Information-seeking Questions Research Articles

Usage d’Internet en fin de grossesse chez des femmes primipares : lien avec l’attachement et les troubles anxiodépressifs

IntroductionThe pregnancy of a first child is a life event with a strong emotional impact. Like any life event, pregnancy is a time when the need for comfort and support can be increased. The issues related to attachment will be reactivated in future parents and affect the experience of this transition period. Pregnant women with an insecure attachment style would be particularly vulnerable to experiencing pregnancy-specific anxiety. Furthermore, depending on their representations of attachment relationships, future mothers may perceive their partner as more or less supportive. Faced with a lack of perceived support, expectant mothers could turn to other people. Nevertheless, seeking help and support is not always simple. The Internet could be an alternative source of support and information. Indeed, the specificities of online exchanges can allow another mode of exchange and facilitate the search for support, making the Internet a potential source of support. To face anxiety and depression sometimes experienced during pregnancy, social support is essential. It may help pregnant women to grasp the changes related to her new life. Future mothers with a high level of anxiety and depression, or with anxiety-depressive disorders, could use the Internet to find people with whom to exchange and find answers to their questions. The aim of this study is to explore the Internet use related to pregnancy by expectant mothers in relation to their attachment style, perception of social support, and level of anxiety and depression. Materials and methodsThis study is cross-sectional and was conducted among a sample of 28 pregnant women (mean=27.10 years; sd=3.70). To recruit participants, advertisements with a link to the survey were posted and shared on social networks. All the women were expecting their first child and were in the last trimester of their pregnancy. The participants completed an anonymous online survey. The survey assessed Internet use related to pregnancy, attachment style, perceived social support level of anxiety and depression by autoquestionnaires. ResultsPartial correlation analyzes, controlled by time prior to conception, showed a significant relationship between fearful attachment and (1) Internet use for information seeking, (2) Internet use having a perceived effect on emotions. Data revealed that Internet use to exchange and share experiences and emotions is significantly and negatively related to satisfaction of perceived social support. Finally, depression was linked to both Internet use for information seeking and Internet use for counseling and reducing negative emotions. ConclusionThe results of this study suggest that pregnant women with fearful attachment use the Internet to search for information related to pregnancy. This use could be explained by the fact that the fearful attachment is often associated with a higher level of stress. The need for reinsurance could then result in a multiplication of sources of information to handle the issues raised by pregnancy. The link between the level of depression and the use of the Internet to reduce negative affects suggests that the Internet can be perceived as a source of support by expectant mothers. However, the link between the level of depression and the use of the Internet for information seeking questions about the effects of this use. Indeed, the information and testimonies collected on the Internet could also lead to depressive symptomatology in future mothers.

Intonational variation in Minorcan Catalan: Towards a prosodic change?

Sound variation and change at the suprasegmental level have been the object of a limited number of studies. Among them, the cases of intonational variation and change that cannot be attributed to language contact are very rare. This paper describes a case of intonational variation (which could possibly be the first stage of an ongoing intonational change) that is not due to language contact and that is observed on Minorca, a Catalan-speaking island in the Western Mediterranean. 158 speakers were recorded in 4 locations (two urban areas, a small town and a village). Speakers were male and female speakers belonging to two age groups (teenagers and adults). The corpus contains 1380 information-seeking yes-no questions collected by means of a Discourse Completion Task. Results show that while adult speakers seem to use only the traditional contour (as documented in several previous studies), teenagers in urban areas mostly use a yes-no question contour that differs from the tune used by adults. Teenage speakers in rural areas, on the other hand, still largely use the traditional yes-no question contour. The innovative contour has not been borrowed by other languages or dialects in contact with Minorcan Catalan, but was already in use in Minorcan Catalan with a different pragmatic function.

Covert movement in English probing wh-questions

Besides fronted information-seeking questions, English also allows for two types of wh-in-situ ones: echo questions, which are used to request a repetition or a clarification of a previous utterance, and probing questions, which are often used in quiz shows, classroom settings, and child-directed speech to “prompt” the addressee for an answer. An acceptability judgment task shows that PQs with multiple wh-phrases get a significantly lower acceptability score than echo questions with multiple wh-phrases despite their similarity in surface structure, which suggests a syntactic difference below the surface. Independent syntactic evidence confirms the result and further suggests that while echo questions involve no syntactic movement (Dayal, 1996), probing questions involve covert wh-movement.

