1 Introduction
Recent years have seen a rise of interest in the question of Celtic influences in regional and standard varieties of English, as may be seen in a number of specialized conferences and publications.Footnote 2
Celtic influence in English has been looked for (and found, the way I see it) at various levels of the organization of language: mostly in syntax, some in morphology and phonology, little in vocabulary − all as it should be in substratal influence on a superstrate, according to the general theory of language contact.Footnote 3 In the present article I would like to present some material not really belonging to any of these levels but rather to the level of usage. It is a contribution to English contact pragmatics.
It is a well-known phenomenon in the theory of language contact that the selection of variants from a range of possibilities, and the frequency of employing them, may easily be influenced by a contact language. It is from this domain, the level of idiomatic usage, that I would like to discuss an example. In doing so I am returning to a topic treated briefly in the final section of an earlier article (Vennemann Reference Vennemann2002a). The topic is the peculiar way Yes/No-questions are answered in English − peculiar from a German perspective, to be sure, probably less so in the perception of native speakers of English. I am referring to the sparing use made of Yes and No, compared to the use of Ja and Nein in German: speakers of English quite commonly use, instead of or in addition to Yes or No, an affirming or negating short sentence − what Filppula (Reference Filppula1999: 165f.) calls the ‘Modal only’ type of response, consisting of an auxiliary or modal verb with the appropriate subject pronoun, sometimes expanded by an adverbial phrase, expressions such as Yes I will; No I won't; or simply I will; I won't; I do; I don't; He can; They certainly won't.
2 The marriage vow in English
Since usage is a hard area for proving generalizations, and since Yes and No, Ja and Nein are indeed commonly used in Insular as well as Continental Germanic, in English and in German, I have looked for an area where usage has been regulated and become a norm; and I found it, namely for the wedding vow in German and English. This area has the advantage that every adult knows the norms, if not from personal experience then at least from the cinema. The examples in (1), fished from the Internet, show how it works. First, some English vows:
(1) CBS COM: A Bold and Beautiful Wedding AlbumFootnote 4
(a) RIDGE AND TAYLOR (1998)Footnote 5
Minister: Taylor, will you have this man to be your husband, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, and forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?
Taylor: I will.
Minister: Ridge, will you have this woman to be your wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?
Ridge: I will.
Here we are looking at ritual, and the questions and answers are to a high degree ritually fixed. There is little structural variation; the only significant variation that may be observed is lexical, but the choice of lexeme is again ritually fixed: it is determined by the wording of the question. Ridge and Taylor were asked by the minister: ‘Will you have this man [etc.]’ / ‘Will you have this woman [etc.]’, and they answer ‘I will.’ And here they have no choice. To be sure in principle they may say ‘I won't’, or even ‘No I won't’, but as long as they want to go along with what they have started their only ritually permitted answer is ‘I will.’
(1)(b) SALLY AND CLARKE (1991)
Minister: Clarke Garrison, do you take this woman to be your wife, to love and honor from this day forward, in faith and tenderness, to live with her and cherish her according to the ordinance of God, in the holy bond of marriage?
Clarke: I do.
Minister: Sally, do you take this man to be your husband, to love and honor from this day forward, in faith and tenderness, to live with him and cherish him according to the ordinance of God, in the holy bond of marriage?
Sally: I do.
Minister: The rings please.
In the second example, Sally and Clarke are asked by the minister, ‘Do you take this woman to be your wife [etc.]’ / ‘Do you take this man to be your husband [etc.]’, and this determines their answer: it can only be ‘I do.’ This observation is confirmed by the third example.
(1)(c) KRISTEN AND TONY (2001)
Priest: Tony. Kristen. Do you consent to join together in the sacred covenant of marriage? From this day forward, to love, honor and keep each other, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?
Kristen: I do.
Tony: I do.
The following example shows that the structure and wording of the formula are also used in nonreligious wedding ceremonies.
(2) Our atheist wedding ceremonyFootnote 6
Officiant: Do you, [Groom], take [Bride] who you have promised to love and cherish to be your lawfully wedded wife?
[Groom]: I do.
Officiant: Do you, [Bride], take [Groom] who you have promised to love and cherish to be your lawfully wedded husband?
[Bride]: I do.
3 The marriage vow in German
Let us now look at the German examples, (3) and (4).Footnote 7
(3) Kirchliche Segnung einer standesamtlich geschlossenen EheFootnote 8
Nach örtlicher Sitte kann geläutet werden.
Pfarrer:
N.N. und N.N.!
Ihr seid schon rechte Eheleute und seid heute in Gottes Haus gekommen, um Gottes Segen für eure Ehe zu empfangen.
So frage ich dich, N.N. (Name des Ehemannes):
Willst du N.N. (Name der Ehefrau) lieben und ehren,
und mit ihr leben in guten und in schweren Zeiten,
welches Glück euch Gott, der Allmächtige, auch immer bescheren mag −
wie ein Ehemann mit seiner Ehefrau leben soll,
bis der Tod euch scheidet? − Ja!
