Talk:Tag question

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A comment on the article about tag questions:

Tag questions are here defined as a declarative followed by a questioning tag, which is in itself an incomplete definition. However, the reason why I react is that the examples given are actually imperatives followed by a questioning tag, which is also possible.

Some examples with declaratives and an interrogative:

John's going out, isn't he? (pos. declarative + neg. tag)

That's not true, is it? (neg. declarative + pos. tag)

He's quite stubborn, is he? (pos. declarative + pos. tag)

Do you sell newspaper do you? (pos. interrogative + pos. tag)

(Above comment by user 134.58.253.114. Please give a username in future.)

The last example, with interrogative + tag, is not to my mind a possible English sentence. The other examples are exactly parallel to the examples in the text of the article. I don't really see the problem here. --Doric Loon 14:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Echo questions

What are echo questions? Are they the same what question tags?

(This question by user Pawlątko.)

No, as far as I can discover, echo questions are questions which repeat the bulk of the sentence to which they are reacting. eg:

Jack: It's Mary's birthday. I gave her a kitten.

Jill: You gave her a KITTEN??? But you know she hates cats!

--Doric Loon 14:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Answering Tag Questions

There's a lot about the forms of these questions on this page. But what should be addressed is how one answers them: answering tag questions phrased in the affirmative form is obvious, but those phrased in the negative form confront the difficulty in present-day English of the double negative.

In German, "doch" is used to answer "yes, it isn't"; "si" in French as well ("non" is used to answer the negation "no; rather, it is") and Japanese has similar expectation of how such questions are answered.

In Archaic English, there used to be a means of answering as in those other languages listed above, and I think it was "nay". Personally, I'm interested in the various ways things can be expressed -- but there are a lot of people out there who are trying to learn English and get hung up on this point. (I work around it). --Sobolewski 22:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The only way I have ever heard is to answer it in the same manner as a positive, ignoring the negative. Thus, given "This is good bread, isn't it?" answering yes means "yes it is good bread" and no means "no it isn't". This is the same rule that is used for negative questions in general in english. The double negative doesn't cross into the answer is the best way I can think to say it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.153.117.118 (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] "Emphasis" examples

• I don't like peas, do you?
• I like peas, don't you?

Are these really tag questions and not separate questions (that should be indicated as such using periods or maybe semi-colons)?

• I don't like peas. Do you?
• I like peas. Don't you?

--RJCraig 07:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

If they are joined to the sentence as in the text, they are tag questions. If they are separated the way you write them, they are not. The difference in writing is real, because it reflects two different ways of saying them, and the different intonation patterns have different levels of meaning, or at least of stress. If they are just tagged on the end of the sentence as afterthoughts, they are modifiers of the original sentence. In this case, like many other tag questions in the article, they simply invite - but in fact probably presuppose - agreement, they don't really solicit information. --Doric Loon 17:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)