CLAUSE AS EXCHANGE
Text 4-3 Mood and tone combinations
4.5 Polarity and modality
4.5.1 Polarity
The positive/negative opposition is one that is fairly certain to be grammaticalized in every language, in association with the clause as proposition or proposal. Typically the positive clause is formally unmarked, while the negative is realized by some additional element: in English, by the word notlocated in the neighbourhood of the verb.
If we take account of a wide range of discourse types, positive probably works out around ten times as frequent as negative (see Halliday and James, 1993). But it would be wrong to think of positive as simply the absence of a negative feature; choosing positive is just as substantive and meaningful as choosing negative, and this is suggested symbolically in English by the way the negative marker may get reduced to the point where positive and negative are more or less equivalent in weight and the negative marker can no longer be detached to leave a positive form intact, for example can/can’t, will/won’t and, in rapid speech,i’n’t,doe’n’t(forisn’t,doesn’t).
This kind of fusion happens only in conjunction with the Finite element — notdoes not get reduced if the verb is non-finite; and this reflects the systemic association of polarity with mood. What carries the polarity feature, positive or negative, is the speech functional component of the proposition or proposal; hence when the speaker adds a mood tag, meaning
‘please check!’, the unmarked form of the tag is the one which reverses the polarity:
You know them don’t you? I didn’t hurt you, did I?
Keep quiet can’t you! Don’t tell him will you!
If the polarity in the tag remains constant, the meaning is assertive rather than seeking corroboration (cf. Section 4.1 above).
It’s you is it? (‘It would be!’) They won’t pay won’t they? (‘I’ll see about that.’)
It is this reversal of polarity in the tag which enables us to identify the polarity of clauses containing other negative expressions, such asno,never,no one,nowhere,seldom:
There’s no more paper in the box, is there?
They never came back again, did they?
It seldom works that way, does it?
No one with any sense would behave like that would they?
P o l a r i t y a n d m o d a l i t y
These clauses all have negative polarity; so if a negative tag is added, it becomes assertive:
there’s no more paper isn’t there?.* By contrast, if the negative word is part of some element in the Residue, the clause itself may be positive:
It’s a question that’s never really been addressed, isn’t it?
She could have not known about it, couldn’t she?
Well you can not go, can’t you?
What is the meaning of polarity in interrogative? In a yes/no interrogative clause, which is precisely a request for polarity and hence presumably can not itself pre-empt the choice, both positive and negative can occur; and here the negative does appear as a marked option, in that while the positive contains no suggestion regarding the likely answer, the negative is, in the traditional formulation, a ‘question expecting the answer “yes” ’:
Haven’t you seen the news?
Aren’t those potatoes done yet?
Aren’t you pleased with it?
(the mother’s question to a child showing no great enthusiasm for a gift). In fact, the typical meaning is slightly more complex than this formulation suggests; what the speaker is saying is something like ‘I would have expected the answer yes, but now I have reason to doubt’.
How then is the negative question answered? The responses yes,no(see below) state the polarity of the answer, not the agreement or disagreement with that of the question:
Haven’t you seen the news? — No (I haven’t). Yes (I have).
— whereas some languages reverse the pattern, or (like French and German) have a third form for the contradictory positive term.
In the WH-interrogative, the negative is more variable. It is common enough with why, especially in contexts of disapproval; for example,Why didn’t you tell me before?.With the other WH-items the negative is more restricted. It does occur straightforwardly as a question, for example Which ones don’t contain yeast?; and especially perhaps in questions of the echo type:They didn’t have any bananas. — What didn’t they have?.Otherwise it tends to function as the equivalent of a generalized positive:
I’d love to live in a house like that! — Who wouldn’t? (= ‘Everybody would.’)
To return briefly to the words yesandno: these are direct expressions of polarity, but they have more than one functional status. If they are expressing a speech function, they are mood Adjuncts; if not, they are continuatives (see Chapter 3, Section 3.4, p. 79) and have no place in the mood structure.
(1)yesandnomay function as statements;either in answer to a question,in acknowledgement to a statement, in undertaking of a command or in acceptance of an offer (cf. Table 4(1) on
* The tendency in speech is to prefer the ‘not ... any’ combination: rather than it goes nowhere, which seems awkward to tag, we get it doesn’t go anywhere(tag:does it?). Similarly, it doesn’t often work that way, does it?.
p. 108). They are then mood Adjuncts. In this function they are phonologically salient and often carry tonic prominence. They may occur elliptically, as a clause on their own; or thematically within the responding clause. So in answer to It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?we might have various forms of denial, as in Figure 4-21. Note that in (b) the response consists of two clauses;
thenois tonic, as shown by the comma in writing, and could have stood alone as an answer.
In (c) the nois salient but not tonic, and the response is a single clause.
P o l a r i t y a n d m o d a l i t y
(a) (b)
(c)
Fig. 4-21 Yes and no as mood Adjunct
no it isn’t
Mood Adjunct Subject Finite Mood
it isn’t
Subject Finite Mood
no, Mood Adjunct Mood no
Mood Adjunct Mood
* The principle is rather complex, but it works as follows: if the agnate finite clause is negative (as shown by the tag; e.g. she was never given a proper chance, was she?) then the negative Adjunct functions as Mood element. If the agnate finite clause is positive (e.g. she could nothave known about it, couldn’t she?) then the negative Adjunct forms part of the Residue.
(2) yes and no may function as part of a textual Theme (like oh, well). Here they are continuatives and serve to signal that a new move is beginning, often but not necessarily a new speaker’s turn; they have no speech function of their own, and therefore merely reflect the current polarity — they are not selecting for positive or negative (and so cannot bring about a switch). In this case they are almost always phonologically weak. Examples are shown in Figure 4-22.
(3) yes (but not no) may function as response to a call; it carries tonic prominence, typically on a rising tone, for example Paddy! — Yes?. It does not seem necessary to label this function grammatically (see Section 4.6.2, p. 153, on minor clauses).
Finally, we should note that the negative word not occurs in two functions: either it is simply a formal or written variant of the Finite negative element n’t, in which case it is part of the Finite; or it is a distinct modal Adjunct in Mood or Residue. In the latter case it is phonologically salient and may also be tonic, for example:
// ^ I will / not al/lowit //
// ^ we were / notim/pressed //
In non-finite clauses, such as not having been told about it, not to allow it, where there is of course no Finite element and the reduced form n’t cannot occur, the not(or other negative modal Adjunct) may constitute a Mood element either on its own, or together with the Subject if there is one.* Some specimen analyses are given in Figure 4-23.