Interpreting nominal tautologies: Dimensions of knowledge and genericity

Being always true by their very form, tautologies should be uninformative; however, they are felicitously used to evoke some sort of shared knowledge. In this paper we explore the varieties of knowledge speakers and hearers can resort to in interpreting nominal tautologies. Our examples show that different dimensions of knowledge (encyclopaedic vs. metalinguistic, normative vs. descriptive, and common vs. local) can combine in different ways in the interpretation of tautologies, and that these combinations fit in well with existing classifications of tautologies in the literature. Tautologies serve an argumentative function by invoking general knowledge as a means to justify a certain behaviour, but they also can have the opposite interpretation: when they are used as replies to information-seeking questions, they can only be interpreted as refusals.

The Intonation of Information-Seeking and Rhetorical Questions in Icelandic

We investigate the intonation of information-seeking and rhetorical questions in Icelandic. The results for the information-seeking questions largely confirm observations in previous literature based mostly on introspective data: Polar questions are mostly realized with late rise nuclear accents where the peak aligns after a stressed syllable (L*+H),wh-questions with peak accents (H*);wh-questions often start high (%H, H*). Illocution types (that is, information-seeking versus rhetorical questions) differ in nuclear pitch accent types and in the type and frequency of prenuclear accents. The default boundary tone is low (L%) across question types and illocution types. The results are discussed against the background of previous findings with respect to the relationship between question and illocution type, and prosody.*

Stress clash in Spanish, Catalan, and Friulian from a prosodic perspective

Abstract In several languages, two stresses cannot appear adjacently in the speech chain, and a variety of solutions have been found to be used to resolve this disfavored juxtaposition. According to various different authors, a common strategy for solving stress clash is the non-realization of the first stress and, typically, a transfer of all stress parameters to the pre-tonic syllable. This study aims to describe how stress clash is solved in three Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan, and Friulian) and two sentence-types (broad focus statements and information-seeking yes-no questions). The first two languages behave similarly, insofar as length and loudness are not stress-supporting parameters, and F0 maintains the general patterns of the type of sentence. Friulian stands out because length is the main stress parameter and tonic syllables are significantly longer, even when there is a stress clash. F0 also follows the general sentence type pattern, with one exception: declarative sentences in NP1, where the pre-tonic syllable is always higher than its corresponding tonic.

What are speakers doing when they pretend to be uncertain?

AbstractThis paper investigates conversational actions accomplished by a knowing speaker who takes a non-committal epistemic stance using epistemic adverbs expressing uncertainty in Mandarin conversations. This study finds that adverbs of uncertainty such askeneng,yexu,anddagai, are used predominantly by knowing speakers, rather than unknowing speakers in Mandarin conversations. Moreover, most of these epistemically incongruent cases occur in sequence-initiating actions. Three most common practices are announcements involved in a request project, announcements of self-related positive news, and advice-giving actions. Adverbs of uncertainty are less frequently used by knowing speakers to take a non-committal stance in the sequence-responsive actions. A common practice observed is responses to information-seeking questions that have negative valence. Adverbs of uncertainty are adopted by knowing speakers to minimize disaffiliation caused by these dispreferred actions such as requests, self-praising of accomplishments, advice-giving, and informing with negative valence.

Adapting the eHealth Literacy Scale for Carers of People With Chronic Diseases (eHeals-Carer) in a Sample of Greek and Cypriot Carers of People With Dementia: Reliability and Validation Study.

BackgroundAs the population ages, many more people will be in need of long-term care. According to a recent report by Alzheimer's Disease International and the Karolinska Institute, 84% of people with dementia are cared for at home and 16% in nursing homes. Several Web-based interventions have been developed to assist the work of carers at home. Measuring the levels of electronic health (eHealth) literacy is of top priority to facilitate inclusion of this population and develop training programs to enhance eHealth literacy skills.ObjectiveThis study aimed to adapt the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHeals) for carers of people with dementia, who speak Greek as their native language and live in Greece and Cyprus, and to test the reliability and validity of the scale for carers.MethodsThe content validity of the eHealth Literacy Scale for Carers of People With Chronic Diseases (eHeals-Carer) was assessed with an expert panel (N=10). A descriptive study with face-to-face interviews among 101 primary carers of people with dementia was conducted. In addition to the eHeals-Carer to assess their perceived eHealth literacy, participants responded to a brief questionnaire regarding characteristics of internet use and provided sociodemographic data. The internal consistency of the tool and the construct validity via an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were explored.ResultsThe Mean Item-Level Content Validity Index (CVI) and Scale-Level CVI Average was 0.93. The participants were mostly women (75.2%, 76/101), aged less than 60 years (67.3%, 68/101) with secondary education. The internal consistency was estimated at a Cronbach alpha of .83. Two factors were extracted from the EFA: information seeking questions 1 to 5 (factor 1) and evaluation questions 6 to 8 (factor 2).ConclusionseHeals-Carer is the first perceived eHealth literacy tool adapted for carers of people with dementia. The use of Web-based services available for carers could help them and improve the health care system in the long term. In Greece and Cyprus, there is a lack of services, and improving the digital skills of carers could provide them with the means to support themselves at home and improve care provision.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)RR2-10.2196/resprot.8080

Wer kanndenn schon jasagen?

