of questions in English that would not be asked with a rising tone at the end?
What's your name? How old are you? Where are you from?
They seem to have a rise-drop, at least when I say them.
"How old are you?" is interesting because the rise is on the third-last word ("old"). But "How old is your daughter?" has the rise in the first syllable of daughter.
That's just emphasis. You can tell because you can shift it to another word.
- What's your name? (more pointed)
- How old are you? (as if it's now suddenly of concern)
- Where are you from? (maybe the person has an unusual accent)
- Where are you from? (more pointed)
- How old is your daughter? (shifting from discussing someone else's daughter)
Switching the emphasis on one word can completely change the meaning of a phrase, there's one example I love: "I never said she stole his money"
- I never said she stole his money (someone else did)
- I never said she stole his money (absolutely not true)
- I never said she stole his money (I wrote it down)
- I never said she stole his money (it was someone else)
- I never said she stole his money (she might have just borrowed it)
- I never said she stole his money (it was someone else's)
- I never said she stole his money (she stole something else)
I wonder if it's more because we frame the question by altering the structure to indicate the appropriate response.
We could just as well ask "you are from where?" Or "your name is what?" That matches the expected sentence structure of a response, and the natural pitch rises.
But the default stress towards the end of the question is what makes it a question.
You can move the stress to another word for emphasis on yes-no questions, too, similarly removing the "rising intonation" that makes a question.
E.g., "Do you want any cheese^?" vs. "Do you WANT any cheese?" (Falling intonation after "want")
I'm totally with you. I think it is somewhat speaker dependent, but that is how I would say those questions.
What's your NAme
How OLD (are you)?
Where are you FROm?
You would never say
"What's YOUR name?
"How old are YOU?"
"Where ARE you from?"
?
The first two have emphasis that imply something different than a simple question. Like you are asking a bunch of people individually, and you are directing each question at a specific person.
The last one would maybe be like, if the person did something weird, and you were sarcastically asking where the are from, to imply that they were raised by wolves, or something like that.
Point being, yes, you can ask like that, but it has different connotations than a simple question, which I think is where you would use the rising intonation.
Do you really pronounce those with a higher pitch? Or do you pronounce them louder?
EDIT: that is a genuine question given that a lot of people conflate stress (louder; more dB) with pitch (higher tone; more Hz), and the examples provided hint prosodic stress, not prosodic intonation, since in English prosodic stress is often used for emphasis.
"Who is my daddy and what does he do?" actually seems to drop a little bit.
I guess in this example, "who is your daddy?" Is the main question, which has a somewhat flat intonation, but contrasted to the emphasis in the second half of the sentence, it feels like a rise