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Originally posted by Vector A Uptalk already has a meaning in other English dialects? It is used to mark a sentence that is supposed to be a question? So when people use it all the time it can be kind of annoying if you are not accustomed to it? Sort of like if someone were to put a question mark at the end of every sentence regardless of whether the sentence were a question? So it seems to me what is actually happening is the de-phonemizing of uptalk by Californians?

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Originally posted by Sushipunk At least last time you Brits got pissed off, we got punk music out of it. This time, it'll probably just end up being embers breaks

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A Uptalk already has a meaning in other English dialects? It is used to mark a sentence that is supposed to be a question? So when people use it all the time it can be kind of annoying if you are not accustomed to it? Sort of like if someone were to put a question mark at the end of every sentence regardless of whether the sentence were a question? So it seems to me what is actually happening is the de-phonemizing of uptalk by Californians?

I...guess...

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Originally posted by Lira The phenomenon is actually understandable - it's not unlike back-channelling, in the sense that you make a question-like intonation in order to check if the hearer is engaged in the conversation with you.

I've always perceived it as the speaker's insecurity, a lack of confidence in whatever it is they're trying to convey.

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Interesting comment on the article:

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It's not unique to young women. The woman who is the current editor, of the New York Times does this, to the extreme...everything she says, she drags out...she never ceases vocalizing, between words, as if in deep cogitation about how to finish the sentence. Every single syllable is pronounced with an exaggerated deliberation, in a drawl-like delivery that is extremely tiring to the listener. This syndrome has been noted by media consultant John C. Dvorak, of the Dvorak-Curry Media Consultancy, who describes the phenomenon as "Humming", and has hypothesized it to be an adaptive communication strategy developed by women in academia, as a pre-emptive means to prevent interruption by their male colleagues, and subordinates.

Maybe Chomsky developed it while in academia as a pre-emptive means to prevent interruption of his bullshit theories.

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quote:

Originally posted by Lira It was hellishly hard not to read all sentences as questions. But I wouldn't say that's exactly what's going on, though I can see why people have this impression. English doesn't rely exclusively on prosody (sentence intonation) to make questions: Word order also changes and sometimes there's the addition of specific particles (such as "do"). And, even when it does, it seems to me that the intonation doesn't rise as it does with uptalk. When you ask something, you rise until you reach the syllable before the last, when the intonation drops (unless you're surprised).

That may be, but I doubt that this slight difference is perceived by nonlinguists who are unused to California-speak. I think it is all basically the same to us lay-people.

The combination of normal word order and rising intonation is exactly what makes it confusing. "The pitch contour sounds like a question, but the grammar isn't question-style...wtf?"

I never knew this was a "thing", how terribly uninteresting. lulz

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Well, as a hipster, this must be how you talk all the time, so of course it would be uninteresting.