AbstractThe article explores German discourse particles (DiPs) in rhetorical wh-questions (wh-RQs). Whileschon(roughly ‘unexpectedly’) only marks rhetorical wh-questions,denn(roughly ‘I wonder’) marks contextually arising information-seeking or rhetorical Questions under Discussion (QuDs), with or withoutschon. Sinceja(roughly ‘unquestionably’) marks shared information, it is incompatible with questions by itself, but occasionally occurs in wh-RQs left of DiPs likeschoninstead ofdenn. The results of two acceptability judgment experiments confirm thatjais strongly dispreferred in RQs, the presence ofschonimproves RQs with and withoutja, anddennhas no effect on acceptability. A follow-up study further indicated the rhetorical reading of our target questions to prevail independently from DiPs. We conclude thatjain RQs operates on the information contributed by elements likeschon, denoting roughly that the issue in question arises ‘unquestionably against expectations’. Our contexts were neutral regarding the discourse functions ofjaanddenn(side remarks vs. QuDs), unlike the contexts of the findings, from which we deduce that the markedja schon-RQs, while grammatical, require specific felicity conditions. A first attempt to confirm this experimentally was globally unsuccessful and could only reveal potential hints in an exploratory analysis.

The prosody of rhetorical questions in English

This article contributes to our knowledge about the prosodic realisation of rhetorical questions (RQs) as compared to information-seeking questions (ISQs). It reports on a production experiment testing the prosody of Englishwh-and polar RQs and ISQs in a Canadian variety. In previous literature, the contribution of prosody to the distinction between the two illocution types has often been limited to the intonational realisation of the terminus of the utterance, i.e. whether it ends in a rise or a fall. Along with edge tones, we tested other phonological and phonetic parameters. Our results are as follows: (i) The intonational terminus was distinctive only for polar questions (rise vs plateau), not forwh-questions (low throughout). (ii) Moreover, the semantic difference between RQs and ISQs is signalled by pitch accents. It is reflected in nuclear pitch accent type forwh-questions, and accent type and position for polar questions. (iii) Phonetically, RQs are produced with longer constituent durations and – forwh-questions – a softer voice quality in thewh-word. Taken together, several intonational categories and phonetic parameters contribute to the distinction between RQs and ISQs. A simple distinction between rising and falling intonation is in any case insufficient.

Questions asked by Turkish preschoolers from middle-SES and low-SES families

Research with preschoolers growing up in the US and UK highlights the importance of young children’s questions as a tool for learning from knowledgeable others; however, studies on this topic in different sociocultural contexts are scarce. The present study addressed this gap by examining questions of preschoolers growing up in middle-SES and low-SES Turkish families. We presented a total of 105 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (55 middle-SES and 50 low-SES) with pictures of unfamiliar animals and objects in an experimental context to examine what type of questions children asked, and whether the quantity and type of their questions differed depending on the type of answers they received in an informative vs. a non-informative answer condition. We found that Turkish preschoolers asked many questions to gather information about these unfamiliar items, asking more fact-seeking than explanation-seeking questions. They were also more likely to ask information-seeking questions when they received informative answers than non-informative answers to their questions. We found significant SES differences in that children from middle-SES families asked more information-seeking questions than children from low-SES families; and this difference was particularly pronounced for fact-seeking questions. While Turkish children asked some explanation-seeking questions (22% middle-SES, and 10% low-SES), they were less frequent when compared to previous studies with Western samples (26–30% middle-SES). These results suggest that children’s questions show differences by socioeconomic and possibly by cultural background, at least in this early period of development.

