I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that a common aspect amongst all languages is the tendency to raise the pitch of your voice slightly when asking a question. Especially at the end of a question sentence.

If I’m wrong about this raised pitch being common amongst all languages, at the very least do all languages change their tone slightly to indicate that a question is being asked?

I guess there needs to be some way to indicate what is and isn’t a question. Perhaps a higher pitched voice reflects uncertainty. Is this something deep rooted in humans, or just an arbitrary choice when language developed?

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    Russian does, because the rising intonation is the only thing that differentiates a statement from a question in many cases. Eg “You a good driver.” Vs “You a good driver?” Both are grammatically correct, and only the intonation makes it a question.

    Vietnamese doesn’t really rise at the end of the question unless that’s the way the last word is anyway. Some questions end with a low sound. Some questions are evident by a small word cluster (sounds like “Fai La”) after the subject but before the object that basically mean “this is a question and not a statement.” Or “I’m asking not telling”