Ebenso frage ich dich, N.N. (Name der Ehefrau):
Willst du N.N. (Name des Ehemannes) lieben und ehren
und mit ihm leben in guten und in schweren Zeiten,
– welches Glück euch Gott, der Allmächtige, auch immer bescheren mag −
wie eine Ehefrau mit ihrem Ehemann leben soll,
bis der Tod euch scheidet? − Ja!
(4) Trauung (Hochzeit)Footnote 9
Pfarrer:
So frage ich dich, N.N. (Name des Bräutigams):
Willst du N.N. (Name der Braut), die bei dir steht,
als deine Ehefrau haben? − Ja!
Willst du sie lieben und ehren,
und mit ihr leben in guten und in schweren Zeiten,
– welches Glück euch Gott, der Allmächtige, auch bescheren mag −
wie ein Ehemann mit seiner Ehefrau leben soll,
bis der Tod euch scheidet? − Ja!
Ebenso frage ich dich, N.N. (Name der Braut):
Willst du N.N. (Name des Bräutigams), der bei dir steht,
als deinen Ehemann haben? − Ja!
Willst du ihn lieben und ehren,
und mit ihm leben in guten und in schweren Zeiten,
– welches Glück euch Gott, der Allmächtige, auch immer bescheren mag −
wie eine Ehefrau mit ihrem Ehemann leben soll,
bis der Tod euch scheidet? − Ja!
So gebt euch darauf die Hand!
In Germany a church wedding may only take place after a couple's civil marriage at a registry office, i.e. before a civil magistrate. This explains why the priest may address the couple as Eheleute ‘married people’, also as Ehemann ‘husband’ and Ehefrau ‘wife’. In any event, at the church wedding the question is ‘Willst du [then the name, X] lieben und ehren [etc.], bis der Tod euch scheidet?’, ‘Do you want to love and honor X . . . until death will part you?’, or some similar formula the details of which do not matter in the present context, and the ritual answer is ‘Ja’, ‘Yes’. The only imaginable alternative is lexical, ‘Nein’, ‘No’; but that answer would be, as we as linguists would say, highly marked.
4 English and German in contrast
Thus we find a clear difference between English and German usage. As a matter of fact, it is not only a matter of usage, even though historically that may be the way the differentiation started. It is now also a matter of grammar; because in German, answers like ‘Ich tue’ ‘I do’ or ‘Ja, ich tue’ ‘Yes, I do’ or ‘Ich werde’ ‘I will’ or ‘Ich will’ ‘I want to’ are not merely unusual but ungrammatical; those auxiliaries and modal verbs require an object (nominal, pronominal, or infinitival) to form a grammatical pattern.
Now one could think for a moment that the difference illustrated with the wedding formula is merely a matter of ritual, as such perhaps reflecting something highly stylized or historical rather than ordinary language use. But it is not so.
It is not easy to find general statements on how to form a correct answer. All grammars have a chapter on how to construct questions, but hardly any say anything about how to construct answers. This has also been noticed for earlier stages of English, with reference to both early grammars of English and historical descriptions. Thus, Dawn Archer writes:
Although question-and-answer sequences have been used for rhetorical purposes since the medieval period (examples include sermons, plays, and language-teaching books to name a few), comparatively little is known about sequences dating from the E[arly] mod[ern] E[nglish] period (Wikberg Reference Wikberg1975: 12−13). Some of what we do know has been gleaned from grammar books. (Archer Reference Archer2005: 60)
Archer cites Kay Wikberg (Reference Wikberg1975: 19) as saying, ‘Apart from . . . scattered remarks on various grammatical phenomena, such as word order, the use of do, and the formation of the tenses, 16th- and 17th-century grammars admittedly have very little to contribute to our understanding of Q[uestion]s and R[esponse]s’, and adds:
There is a similar lack of detailed coverage of questions and answers in standard ‘History of English’ books (e.g. Baugh & Cable Reference Baugh and Cable1993; Pyles & AlgeoReference Pyles and Algeo1993Footnote 10), and, surprisingly, the more specialized reviews of the Early Modern English period (e.g. Görlach Reference Görlach1991). Mostly, we are told about certain characteristics of question formation, the most researched being the establishment and regulation of the use of do. (Archer Reference Archer2005: 60f.)
I did find one clear statement on the proper way to answer Yes/No-questions, however, preceded by a page of examples such as the following. The source is Ungerer et al. (Reference Ungerer, Meier, Schäfer and Lechler1984: 27):
We're being a bit extravagant, aren't we?
– Yes, I think we are.
– Oh, I don't think we are. We can afford it.
There isn't much sense in arguing over details right now, is there?
– Of course there isn't.
What a difficult decision!
– Yes, it was, wasn't it?
Size 12 is not in stock?
– I'm afraid it's not, but it's on order.
– Yes, it is. You'll find them over there on the other rail.
The staff will never agree to working overtime.
– No, they certainly won't.
– Oh, I'm sure they will, if the pay is attractive.
As the examples show, Kurzantworten [‘short answers’, used as a technical term by the authors] are frequently reinforced or softened by adverbs (certainly, of course, etc.), by verbs and verbal groups (I think, I'm afraid, etc.), by tag questions, etc. Especially when they are thus expanded or when a further clause is added, yes and no are often omitted.Footnote 11
The second group of examples above shows at the same time an affinity of this kind of answer to tag questionsFootnote 12 and its use in affirmative/concurring or contradictory/correcting responses.