Degree intensifiers as expressives in Mandarin Chinese

AbstractIn this paper, we provide an empirical description and a theoretical analysis of the adverbial use ofhǎo‘(lit.) good’,lǎo‘(lit.) old’, andguài‘(lit.) strange’ in Mandarin Chinese. The three adverbs represent a small yet theoretically interesting class of lexical items. Because they manifest certain similarities to canonical degree adverbs such ashěn‘very’ andfēicháng‘extremely’, they have been usually treated as pure degree adverbs in the descriptive linguistics literature. Empirical evidence, however, shows that these adverbs actually fuse together both degree intensification and expressive meanings. For instance, they convey strong emotion on the part of the speaker and cannot appear in non-veridical contexts such as negation, modals, information-seeking questions, and antecedents of conditionals. We argue thathǎo, lǎo, andguàiare mixed-content lexical items. Based on their empirical behaviors, we follow recent advances in multidimensional semantics to propose a hybrid formal analysis ofhǎo, lǎo, andguàiby incorporating degree semantics into a multidimensional logic for conventional implicature.

The Intonation and Pragmatics of Greek wh-Questions.

We experimentally tested three hypotheses regarding the pragmatics of two tunes (one high-ending, one flat-ending) used with Greek wh-questions: (a) the high-ending tune is associated with information-seeking questions, while the flat-ending tune is also appropriate when wh-questions are not information-seeking, in which case their function can instead be akin to that of a statement; (b) the high-ending tune is more polite, and (c) more appropriate for contexts leading to information-seeking questions. The wh-questions used as experimental stimuli were elicited from four speakers in contexts likely to lead to either information-seeking or non-information-seeking uses. The speakers produced distinct tunes in response to the contexts; acoustic analysis indicates these are best analysed as L*+H L-!H% (rising), and L+H* L-L% (flat). In a perception experiment where participants heard the questions out of context, they chose answers providing information significantly more frequently after high-ending than flat-ending questions, confirming hypothesis (a). In a second experiment testing hypotheses (b) and (c), participants evaluated wh-questions for appropriateness and politeness in information- and non-information-seeking contexts. High-ending questions were rated more appropriate in information-seeking contexts, and more polite independently of context relative to their flat-ending counterparts. Finally, two follow-up experiments showed that the interpretation of the two tunes was not affected by voice characteristics of individual speakers, and confirmed a participant preference for the high-ending tune. Overall, the results support our hypotheses and lead to a compositional analysis of the meaning of the two tunes, while also showing that intonational meaning is determined by both tune and pragmatic context.

The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German.

This paper reports on the prosody of rhetorical questions (RQs) and information-seeking questions (ISQs) in German for two question types-polar questions and constituent questions (henceforth "wh-questions"). The results are as follows: Phonologically, polar RQs were mainly realized with H-% (high plateau), while polar ISQs mostly ended in H-^H% (high-rise). Wh-RQs almost exclusively terminated in a low edge tone, whereas wh-ISQs allowed for more tonal variation (L-%, L-H%, H-^H%). Irrespective of question type, RQs were mainly produced with L*+H accents. Phonetically, RQs were more often realized with breathy voice quality than ISQs, in particular in the beginning of the interrogative. Furthermore, they were produced with longer constituent durations than ISQs, in particular at the end of the interrogative. While the difference between RQs and ISQs is reflected in the intonational terminus of the utterance, this does not happen in the way suggested in the semantic literature, and in addition, accent type and phonetic parameters also play a role. Crucially, a simple distinction between rising and falling intonation is insufficient to capture the realization of the different illocution types (RQs, ISQs), against frequent claims in the semantic and pragmatic literature. We suggest alternative ways to interpret the findings.

The acquisition of question intonation by Vietnamese learners of English

This paper examines the intonation of English statements and questions produced by Vietnamese speakers at two differing levels of proficiency. The goal of the study is three-fold: (1) analysing the final tunes and the prosodic structure observed in information-seeking questions, namely Yes-No question, Or-question, Tag-question and Wh-question, (2) evaluating which characteristics of the L2 English intonation can be clearly derived from the observation of the data, and (3) whether the L2 English intonation patterns are transferred from Vietnamese. A data set of 25 sentences that included 5 statements and 20 information-seeking questions were constructed. Ten native Australian English speakers as a control group and 20 Southern Vietnamese speakers of English (10 beginners and 10 advanced speakers) were recorded. The final tunes (the direction of the final F0 contours) of the sentences were analysed. The result showed that while the advanced speakers of English mostly produced intonation patterns that are typically used by native English speakers, beginning speakers of English used a variety of tunes, several of which are deviate from the native-like standard and clearly transferred from the tone contours in Vietnamese. The findings of this study have an original and significant contribution to the literature because it investigated into the prosodic transfer of intonation patterns between two typologically distinct languages: English, a stress accent language and Vietnamese, a contrastive contour tone language and has implications for intonation teaching.

