2961: Rising Intonation for Question: Not Universal Jan 29, 2025

In English, even when a question is marked by interrogative pronouns etc. or a change in word-order (moving the verb to the first position), the tendency is to raise the intonation as the question is uttered. This is especially common in yes-no questions, though in either case the question is still indicated by the grammar, and it wouldn’t be necessary to change tone. Compare:

Where are you going?

Are you going?

We are going.

However, echo questions do keep indicative word order, for instance

“I am going” → “You are going!?”

(These pitches can also be meaningfully changed by stressing over different words, but that will be ignored for now.)

Though this is not strictly necessary in English, this is frequently necessary in languages like Hebrew where there is no grammatical difference in word order:

Do you have a dog?* : ?יש לך כלב

You have a dog: .יש לך כלב

This is not universal however. Many African languages in the Sahel instead use a falling intonation or a lengthened final vowel. Only a handful of languages globally do not seem to natively have some form of question-intonation at all, and most languages, including already tonal languages do use it.

*One can clarify this as a question by adding האם יש לך כלב, but this is not necessary.