Verbless questions in oral monologic discourse

Bibliographic Data

ID21227043
AuthorsAntonina Bondarenko (0000-0003-3622-296X, Université de Caen Normandie, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume11
Issues2
Pages181-197
Publication date2025-12-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistics Vanguard (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2199-174X • E-ISSN: 2199-174X
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/lingvan-2025-0031
OpenAlexW4412806877
LanguageFR
Citations received2
References cited21

Recent studies of written corpora have shown that the variation between the presence and the absence of the verb is a particularly sensitive issue for questions in English. Extending the analysis to oral monologic discourse, this paper explores the form and discourse function of verbless questions in a corpus of TED Talks. The results show a proportion of verbless questions to verbless sentences that is typical of dialogical written discourse, suggesting that TED Talks represent a speaker-controlled dialogically motivated type of discourse. The observed correlation with antecedent-based ellipsis suggests that verbless questions involve stronger speaker commitment and a lighter cognitive load on the addressee in terms of pragmatic implicature than verbless sentences. Verbless questions also tend to be marked solely by intonation, be immediately answered by the speaker, and assume interlocutive intent

Linguistics · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology

Tools

Open DOI