A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE EXPRESSIVE USES OF AFFIRMATIVE AND NEGATIVE PARTICLES IN ITALIAN AND ENGLISH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46991/AFA/2025.21.2.15Keywords:
Syntax, pragmatics, expressive language, comparative linguistics,, multimodality, negative particles, affirmative particlesAbstract
This work examines the properties of affirmative and negative particles, such as yes and no, when used to express emotions like regret, surprise, disapproval, and others. In the cases discussed here, yes and no do not negate or affirm the truth of the previous statement but instead convey the speaker's emotional response to a certain content. They therefore belong to the category of expressive language, which transmits emotional meanings. This article compares Italian and English and argues that both languages in these cases use similar structures to express the speaker’s reactions, with specific intonation and gestures enhancing their expressive effect. This discussion will also demonstrate that pragmatic considerations can be integrated into a model of language to generate relevant expressive interpretations, framing language as a multimodal system.
Downloads
References
Abelin, Å., & Jens, A., Abelin, Å., & Allwood, J. (2000). Cross linguistic interpretation of emotional prosody. Paper presented at the ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop (ITRW) on Speech and Emotion, Newcastle, Northern Ireland, UK.
Bianchi, V., & Silvio, C. (2016). The derivation and interpretation of polar questions with a fronted focus. Lingua 170. 47–68. DOI: https://doi.org/-10.1016¬¬/j. lingua.2015.10.010.
Bänziger, T., & Klaus, S. (2005). The role of intonation in emotional expressions. Speech Communication, 46, 252–267.
Bezooijen, R. van. (1984). Characteristics and recognizability of vocal expression of emotion. Berlin, De Gruyter Mouton.
Boersma, P.(2001). Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5 (9/10), 341-345.
Brasoveanu, A., Donka, F., & Floris, R. (2013). N-words and sentential negation: Evidence from polarity particles and VP ellipsis. Semantics and Pragmatics, 6. 1–33. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.7
Cienki, A. (Ed.). (2024). The Cambridge handbook of gesture studies, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press.
Cinque, G. (1999). Adverbs and functional heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Corpus of Contemporary American English: https://www.english-corpora.org/coca
Crystal, D., & Ben, C. (2002). Shakespeare’s words: a glossary and language companion. London, Penguin.
Culpeper, J. (2023). Affirmatives in Early Modern English: Yes, yea and ay, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 19 (2), 243–264. https://doi.org/¬10.1075/-jhp.00021.cul.
Dal Farra, C., Gonzales, A., & Silleresi, S.*, Desiré, C., Guasti, M. (2025). Sì e no: How Italian children and adults answer positive and negative polar questions, ms., Milan: University of Milano Bicocca.
Enfield, N., Stivers, T., Brown, P., Englert, C., Harjunpää, K., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., Hoymann, G., Keisanen, T., Rauniomaa, M., Raymond, C. W., Rossano, F., Yoon, K.-E., Zwitserlood, I., & Levinson, S. C. (2019). Polar answers. Journal of Linguistics, 55(2), 277-304.
Ernout, A., & Meillet, A. (Eds.). (1959). Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue Latine: Histoire des mots [Etymological idctionary of the Latin language: History of words]. Paris: Klincksieck.
Farkas, D., & Kim, B. B. 2010. On reacting to assertions and polar questions. Journal of Semantics, 27. 81–118. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffp010
Furlan, E. (2019). Preguntas especiales en contextos de sorpresa: Entonación y gestualidad en castellano. Análisis de datos experimentales procedentes de entrevistas a nativos [Special questions in the context of surprise: Speech and gestures in the castellan. Analysis of experimental data proceeding from interviews with natives]. MA Thesis. Ca’ Foscari University.
Giorgi, A. (2010). About the speaker. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Giorgi, A. (2018). Ma non era rosso? (But wasn’t it red?): On counter-expectational questions in Italian. In L. Repetti & F. Ordóñez (Eds.) Selected papers from the 46t Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), 69-84. New York: John Benjamins.
Giorgi, A. (2023). Micro-discourses and context-enrichment: Interjections, vocatives and adversative particles. Quaderni di lavoro ASIT, 25. 571-600.