That this particular usage finds attention in an English grammar book for German students is, of course, not accidental: those students have to learn that while German Ja and Nein are properly translated as Yes and No, respectively, the way these particles are used in the two languages is very different.
5 Shakespeare versus von Schlegel
Needless to say this difference cannot only be looked at synchronically but also diachronically. As a matter of fact I have looked at the history of the phenomenon, but I must admit that I found it difficult to produce reliable material on which to base generalizations. Here and in the sections that follow is a summary of what I have collected and how I interpret it.
One place to look for question-and-answer pairs is drama. Since my access to the problem is comparative, I have selected examples from Shakespeare plays, because (a) the way questions and answers are handled by this author has been thoroughly studied by Kay Wikberg (see Wikberg Reference Wikberg1975) and (b) there exists a very good translation into German.
In (5)–(11) I have presented examples from Hamlet, both in Shakespeare's English and in the German of the Romantic era (a. 1798).Footnote 13 Examples (5) and (6) are especially striking. The translator, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, who wanted to be faithful to the admired original author but also to produce good German that would appear native and natural on the stage, translated the answers against the English text, as would a translator of the twenty-first century.
(5) Scene 2 (1.2); English p. 741, line 381; German p. 88
(6) Scene 7 (2.2); English p. 749, lines 1112f.; German p. 109
Whereas the questions are phrased in a parallel fashion in both languages, the answers differ radically, and they differ exactly in the same way as in the marriage vows: Kurzantworten Footnote 14 (without Yes) in English, Ja in German, both followed here by a polite address, my Lord in English, gnäd'ger Herr ‘gracious Lord’ or mein Prinz ‘my prince’ in German.
The third example, (7) below, shows a Kurzantwort in response to a tag question on the English side. German does not normally use sentential tag questions but mostly particles, adverbs, and adjectives such as ja? ‘yes?’, oder? ‘or?’, nicht? ‘not?’ (also reduced, [nə]), nicht wahr? ‘not true?’, all with a question intonation.Footnote 15 In the example, the tag is nicht wahr? which, despite its negative component nicht ‘not’, merely has the function of turning the preceding statement into a question; thus, the answer ‘Ja’ does not respond to the literal meaning of the tag but confirms the tagged statement, as if the question had been ‘Habt ihr's gefaßt?’
(7) Scene 6 (2.1); English p. 746, lines 875f.; German p. 102
The following four examples show English answers with Yes and No. As will be seen directly, they support my line of argument in their own special way.
(8) Scene 2 (I.2); English p. 741, lines 383f.; German p. 88
(9) Ending of scene 14 in the Additional Passages; English p. 776, lines 14f.; German p. 150
(10) Scene 9 (3.2); English p. 758, lines 2015−19; German p. 133
(11) Scene 11 (3.4); English p. 760, line 2228; German p. 139
Here Yes and No are used in English because the particles transport more meaning than just affirmation or negation: they express a component of contradiction or correction.Footnote 17 This is most obvious in examples (8) and (9), where in German the translation is, or contains, the adversative doch.Footnote 18 In the remaining two examples this additional meaning component is underlined by rather (10) and by the swearing formula (11).
6 Before Shakespeare
Shakespeare's usage may reflect the situation around 1600. It is not what one expects from a Germanic point of view. Studying what the specialists have reconstructed about answering Yes/No-questions in other Germanic languages, my impression is that the German method of answering Yes/No-questions reflects the original Germanic one, which at the same time means that it was also the Anglo-Saxon way of doing it.
The illustrations for Old and Middle English in the OED (s.vv. yea, yes, nay, no) support this; I quote only one example each for yea and nay:
c. 1000 Ags. Gosp. John xxi. 15 þa cwæð se hælend..Simon Iohannis lufast ðu me swiðor þænne ðas; He cwæð to him, ʒea [Lind. & Rushw. ʒee] drihten þu wast þæt ic þe lufiʒe. [Then said the Savior . . .: Simon, son of John, do you love me more than those? He said to him, Yea, Lord, you know that I love you.]Footnote 19
c. 1250 Owl & Night. 464 Hwanne myn erende is ido, Scholde ich bileue? Nay; hwar to? [When my work is done, should I stay on? Nay, what for?]
The one old example which looks as if it added a sentential repetition to the Yes-answer − Ælfric's Eart þu Esau min sunu? And he cwæð: Ia leof, ic hit eom (Gen. xxvii. 24, ca. 1000) − actually adds the Germanic particle to the sentential answer of the Vulgate (Ait ‘tu es filius meus Esau?’ Respondit ‘ego sum’).Footnote 20 The King James version only has I am; the German Einheitsübersetzung only Ja.
The Germanic usage continued until Late Middle English, as will be seen in section 10 below. Therefore, what requires an explanation is the Modern English method of answering by means of a Kurzantwort, namely a pronoun plus an auxiliary or modal verb; because this method differs from that of all other Germanic languages and, indeed, from that of all European languages, as far as I know − with one exception to which I will return.Footnote 21
7 Towards an explanation
In a situation such as this many Anglicists will turn to Latin in the hope of finding a model there. The late Old English examples in (12) may appear suggestive:
(12) Yes/No-questions and answers in Ælfric's Colloquy (Ælfric [Reference Ælfric and Garmonsway1978])
(a) Ys þæs of þinum ʒeferon? (48)
Est iste ex tuis sociis?
