The Psychological Foundations of the Grammar 65
Sincerity condition S wants this information.
Essential condition Counts as an attempt to elicit this
information from H.
Searle’s conditions state that a question is an attempt to elicit information
which the speaker does not have but believes that the hearer has. This
defi nition, as Couper-Kuhlen (1986: 170) points out, is insuffi cient. It fails
to address the issue that the condition S does not know the answer holds
with varying degrees of certainty. Questions where the speaker suspects or
even knows the answer are conducive; all other questions are non-conducive.
Speakers who ask both conducive and non-conducive questions appear to
want the information which they attempt to elicit: they fulfi l the sincerity
and essential conditions. Searle (1969: 65) argues that the performance of
any illocutionary act implies the satisfaction of the preparatory conditions.
In other words, the production of a conducive question also satisfi es the
preparatory conditions and so realizes the illocutionary act of questioning
and not an independent illocutionary act of checking.
Brown, Currie and Kenworthy (1980) investigated the intonation of
conducive and non-conducive questions in Edinburgh English.^18 They sug-
gest that there appears to be a consistent correlation between the terminal
tone and the conduciveness of the question and state:
The terminals appear to relate in a consistent way to the conduciveness
of the question. Where the questions appear to be non-conducive, as in
some polar questions, all WH-questions and some echo questions, the
terminal is either A (rise to high) or B (fall to mid)... Conducive ques-
tions, all declarative questions and some polar questions are regularly
asked on a fall-to-low, C. (ibid. 187)However, counter-evidence exists; for example Halliday (1970: 27) argues
that a polar question with falling tone has the potential to realize a strong
question indicating forcefulness or impatience but not apparently condu-
civeness. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1972: 392) report the
existence of declarative polar questions (conducive questions) occurring
with rising tone and non-conducive Wh-questions with falling tone printed
below as examples (21) and (22) respectively.
(21) you’ve got the ex/plosive
(22) i wonder what \time it is