tailieunhanh - The grammar book teacher course part 39

While rules may serve a useful purpose, particularly in meeting the security needs of beginning language learners, it is important (hat teachers understand that almost every linguistic category or general¬ization has fuzzy boundaries. Language is mutable—organic, even; therefore its categories and rules are often nondiscrete (Rudicrford 1987; Ijarsen-Freeman 1997). | 264 The Grammar Book Yes No Question Alternative Question A Would you like coffeetea A- Would you like c B Yes please. Coffee please. Lest we leave readers assuming that only near-identical alternatives can be conjoined consider the following alternative question with different subjects Did you buy it or did someone give it to you Three conjuncts are also possible with rising tone on each of the alternatives except the last Did you u it did someone gKe it to you or did yoti fthdjt And even clauses with different tenses and subjects can appear as alternatives Did you buy it or am I going to have to It is also possible to have an alternative question where the second of the two alternatives is an elliptical negative clause Did you buy it or not As use of a yes no question already presumes the inevitability of one of these two alternatives the alternative question form with the redundant or not seems to be petulant The degree of speaker irritation appears to increase with the amount of redundancy expressed in the second alternative Did you buy it or not Did you buy it or didn t you Did you buy it or didn t you buy it Did you buy it or did you not buy it However the connotation of petulance is speculative on our part. Intonation would also be a factor and we would need to do a discourse analysis of questions like these to determine the differences among them. In sum we note that alternative questions result when listeners are given a choice between two or more options and when the truth value of only one of the two or more alternatives is presumed. This is different from a yes no question with objects conjoined by or which does not necessarily exclude either alternative. The semantic difference is signalled by an intonational difference. Alternative Wh-Question Combinations While probably few ESL EFL students will speak languages that have alternative questions of the type we have just examined they will likely be familiar with the kind that takes the form of a .