ʒea, he ys. (49)
Etiam est.
(b) Canst þu æniʒ þinʒ? (50)
Scis tu aliquid?
Ænne cræft ic cann. (51)
Unam artem scio.
(c) Ne canst þu huntian buton mid nettum? (61)
Nescis uenare nisi cum retibus?
ʒea, buton nettum huntian ic mæʒ. (62)
Etiam sine retibus uenare possum.
(d)
ære þu todæʒ on huntnoþe? (67)Fuisti hodie in uenatione?
Ic næs, forþæm . . . (68)
Non fui, quia . . ..
(e)
ilt þu fon sumne hæl? (109)Uis capere aliquam cetum?
Nic. (110)
Nolo.
(f) Hæfst þu hafoc? (127)
Habes accipitrem?
Ic hæbbe. (128)
Habeo.
(g) Canst þu temian hiʒ? (129)
Scis domitare eos?
ʒea, ic cann. (130)
Etiam, scio.
(h)
ilt þu syllan þinʒc þine her eal sa þu hi ʒebohtest þær? (162)Uis uendere res tuas sicut emisti illic?
Ic nelle. (163)
Nolo.
(i) Hæfst æniʒne
isne ʒeþeahtan? (208)Habes aliquem sapientem consiliarium?
ʒe
islice ic hæbbe. (209)Certe habeo.
(j)
ære þu todæʒ besuncʒen? (279)Fuisti hodie uerberatus?
Ic næs, forþam . . . (280)
Non fui, quia . . .
Latin here offers a very fine model. But the problem is first that Latin was only practiced by a small minority of the population, and second − and more importantly − that the same model was practiced by the Germans as well, see e.g. the High and Low German baptismal vows (13) with their repetition of the verb in answers to Yes/No-questions, all modeled on Latin.
(13) Yes/No-questions and answers in the Continental Taufgelöbnis (baptismal vow)Footnote 22
(a) Old High German (Frankish)
(b) Old Saxon
Yet only the English developed something similar, whereas the Germans continued the Germanic tradition undisturbed. Therefore Medieval Latin does not appear to offer a viable explanation.
Others may suspect French influence after the Norman conquest of 1066. But the French method of answering Yes/No-questions has never been similar to what we find in English; rather, the language has used particles from Old French to the present, oui ‘yes’ < Old French oil < Vulgar Latin hoc illí and non ‘no’ which continues Latin nón under accent (Gamillscheg Reference Gamillscheg1969: s.vv. oui, non).
Yet other linguists will prefer to look for internal causes. However, I have not seen proposals to that effect, and personally I would not even know where to begin looking. After all, English had its affirmative and negating particles, in part inherited, in part newly built, and in part borrowed, words like Yea [jei] and Na and Nay and Yes and I (Ay[e]). It had no more internal reason than German to augment them or replace them by the short sentences consisting of a pronoun and an auxiliary or modal verb.Footnote 23
8 Irish English
The explanation remaining is contact with those languages which in my view are the most likely to exert the kind of influence we are looking at in the first place, the original substrate and continuing adstrate of Anglo-Saxon and English, the Celtic languages, Brittonic in particular. My attention was drawn to this solution − as a matter of fact: to the very problem − by Markku Filppula's treatment of Yes/No-questions and their answers in his book on Irish English (Filppula Reference Filppula1999); see the Irish English dialogs in (14).Footnote 24
(14) Irish English (Filppula Reference Filppula1999: 165)
(a) Do people eat it still?
They do.
(b) Are you telling me their names?
I amn't.
(c) D'you have the song?
I haven't, I only have the opening line of it.
(d) So, you belong to that parish?
Belong to that parish.
(e) Do you remember Johnny Doran comin’ around?
I do remember Johnny Doran comin’ around.
The avoidance of Yes and No by speakers of Irish English − so Filppula reports − creates problems in courts of law where judges and lawyers require answers by Yes and No from defendants and witnesses. Apparently the words Yes and No rarely pass the lips of an Irishman. Concerning the frequency of the avoidance of Yes and No and the exclusive use, instead, of the auxiliary or modal verb type of answer, Filppula (Reference Filppula1999: 165f.) writes:
The figures show that the ‘Modal only’ type of response is most frequent in the (south)western dialects, and especially in Clare dialect, where it accounts for well over a third of all direct responses. By contrast, the same type is a rather peripheral feature in both of the eastern dialects, and in Dublin speech, in particular. [Clare dialect 38.5 %, Dublin 6.6 %.]
The most plausible explanation for these differences is the continuing influence of Irish upon the usage in the west of Ireland.
More specifically, Filppula (Reference Filppula1999: 160, 161f.) gives the following reason for this Irish English usage: ‘Irish has no exact equivalents of the affirmative and negative particles yes and no.’ Instead, ‘Irish repeats the verb of the question, usually in the shortest available form.’ The example in (15) shows the repeated full verb:
(15) Repetition of full verb in Irish
An dtiocfaidh tú? ‘Will you come?’
