Locality constraints on yes/no questions in Singapore Teochew

Abstract

This paper describes the formation of yes/no (Y/N) questions in colloquial Singapore Teochew (ST), a variety of Teochew (Chaozhou) which has borrowed a significant number of lexical items from Malay. The varieties of Y/N questions which we shall describe are A-Not-A questions, questions employing the question particle ka and postposed negative auxiliary (PNA) questions. The three types of Y/N questions can be reduced to two types, A-Not-A questions and ka questions. These two types of questions differ markedly in their properties. Ka questions show distributional limitations which indicate that they are derived similarly to adverbial WH questions, suggesting a movement analysis like that proposed by Huang (1982 and 1991) for Mandarin and Taiwanese A-Not-A questions. ST A-Not-A questions, however, appear not to be derived by movement. Rather, we follow McCawley's suggestion that A-Not-A questions represent the conventionalization and grammaticization of what earlier were not Y/N questions, but rather alternative or disjunctive questions. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.