BIASED DECLARATIVES WITH ATTITUDINAL MARKERS
Speakers also use declaratives to seek confirmation of their assumptions in a tactful way. Most simply, the declarative is accompanied by appropriate intonation: You are seeing her? You don’t mind if I stay? They are, in fact, leading questions. Frequently, certain items function as attitudinal markers to ‘draw out’ the desired information by reinforcing the speaker’s assumption:
Examples are:
I suppose you’ve heard the news? (epistemic verb)
I understand you’re leaving your job? (hearsay verb)
I hear you’ve been offered a new post? (hearsay verb)
She wasn’t invited to the wedding, then? (inferential connective)
So there’s nothing we can do? (inferential connective)
She knows all about it, of course? (attitudinal adjunct)
But surely you can just defrost it in the microwave? (attitudinal adjunct)
So you took the documents to which (displaced wh-element)
Ministerial office? And you left them where?
More indirectly still, speakers can hint that information should be provided by You were about to say . . .?
Conversely, an interviewer in a chat show might press a participant to admit that she had left her husband and child, which she denies:
Interviewer: So you’ve reported, basically, that you walked out?
Young woman: No, I didn’t walk out.
Ellipted yes/no questions (a type of verbless clause) are extremely common in spoken English. With these, it is even more important than usual to use appropriate intonation.
For example, if you are pouring coffee for someone, you might offer sugar and milk by saying simply Sugar? Milk? with a rising tone. A falling tone would be inferred as a statement, ‘Here is the sugar, here is the milk’, but wouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as an offer; quite the opposite – you might be considered unhelpful.