Tiocfad. ‘I will come.’
Furthermore, answers may be abridged or simplified by means of the auxiliary déan ‘make, do’ (Filppula Reference Filppula1999: 161f.):
(16) Substitution of auxiliary verb déan ‘make, do’ in Irish
(a) Ar ólais an tae? ‘Did you drink the tea?’
Dheineas. ‘I did.’
(b) Ól ceann eile! ‘Drink another one!’
Ní dhéanfad. ‘I won't (do).’
Since the copula is unaccented and therefore cannot stand alone, it must be accompanied by a specifier:
(17) Answering copular Yes/No-questions in Irish
Is é an múinteoir é? ‘He is the teacher?’ (Is is the copula.)
Is é. ‘He is.’
From among the earlier authors who have given essentially the same explanation for the phenomenon, I cite Pokorny, omitting most of the examples because they are similar to those already cited from Filppula's book above.
That in Irish the sentence rather than the word is felt to be the linguistic unit also follows from the form of the answer to certain questions.
The traveler in the Anglicized parts of Ireland is especially struck by the fact that the answer to a question is usually given in the form of an entire sentence.
In Modern Irish there are no words for ‘yes’ and ‘no’; in this case the answer as a rule has to be given in the form of a sentence, or a verb. . . .
Even if the answer is given in an indefinite form it always has to take the form of an entire sentence. The answer to the question ‘Cad é an rud é sin?’ ‘What is that?’ is not Leabhar ‘a book’ but Leabhar is eadh é or Is leabhar é ‘It is a book’. . . .
The examples from Scottish Gaelic that Prof. Watson most kindly sent me show that there the answer takes the form of a whole sentence even more frequently than in Irish. . . .
It is true that Old Irish still possesses words for ‘yes’ (tó) and ‘no’ (naicc), but in the course of its development the non-Indo-European idiomFootnote 25 increasingly got the upper hand. However, the tendency to answer with a whole sentence shows itself even in Old Irish. . . .
The fact that the Old Irish words for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ have entirely disappeared makes it clear that we must not consider the Modern Irish usage an archaic Indo-European habit, even if perhaps in Indo-European the answer was originally given in the form of a sentence, though shortened most of the time. Rather we have here one of the cases, mentioned above by way of introduction [in Pokorny Reference Pokorny1927−30: § 1, esp. pp. 103f.], where pre-Indo-European linguistic habits only became dominant with the decline of the ruling caste. At best the old Indo-European habit was preserved through the influence of the more primitive substratum. Nowadays there is not a single Indo-European language outside Celtic that would so often require answers to take the form of sentences. (Pokorny Reference Pokorny1927−30: 16.236−8; my translation)
I would like to draw attention to the fact that Pokorny here addresses an additional thought, namely in the last two paragraphs: he suggests that the exclusive way of answering Yes/No-questions with short sentences is a non-Indo-European linguistic habit of Insular Celtic owed to a pre-Celtic substrate of the Isles.Footnote 26
Filppula (Reference Filppula1999: 166f.) ends his discussion of Yes and No in Irish English with the following remark:
Unfortunately, quantitative comparison with Br[itish] E[nglish] dialects was not possible . . . On the other hand, it is scarcely needed, as the trend emerging from the H[iberno-]E[nglish] corpus is so clear. (Filppula Reference Filppula1999: 166f.)
Indeed such quantitative comparison does not appear to be needed to make the point concerning Yes and No for Irish English.
9 British English
But what about British English dialects or indeed the standard varieties of the language? What seems to have escaped Filppula's attention is that, from a Germanic point of view, standard English is just as peculiar as Irish English from a standard point of view, as I have shown above by comparing standard and Shakespearean English to German.Footnote 27
As for the question of how British English acquired this un-Germanic property, my answer may by now be guessed; it is indeed straightforward: just as Irish English has intensified a property of British English as a result of its Irish substratum, so British English itself had acquired it from its Brittonic substratum.Footnote 28
In order to show this, it suffices to demonstrate that Welsh too has the property; because from the joint occurrence of the feature in Irish and in Welsh we may conclude that the feature belonged to the earliest stages of the two branches of Insular Celtic, and thus in particular that it belonged to the Brittonic substratum of Anglo-Saxon. The situation in Welsh is described and exemplified by David A. Thorne (Reference Thorne1993: § 342):Footnote 29
In Welsh the choice of response is dependent on the clause structure of the interrogative clause. When the simple verb predicator is realized by a tense other than the preterite . . ., the response consists of a repetition, in phase, of the verbal form realizing the predicator in the interrogative clause, i.e. the verbal form has the same tense as the verbal form in the interrogative clause, but makes relevant adjustments as regards person and number.
The person−number category of the response must exhibit concord with the noun realizing the subject:
All varieties of Welsh, apart from a highly literary text, will select the appropriate inflected form of gwneud ‘to do’ . . . as response forms whatever the verb in the interrogative clause:
The situation in Middle Welsh is described and illustrated by D. Simon Evans (Reference Evans1964: § 197):
In answering questions introduced by an interrogative particle, the verb or noun, &c., which follows the particle is repeated. . . .