Marking “commitment to undertaking of the task at hand”: Initiating responses with eeto in Japanese conversation

Eeto is one of the most frequently occurring Japanese vocal markers. Often characterized as a mere time-buyer, or “filler”, this token has been frequently said to reflect ongoing internal cognitive processing or reflection. Examining naturally occurring instances of eeto by focusing on its occurrences at the beginning of responses to information–seeking questions, however, we found that eeto-prefaced responses all provide a carefully constructed answer in contexts where the responses might otherwise be heard as not aligning in the most straightforward way. We argue that eeto affords Japanese conversationalists a way through which they can project the maximally prosocial stance of interactional commitment to undertaking the task at hand. Rather than a marker of an internal processing state, eeto, we argue, is instead a useful linguistic resource to publically display a respectful stance toward the questioner while the respondent is carefully building an appropriately contextualized response.

Question, Explanation, Follow-Up: A Mechanism for Learning From Others?

This study explored differences in caregiver-child interactions following children's information-seeking questions. Naturalistic speech from thirty-seven 4-year-olds and their caregivers was used to explore children's information-seeking questions, the caregiver's response, and children's subsequent follow-up. Half of the families were low-socioeconomic status (SES) and the other half were mid-SES. Although children across socioeconomic groups asked a similar proportion of questions, mid-SES caregivers offered significantly more explanatory responses to causal questions as well as more noncircular explanations than low-SES caregivers. No differences were found in children's follow-up to responses given to fact-based questions; however, after hearing unsatisfactory responses to causal questions, mid-SES children were significantly more likely to provide their own explanation. Such variability in caregiver-child interaction may have implications for subsequent learning.

Young children’s developing conception of knowledge and ignorance: work in progress

When do children acquire an understanding of knowledge and ignorance? We analyzed the early development of children’s spontaneous references to knowing and not knowing and conclude that 2-year-olds talk explicitly and cogently about their own knowledge as well as that of an interlocutor. Two-year-olds also admit their own ignorance. Moreover, consistent with their realization that an informant may know what they do not, 2-year-olds ask many information-seeking questions. Finally, we discuss children’s receptivity and skepticism, especially toward the counterintuitive claims of an adult. We conclude that children’s conception of knowledge and ignorance begins early but undergoes protracted refinement.

‘Who will employ them? ’Questions as engagement strategies in Nigerian job portals online

This study investigates the use of questions for engagement by writers in discussions in online job portals. Based on a mini corpus of 40 postings together with their comments consisting of 139,104 words extracted from Naijahotjobs and Nairaland job portal discussions, the study addresses the functional use of questions in the presentation of writer's stance, the possible variation of questions with the topics being discussed, the rhetorical functions of questions and the use of question clusters in discussions. The analysis shows that two major kinds of questions were frequently used for engagement – wh- and yes-no questions. This represents two levels of complexity in interrogation – open-ended and closed-ended levels. It also reveals that the two most prominent groups in the discussions (motivational writers and graduate job seekers) used questions differently for engagement purposes. Motivational writers who typically assumed the position of experts used questions to engage the cognition of readers and sometimes to threaten their face, while graduate job seekers tended to ask information-seeking and confirmation questions based on issues agitating their minds about their unemployment situation. In addition, graduate job seekers asked what I refer to as ‘protest questions’, which focus on social issues connected with unemployment. This study therefore shows that beyond networking and getting relevant information about how to secure employment and advance in a career, job portals have provided a space for interrogating, confronting and guiding job seekers on the social problem of unemployment in Nigeria.Key words: questions, engagement strategy, job portal, Nigeria, unemployment

Children's understanding of physical possibility constrains their belief in Santa Claus

What role does children's understanding of physical possibility play in their acceptance of adults’ testimony about Santa? This question was addressed by comparing children's ability to differentiate events that do and do not violate physical laws to their skepticism toward Santa. Children aged 3–9 (n=47) were asked (a) to generate information-seeking questions for Santa in a letter-writing task, (b) to explain how Santa accomplishes some of the feats he is purported to accomplish, and (c) to assess the possibility of various physically extraordinary events (unrelated to Santa), some possible and some impossible. Children who were better at differentiating possible events from impossible events had also begun to engage with the mythology surrounding Santa at a conceptual level, questioning the feasibility of Santa's extraordinary activities while also positing provisional explanations for those activities in the absence of a known answer. These findings suggest that children's acceptance of testimony about Santa – and possibly other forms of counterintuitive testimony – depends not only on the testimony they receive but also on the child's own understanding of physical possibility.