Page 373 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

CHAPTER 11
NON-DECLARATIVE SPEECH ACTS

11.0 Outline
Up to this point, we have dealt almost exclusively with declarative speech-
acts, i.e., with clauses where the speaker’s main communicative goal was informative

(Givón 2001b:287). This chapter deals with the non-declarative speech acts in
Bhojpuri. It consists of five sections. In section 11.1, we deal with interrogative

speech acts and section 11.2 deals with manipulative speech acts. Section 11.3
examines de-transitive voices and in section 11.4, we discuss passivization. Section

11.5 presents the summary of this chapter.
11.1 Interrogative speech acts

Within the class of interrogative clauses, languages typically distinguish two
subtypes: those for which the information requested is a simple affirmation or
disaffirmation (yes or no), and those for which the requested information is a more

elaborate locution – a phrase, a proposition, or an entire discourse (Payne 1997:295). They
are also known as polar and constituent questions respectively, both available in Bhojpuri

and also partially displayed in Nirbhik (1975:135), Tripathy (1987:261), Shrivastava
(1999:111), Sharma and Ashk (2007:73) and Singh (2013:162) but Thakur (2011:145) has

made efforts to exhibit them properly. Thus, in my observation, as its close neighbours
Chitoniya Tharu (Paudyal 2013:315), Maithili (Yadav 1996:290), Hindi (Koul 2008:222)
and Nepali (Adhikari 2016:436) Bhojpuri exhibit them in similar ways as follows:

11.1.1 Polar questions
The conventional wisdom about polar (yes/no) questions, based on a long

logical tradition, has been that the speaker asking the question is neutral with respect
to the expected answer – positive or negative (Givόn 2011:312). It provides a logical

condition for polar question, as in (1):
(1) Logical tradition about yes/no questions:
Given proposition P, tell me, is it true or false?

However, it is also the fact about languages that the speakers do not only ask
yes/no-questions with neutral expectations, but with some bias towards either the

affirmative or negative response.
Payne (1997:295-6) exhibits a change in word worder in VO languages, use of

interrogative particles mainly in OV languages, and employment of intonation
patterns in languages universally to form yes/no questions. Cross-linguistically, as

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