(a) Affirmative answers.
(1) a: ‘A dywedy di ynni pwy dy lyssenw?’ ‘Dywedaf’ − ‘Wilt thou tell us what thy nickname is?’ ‘I will’ . . .
(2) ae: ‘Ae amser ynni vynet y'r byrdeu?’ ‘Amser, arglwyd’, heb yr Owein − ‘Is it time for us to go to the tables?’ ‘It is, lord’ . . .
(b) Negative answers.
(1) a: ‘A uyn ef dyuot y'r tir?’ ‘Na uynn, Arglwyd’ − ‘Does he wish to come to land?’ ‘He does not, lord’ . . .
(2) ae: . . . ‘Arglwyd, ae drwc genhyt ti’, heb ynteu, ‘gofyn it o py le pan deuy titheu?’ ‘Na drwc’ − ‘Lord’, said he, ‘would it displease thee to be asked whence thou too comest?’ ‘It would not’ . . .
It is evident that answering Yes/No-questions with short sentences is not a recent innovation in the Welsh language. Rather, it is a traditional feature in both Irish and Welsh, likely to have entered Insular Celtic in prehistoric times. The antiquity of the Irish and Welsh way of answering Yes/No-questions is also stressed by David Greene who speaks of ‘the consistent archaism of the R forms’:Footnote 31
The object of this study has been to show that . . . the category of the responsive offers impressive testimony to the conservatism of the Insular Celtic languages. (Greene Reference Greene, Pilch and Thurow1972: 72)
The explanation I would like to propose is the following: when Anglo-Saxon was in contact with Brittonic and for several diglossic centuries more and more speakers of Brittonic learned Anglo-Saxon, they carried this particular habit of answering into their new language, where it worked its way up the social ladder together with other Celticisms until it reached the level of educated discourse during the time between Chaucer and Shakespeare (see section 10 below). This explanation is the perfect analog of Filppula's explanation for Irish English, which reads: when British English was in contact with Irish and for several diglossic centuries more and more speakers of Irish learned British English, they too carried this particular habit of answering into their new language, thereby intensifying a feature their target language already possessed to a degree. The Irish English development apparently has not yet come to an end, as Filppula's comparison of the situation in various regions of Ireland in the quotation in section 8 above suggests.
Hildegard Tristram, in an e-letter of 12 November 2006, draws attention to the chronology of the rise of the verb-repetition type of response. She writes:
The problem is that negation and affirmation with yes- and no-words existed both in Old Irish and in Old and Middle Welsh. According to the comparative method this shared property therefore goes back to Common Insular Celtic. The Continental Celtic languages are merely so-called Trümmersprachen (residual languages), in which these forms are unfortunately not attested.
The development of verb repetition is comparatively late, viz. demonstrable only from Middle Welsh and Middle Irish onward.Footnote 32 This middle period must have been a typologically very productive time for the structural development of both languages, as it was indeed for Early Middle English. Quite a number of grammatical innovations emerged at precisely this time in the documents of all three languages or significantly increased their frequency, e.g. DO-periphrasis, subordination of infinite expressions with and he + Prep. + Gerund / Verbal noun etc., periphrastic aspect marking (progressive, habitual, perfective, prospective), restructuring of the deictics, etc.
Old Irish had an affirmation form tó, deriving from PIE *tod ‘that’ with the sense of ‘yes’. The answer was na-thó ‘no’. Both forms could be used sentence-externally: ‘Nathó’ ol Pól. (‘“No,” says Paul’). There also existed dependent, sentence-internal forms, e.g. naicc and náte. Cf. [Thurneysen Reference Thurneysen, Binchy and Bergin1946: § 867] for examples.
In present-day Modern Irish a strong tendency can be observed to answer all [Yes-No] questions with sea ‘yes’ and ní hea ‘no’. This is probably owed to English influence. (My translation.)
Whether these chronological observations and the above explanation are in harmony is an interesting question, which can only be tackled by specialists in Celtic and English language history as well as contact linguistics. What makes a comparison difficult is the fact that we possess no easy measure for the time it takes for an innovation starting at the substratal contact level to work its way up into the written language.Footnote 33
10 When did the Modern English usage begin?
As to the time when the Brittonic way of answering Yes/No-questions was established in English, I would guess that it was at the same time that not just this feature but several other Brittonicisms gathered momentum in English: the Middle English period. The reason for this chronology has been most succinctly formulated by Heinrich Wagner:
That Germanic was preserved in Anglo-Saxon England rather well for several centuries is connected to the existence of an Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and an Anglo-Saxon written and poetic language. The Norman conquest broke the supremacy of this ruling class and paved the way for the development of a British language. (Wagner Reference Wagner1959: 151; my translation.)
It was during this period in the history of the language, especially its second half, that the French-speaking aristocracy of England gave up their native Norman French in favor of the language of the natives, the Celticized Anglo-Saxon speech of the lower classes. Romanizing the language at the same time by carrying masses of their French vocabulary into their newly adopted idiom, they contributed their part to the origin of English. What originated in this process was no longer the moderately Celticized Germanic dialect described by Angelika Lutz (see Lutz MS a) but a new language, the new national language of England, see (18).
