Beyond 'yes' and 'no': Multimodal multilexical polar responses in German

Abstract

Response particles like yes and no fulfil two functions: they may affirm or reject a previous utterance, or they may indicate the response polarity. Languages differ with regard to the function that is given priority, which is reflected in the use of particles in responses to negative antecedents. Quantitative evidence shows that priorities are gradient and that there also is interindividual variation. Response strategies other than particle responses are less well studied but it is well known that languages use for instance echoing strategies, truth-related verbal and adjectival predicates, non-vocal gestural strategies, as well as sequential and simultaneous combinations of these. We present results from an open production experiment looking at the entire range of multilexical and multimodal response strategies in German. German uses a wide range of response elements (RE) including the ambiguous particles ja ‘yes’ and nein ‘no’, unambiguous RE like the adverb genau ‘exactly’ and the particle doch ‘rejecting a negative antecedent’, as well as stand-alone head nods and headshakes. We show inter alia that particles are preferred over non-particles, that stand-alone head movements are ambiguous like ja and nein, that co-speech headshakes may be used to help disambiguation whereas this is not the case for co-speech head nods, and that sequential combinations in principle are such that a second RE may disambiguate the first, although they typically are collocations that are used independently of actual ambiguity avoidance. We discuss the results in the context of models of response elements making use of presuppositional polarity features.