MISCELLANY ATCHESON L. HENCH University of Virginia SUBSTANDARD ‘YES! AND ‘NO! IN SPOKEN AMERICAN ENGLISH Foreign visitors to the United States, who have leaned the proper affirma- tive and negative responses of yes and no, are often bewildered by the wide- spread colloguial use of uhh and hul-uh.! Conversely, even the most addicted American ‘uh-huh-er’ is often forced to abandon this colloguialism in favor of the traditional yes and no for the sake of efficient communication when abroad? Substandard yes and no provide an interesting case study from the point of view of structural linguistics, where it is claimed that the phonemes may be broken down into inherent distinctive features. These features are the ultimate discrete signals, by which this operation can be reduced to yes-or-no situa- tions. In addition, substandard yes and no provide a convincing minimal pair which suggests the glottal catch as a marginal phoneme in spoken American English. Affirmative and negative occur as bisyllabic ‘words’ consisting of two open syllables (CVCV). Any vowel or syllabic sonorant may appear, as long as it appears in both syllables. Normally, a vowel, represented here by a hyphen, is used; this vowel is similar to the schwa. Choice of consonants is limited to the glottal catch (?] and the unvoiced spirant (h). All of the four mathe- matically possible consonant combinations can be observed in practice, but ‘one of them is rare. The distinction between affirmative and negative is made by the consonant of the second syllable, where [h} indicates affirmative and [?] indicates negative. Thus: hhch- (Fare) affirmative She affirmative hoe negative 2a negative “The prosodic features of tone and force play no distinctive role bu are used 1. Spelling is eandardized in accordance with that used in the comic strip “Peanots’ by (Charles M. Schulz. 2 To the best of my knowledge, no atempe has been mal to identify the localities or speech communities where the use of uhhuk and hub-uk is not universal phenomenon. However, I can cite one native-bom American married couple in cheir later thirties now living in Cambridge, Massacharers, who were not failiae with these forms until theit {our daughters bogan using them, and who ae sill noc entirely sure of the diference beoween the two forms. '. Roman Jakobson, C. Gunnar M. Fant, and Morris Halle, Preliminarier to Speck Analy sis: the Distinctive Features end Their Corelates Cambridge, Mass. 1953), B. 43¢MISCELLANY 331 to indicate various mances of affirmation and negation, such as surprise, ‘anger, pleasure, doubt, and so on. Normally, the affirmative is accompanied by 2 rising tone, while the negative is accompanied by a falling tone. How- ever, reversing the normal tone pattern seems to provide additional shades of affirmation and negation for some people. The fact that both affirmative and negative can be whispered without losing their identities is another indication that tone is not a distinctive feature. Ina like manner, the first syllable of each is normally stressed, but stressing the second syllable produces more degrees of affirmation and negation. The ‘wo structural variants of each response, taken together with the prosodic features of tone and force, provide a total of sixteen variants for substandard _yes and no, four of them taken to be normal. Substandard yes and mo may be pronounced with the mouth closed as well as, open. In the former case, the vocalic function is assumed by syllabic nasal consonants, represented variously: un-hum, unh-humh, and so on. In the latter case, the liquid sonorants may assume the vocalic function without impairing the meaning, although T have not been able to find any written examples of ‘what would most likely appear as ur-hr, h-stl, and so on. Although substandard yes and no are normally accompanied respectively by a nod or a shake of the head, these are optional concomitant and redundant gestures, since the two responses are distinct in the media of radio and tele- phone. Since the yes/no distinction is carried in the second syllable, pronouncing ‘only the first syllable indicates doube or hesitation, leaving the listener waiting for the second syllable. When just the first syllable is used in this manner, it is often followed by three dots to indicate the absence of the second, decisive syllable, and is transcribed variously: wh... mk... aah... mmm... hmm... and 50 on. Certain implications seem to derive from the above remarks. In Preliminaries to Speech Analysis it was suggested that the prevocalic or postvocalic aspiration 7h/ is opposed to the even, unaspirated onset or decay of a vowel, that the former isa tense glide (spiritusasper), andthe latter, a lax glide (spirtus lenis), which, properly speaking, is a zero phoneme, and that the opposition (/h/ — /4/) occurs in English in initial prevocalic position. It was also suggested thatthe lax counterpart of /h/ presents an optional variant: in cases of emphasis a glottal catch may be substituted for the even onset Substandard yes and no appear to be a minimal pair which utilizes /h/ in ‘opposition to the glottal catch //, where the lax glide (spiritus lenis) or zero phoneme /#/ is prohibited. In this situation the glottal catch is no longer an ‘optional (emphatic) variant of the zero phoneme, but appears as an independent phoneme which is opposed to /h/, where this opposition (/h/ ~ /3/) is + Bid, p39332 AMERICAN SPEECH apparently based not on the opposition of tense 2s. lax, but on the opposition of continuant 2s. interrupted. is not clear whether the second consonant of substandard yes and no is to be considered to be in initial or internal prevocalic position. In normal English usage, a hyphen usually indicates at least a potential word boundary. On the other hand, since pronouncing only the first syllable indicates the utterance to be incomplete, we may easily assume the second consonant to be in internal position, and simply ignore the hyphen of the written forms of substandard yes and ro. Te would be interesting to see the results of further research on substandard yes and no. Sound spectrograms might be useful in determining which phonemes ‘are concemed, and whether the hyphen is a phonetic or graphic device. It ‘would be interesting to discover the localities and speech communities where substandard yes and no are widely accepted. It would also be interesting to see ‘to what extent there is agreement on the nuances of meaning attributed by the prosodic Features of tone and force. ‘Onn Frank Indiana University ‘ne-uP? ‘This note is intended merely to call attention to the word re-up as having had a long and continuous existence as a part of Army speech prior to the de- velopment of an Air Force language, and to suggest that its present wide usage in the Air Force is actually a continuation of the Army usage. ‘A foundation for the impression that the word is peculiar to the Air Force is laid in the following remarks in a recent item on Air Force language: “The fllowing ate notes on few special words in presont ue in Air Force diction... The large and fstly homogencous population of the Air Force continues to show the same language habits it has manifested for some years: new words and meanings are realy ‘rested of adapeed to meee changing military and echnical situations, and there ita steady evelopment and use of inter familias humorous terms ‘The term re-up was one of the two listed in the item as having been ‘in use for some time and [appearing] likely to be permanent’ -vr, eT verb 1 re-upis now in wide sein the Air Force to refer to the reenlistment of noncoms and members of other elated ranks... ‘The item clearly indicates that the term is ‘special’ so far as the Air Force is concerned, but it makes no suggestion that the term existed any earlier than about 1956. It also seems to imply that re-up had its origin in the Air Force. American Speech, James L. Jackson, “More Air Force Language in the Makin XXKV (1960), 302. 2, Ibid p. 303. Footnote» cites a verbal ure ofthe term in a 198 issue ofthe Air Force Times. Occurrences of the term in other grammatical forms, acconling to footnote 3, can be found ina 1956 inte.