(18) Two periodizations of English (cf. Lutz Reference Lutz, Fanego, Méndez-Naya and Seoane2002; Vennemann Reference Vennemann, Lucas and Lucas2002b)
Middle English is the period during which other Brittonicizing changes took hold in the written language, among them the generalization of certain Brittonic features such as the loss of the external possessor construction, which I dealt with in Vennemann Reference Vennemann, Lucas and Lucas2002b, and the much-studied loss of the Germanic split word order, i.e. the differentiation between sentence-initial or sentence-second word order in interrogative, imperative, and declarative sentences and verb later-than-second (‘verb-final’) word order in subordinate clauses.
As for the establishment of the Modal-only way of answering Yes/No-questions in English discourse, I have not been able to ascertain anything like an exact date, but it seems to have occurred later than some of the other Celticisms discussed in the literature. I have looked in vain for instances in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1388−1400) and Troilus and Cresseide (1382−6) (cf. Chaucer [Reference Ælfric and Garmonsway1987]), as well as the anonymous York Plays (fourteenth century, earliest mention 1376, manuscript of 1463−77) and Towneley Plays (late fourteenth century, manuscript c.1490 − c.1510)Footnote 34 with the help of Internet editions;Footnote 35 instead I found the Germanic usage still intact, e.g.:
Chaucer, The Miller's Tale, lines 3523−7, 3534−7
‘. . . And shal she drenche? Allas, myn Alisoun!’
For sorwe of this he fil almoost adoun,
And seyde, ‘Is ther no remedie in this cas?’
‘Why, yis, for Gode,’ quod hende Nicholas,
‘If thou wolt werken after loore and reed . . .’
‘. . . Hastow nat herd hou saved was Noe,
Whan that oure Lord hadde warned hym biforn
That al the world with water sholde be lorn?’
‘Yis,’ quod this Carpenter, ‘ful yoore ago.’
Chaucer, The Friar's Tale, lines 1595−9, 1386−8, 1504−6
‘. . . May I nat axe a libel, sire somonour,
And answere there by my procuratour
To swich thyng as men wole opposen me?’
‘Yis,’ quod this somonour, ‘pay anon − lat se −
Twelf pens to me, and I wol thee acquite. . . .’
‘. . . Wher rydestow, under this grene-wode shawe?’
Seyde this yeman, ‘Wiltow fer to day?’
This somnour hym answerde and seyde, ‘Nay; . . .’
‘Yet tel me,’ quod the somonour, ‘feithfully,
Make ye yow newe bodies thus alway
Of elementz?’ The feend answerde, ‘Nay. . . .’
Chaucer, The Franklin's Tale, lines 1467−70
This housbonde, with glad chiere, in freendly wyse
Answerde and seyde as I shal yow devyse:
‘Is ther oght elles, Dorigen, but this?’
‘Nay, nay,’ quod she, ‘God helpe me so as wys! . . .’
Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, book II, lines 277−8
‘. . . Sey ʒe me neuere er now? what sey ʒe? no?’
‘ʒis, ʒys,’ quod he, ‘and bet wol er I go; . . .’
Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, book IV, lines 377−82, 1233−5, 639−40
‘. . . Hastow nat herd at parlement,’ he seyde,
‘ffor Antenore how lost is my Criseyde?’
This Pandarus, ful dede and pale of hewe,
fful pitously answerde and seyde, ‘ʒis,
As wisly were it fals as it is trewe,
That I haue herd and woot al how it is. . . .’
‘Than if I nadde spoken, as grace was,
ʒe wolde han slayn ʒoure self anon?’ quod she.
‘ʒee, douteles’; . . .
‘. . . But telle me thanne, hastow hire wil assayed,
That sorwest thus?’ And he answerde hym, ‘Nay.’
Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, book V, lines 1159−60
‘. . . Heue vp thyn eyen, man! Maistow nat se?’
Pandare answerde, ‘Nay, so mote I the! . . .’
The York Plays, play 5, lines 74−5
Eue: Is this soth that thou sais?
Satan: Yhe, why trowes thou noyot me?
The Towneley Plays, The Killing of Abel, lines 50−2
Cain: I am thi master, wilt thou fight?
Garcio: Yai, with the same mesure and weght
That I boro will I qwite.
The Towneley Plays, Lazarus, lines 57−8
Jesus: say thou, Woman, trowys thou this?
Martha: yee, for sothe, my lorde of blys . . .
The Towneley Plays, Noah and the Ark, lines 548−9
Uxor: ffrom thens agayn
May thai neuer wyn?
Noah: wyn? no, I-wis /
The Towneley Plays, Abraha[m], lines 278−9, 281−2, 285−6
Isaac: sir, shall I lif?
Abraham: yei, this to tokyn.
Isaac: Bot, fader, shall I not be slayn?
Abraham: No, certis, son.
Isaac: Is all for geyn?
Abraham: yei, son, certan.
I have not found a single clear-cut example of the Modal-only type of answer, only the following additional verb repetitions:
Chaucer, The Miller's Tale, lines 3366−9
‘What! Alison! Herestow nat Absolon,
That chaunteth thus under oure boures wal?’