Giorgi, A., & Dal Farra, C. (2019). On the Syntax/Pragmatics interface: Expressing surpriseand disapproval. Intercultural Pragmatics, 16(3), 335-361.
https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2019-0017.
Giorgi, A., & Petrocchi, E. (2024). A cross-cultural analysis of the gestural pattern of surprise and surprise-disapproval questions. Intercultural Pragmatics, 21(3), 307–347. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2024-3002
Giorgi, A., & Petrocchi, E. (2025). On the syntactic representation of co-speech gestures in expressive language. Lingue e Linguaggio. Rivista semestrale, 1, 21-39. https://doi.org/10.1418/117441.
Gutzmann, D., & Turgay, K. (Eds.) (2025). The Oxford handbook of expressivity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krifka, M. (2013). Response particles as sentential anaphors. In: T. Snider (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference. Linguistic Society of America & Cornell Linguistics, 1-18. http://dx.doi.org/-10.3765/salt.v23i0.2676
Krifka, M. (2017). Negated polarity questions as denegations of assertions. In C. Lee, F. Kiefer, & M. Krifka (Eds.). Contrastiveness in information structure, alternatives and scalar implicatures, 359–398. Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/¬10.1007/978-3-319-10106-4_18
Holmberg, A. (2013). The syntax of answers to polar questions in English and Swedish. Lingua 128. Special Issue: Polarity emphasis: Distribution and locus of licensing, 31–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.10.018
Holmberg, A. (2010). How to refer to yourself when talking to yourself. Newcastle working papers in linguistics, 16, 57–65.
Holmberg, A. (2016). The syntax of yes and no. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marchetiello, C. (2022). Uè, ma che staje facenno? (Hey, but what are you doing?):
Expressing Expectation and Surprise/Disapproval in Neapolitan Dialect. MA Thesis. Venice: Ca’ Foscari University.
Mozziconacci, S., & Dik, H.(1999) Role of intonation patterns in conveying emotion in speech. 14th International congress of Phonetic sciences (ICPhS’99).
Munaro, N. (2019). On the syntactic encoding of lexial inrjections in Italo-Romance. In: S. Cruschina, A. Ledgeway, & E.-M. Remberger (eds.), Italian Dialectology at the Interfaces (pp.185-202). New York, John Benjamins Pub.
Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/
Poletto, C. & Zanuttini, R. (2013). Emphasis as reduplication: Evidence from sì che/no che sentences, Lingua, 128, 124-141. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/-j.lingua.2012.10.016
Pope, E. N. (1976). Questions and answers in English. The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
Potočnik, T. (2023). Saying yes without yes: the positive response system in Latin, Transactions of the Philological Society, 121(1), 65–90. http://dx.doi.org/-10.1111/1467-968X.12259
Roelofsen, F., & Farkas, D. (2015). Polarity particle responses as a window onto the interpretation of questions. Language 91 (2), 359-414.
Sadock, J.M., & Arnold, M. Z. (1985). Speech act distinctions in syntax. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description ( Vol. 1), 155–196. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Servidio, E., Bocci, G., & Bianchi, V. (2018). (dis)agreement, polarity, and focus: Answering negative polar questions in Italian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 3(1), 1–28.
Schlenker, P.(2020). Gestural Grammar, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 38, 887-936 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09460-z
Sloetjes, H. (2017). ELAN [Computer program]. Version 5.0.0. https://tla.mpi.nl/-tools/tla-tools/elan/
Treccani Italian Vocabulary https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/
Wallage, P., & Wim, van der W. (2013). On saying ‘yes’ in early Anglo-Saxon England. Anglo-Saxon England, 42, 183-215.
Wiltschko, M. (2017). Response particles beyond answering. In L. R. Bailey, & M.Sheehan (Eds.). Order and structure in syntax I: Word order and syntactic structure (pp. 241–279). Berlin, Language Science Press. https://doi.org/-10.5281/zenodo.1117726.
Wiltschko, M. (2025). The grammar of self-talk. What different modes of talking reveal about language, Theoretical Linguistics, 51(3-4), 167-229. https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2024-202
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
