Page 374 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

Givόn (2001b: 294-5) notes "languages may use intonation, morphology and word
1
order to code yes/no-questions." Intonation alone can distinguish a yes/no question
from its declarative counterpart in Bhojpuri. as in (2a-b):
(2) a. ई कवनो बात बा ?

i kɔno bɑt bɑ
PROX any matter be.3SG.PRES

'IS this any matter of concern?' (01.065)
b. ओकरा बाद म) नेपाल म) अइनी ?

okʌrɑ bɑd mẽ nepɑl mẽ ʌini

u-ʌr-ɑ bɑd mẽ nepɑl mẽ ɑ-ini
3.SG-GEN-DEF later LOC Nepal LOC come-PST.H

'After that, did you COME to Nepal?' (04.036)
In examples (2a-b), yes/no questions are equivalent to their declarative

counterparts except the slightly raised intonation assigned to the finite verbs
(italicised in Devanagari and IPA as well as capitalized in its free English translation).
Thus, the basic pattern of marking the neutral yes/no question in Bhojpuri is the

assignment of rising intonation to the questioned constituent of a sentence.
Moreover, a single word as well as a phrase can also be yes/no questions in

Bhojpuri, as shown in (3a-b).
(3) a. छोटा ?

cʰoʈɑ

cʰoʈ-ɑ
small-SPEC
'A small one?' (04.128)

b. आ बारा िजला के कलेया तक ले ?

ɑ bɑrɑ jilɑ ke kʌleyɑ tʌk le
and Bara district GEN Kalaiya till till

'And upto Kalaiya of the Bara district?' (04.192)
However, in terms of the speaker’s epistemic bias toward either the

affirmative or negative response, yes/no questions in Bhojpuri may be further divided
as follows:

1. Yes–No questions are sometimes referred to as “closed questions,” because the set of possible
answers is closed, containing just two members (yes and no) Kroeger (2005: 203).
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