And she answerde hir housbonde therwithal,
‘Yis, God woot, John, I heere it every deel.’
Chaucer, The Friar's Tale, lines 1458−62
‘. . . Ye han a mannes shap as wel as I;
Han ye a figure thanne determinat
In helle, ther ye been in youre estat?’
‘Nay, certeinly,’ quod he, ‘ther have we noon;
But whan us liketh, we kan take us oon, . . .’
Chaucer, The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, part 2, lines 1292−3
‘.. Is ther any coper herinne?’ seyde he.
‘Ye,’ quod the preest, ‘sire, I trowe wel ther be.’
Chaucer, The Second Nun's Tale, lines 212−15:
‘Leevestow this thyng or no? Sey ye or nay.’
‘I leeve al this thyng,’ quod Valerian,
‘For sother thyng than this, I dar wel say,
Under the hevene no wight thynke may.’
The last of these examples is remarkable, because there the addressee is summoned to answer Yes or No, but instead answers with a full sentence. Yet there is one straightforward occurrence of Modal-only:
The Towneley Plays, Second Shepherds’ Play, line 433:
Uxor: . . . com hap me.
Mak: I wyll.
Here the Modal-only is used in response to a command (‘Come and cover me!’) rather than a question; nevertheless it seems to show that this un-Germanic type of syntax was available in late Middle English.Footnote 36
How much of all this reflects the state of the language at Chaucer's time and how much is owed to the nature of the genres exemplified I do not know. Nevertheless this much seems certain: the Modal-only type is not yet the normal kind of answer to Yes/No-questions in the written language at the end of the fourteenth century. On the other hand, my excerpts from Shakespeare in section 5 above show the new answering usage as fully developed in the sixteenth century. This is even more clearly demonstrated in the full study of questions and answers in Shakespeare's plays by Kay Wikberg, who explicitly concludes:
The overwhelming evidence indicates that most Q[uestion]/R[esponse]-patterns are structurally identical in Shakespeare's and Present-Day English, if in questions the criteria are finiteness, inversion, tags and dependence, and in answers sentence adverbials, expansion, repetition, and the various semantic relationships. (Wikberg Reference Wikberg1975: 208)Footnote 37
I therefore suspect that the English answering system is a Late Middle English and Early Modern English innovation, consolidating in the two centuries between Chaucer (1343−1400) and Shakespeare (1564−1616). The exact reasons for this rather late integration into the written language still have to be found. They are likely to be related to other structural developments of the language forming a kind of prerequisite, in the sense suggested in Lutz MS b. One such prerequisite may have been the development of an auxiliary system suited for constructing Kurzantworten of the Insular Celtic type, as suggested by Ray Harlow (see the Postscriptum below) and by Angelika Lutz (p.c.).Footnote 38 For example, the use of do-support in questions experienced its steepest rise in frequency − from hardly 10 to over 50 percent − between 1500 and the birth (or baptism) of Shakespeare (see Ellegård Reference Ellegård1953: 162). More research is needed, however, to verify such correlations by establishing a secure chronology for the new answering system and by reconstructing the details of the development.
11 Postscriptum: Answers to Yes/No-questions and language type
When I presented my observations on ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ at the University of Munich on 19 July 2002, Wolfgang Schulze (Munich) suggested that I consider the possibility of a correlation with other typological characteristics of the languages involved, in particular with constituent order (VSO/SVO/SOV). I agree; however, first attempts in this direction did not yield positive results. In particular, there does not appear to exist a strong nexus between VSO order and the avoidance of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in favor of short clauses. Conversely, the tendency of VSO-Semitic to answer with clauses is also found in Akkadian even though this Semitic language had changed to SOV.Footnote 39
A cursory check of some of the Pacific languages, which are VSO, has yielded an ordinary use of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ words. Ray Harlow (Hamilton, New Zealand), in an e-letter of 29 July 2002, says specifically about Maori: ‘Maori says “yes” and “no” very much like German. (There's a further word for denying a negative, = German doch, French si.)’ Harlow proposes another possible typological correlation:
I wonder whether the difference is not so much to do with VSO etc. as with whether the language concerned has ‘pro-verbial’ expressions, often auxiliaries, as in the examples from English which you quote [my examples were I do, I won't, He most certainly will, etc., T.V.]. Welsh certainly forms its usual pres. periphrastically, and as far as I remember so does Irish. Maori has no such ‘pro-verbial’ forms.
Neither does Biblical Hebrew, for example; nevertheless there ‘affirmative answers to yes-no questions consist of a restatement of the question in positive terms’ (Steiner Reference Steiner and Hetzron1997: 167). They do not, however, consist of Kurzantworten. So Harlow may have hit the nail on its head.
Thus it seems that if there exist typological correlations between ways of answering Yes/No-questions on the one hand and syntactic or morphosyntactic properties of the kind briefly discussed here on the other, they would not consist of any grand plan but of the details of the verbal system, specifically the availability of auxiliaries, in particular a dummy auxiliary such as English do. Following this line of research, correlating the studied presumed Celticisms with each other and with the totality of grammatical prerequisites, seems to me a most promising strategy and, indeed, the only one with a prospect of dependable results.
