A functional description of questions 109difference: a verbal response is obligatory in the former whereas it is not
in the latter.
Elicit:repeat and Elicit:clarify
Finally, there are two subcategories of Elicitation which are meta-discoursal:
they refer to the discourse itself. One prospects a repetition of the utterance
preceding the Elicitation and the other prospects a clarification of a preceding
utterance or preceding utterances. We may label the former Elicit:repeat
and the latter Elicit:clarify. The former is realized by wh-interrogatives such
as ‘Who/When/Where/What did you say?’, ‘Say that again?’ or words such
as ‘Sorry?’, ‘Pardon?’ or ‘Huh?’. It should be noted, however, that the
utterance ‘What did you say?’ realizes an Elicit:repeat only when ‘what’ is
prominent and is usually spoken with a rising tone (r+). If ‘you” is prominent
then it realizes an Elicit:inform. The following is a possible contextualization
of the latter.
55 A: He asked me if he could borrow my car.
→ B: and what did YOU say?
Here B is not asking A for a repetition, but rather to report what he said.
It is therefore an Elicit:inform and is usually spoken with a falling tone.
Elicit:clarify has a greater variety of realizations. It can be realized by
wh-interrogatives such as ‘What do you mean?’, ‘Which room?’, ‘Where?’
or a high key repetition of a word or phrase in the preceding utterance. For
example,
56 (BCET:A:1)
C: Do you get the bus?
B: Yeah.
→ C: The bus?
B: And the tube.
C’s utterance, spoken with high key, elicits clarification of B’s preceding
response.
To summarize we may say that there are six subcategories of Elicitation:
Elicit:inform, Elicit:confirm, Elicit:agree, Elicit:commit, Elicit:repeat,
Elicit:clarify.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the above examination of conversational data, I have characterized any
utterance which prospects an obligatory verbal response as an ‘Elicitation’
irrespective of its syntactic form. This characterization avoids the inconsistency
of using syntactic criteria for some utterances and discourse criteria for
others; it avoids confusing labels such as ‘exclamatory questions’ and
‘declarative questions’ where in the former, the term ‘question’ refers to