Presentation Transcript
Yes/No QuestionsChapter 11, Part 1 :Yes/No QuestionsChapter 11, Part 1 ENGLISH 5050:
English Syntax and Morphology Robert F. van Trieste, Ph.D. All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from chapter 11 of The Grammar Book, 2nd edition.
Yes/No Questions: 1 :Yes/No Questions: 1 “Yes/no questions are often defined as questions for which either “yes” or “no” is the expected answer.”
Are you finished the exercise?
“A syntactic rule inverting the subject and operator gives rise to the characteristic form of yes/no questions in English.”
“Inversion such as this is relatively rare among the world’s languages.”
This is “problematic for ESL/EFL students.”
“. . . native speakers frequently do not invert questions in conversational English; hence, the input to which ESL/EFL learners are exposed is heterogeneous with regard to inversion.”
Yes/No question tree :Yes/No question tree Page 207
subject-operator inversion tree :subject-operator inversion tree Page 207
subject-operator inversion mapping rule :subject-operator inversion mapping rule “This rule moves the operator and the tense marker, if there is one present, to a position [immediately] before the subject”; NOT to the front of the sentence.
On Monday, did you leave you cel phone in the classroom?
*Did on Monday, you leave your cel phone in the classroom?
end :end