Philippine E-Journals

Interrogativity as Interpersonal Stance Markers in Sambal language

Darwin M. Guianan

Discipline: Social Science, Languages, Art

 

Abstract:

This paper explores on how Sambal interrogatives express interpersonal stance on a sentential level (syntax) and what effect they create in the conversation. Huddleston (1994, in Haan, 2002) explained that “an interrogative sentence relates to syntactic form, and the term ‘question’ to pragmatic function.” From a pragmatic perspective, interrogative utterances are analyzed by looking at its intended use.Haan (2002) stated that “the prototypical function of an interrogative extends its scope to various pragmatic categories, one of which is stance”. Stance is defined as a linguistic and methodical approach in which interlocutors form and cue relationships with the meaning they utter and with the people they converse with (Johnstone, 2009). Dita (2012) discussed that different languages would have different sets of stance taking strategies, one of which is Sambal.