“Yes”

A few posts ago I talked about the song Sweet Caroline. The morning after I posted that, one of my sisters, who is one of my regular reader messaged me “I read your blog this morning and the first song on the radio when I got in the car to drive to church was … Sweet Caroline. Freaky eh!”

The freakiest coincidence of music I experienced was in a bookshop while browsing through a book which attempts to answer rhetorical questions in songs, for example “How deep is the ocean, how high is the sky?”. One chapter was on “Do you know the way to San Jose?”, the answer to which depends on which San Jose you are headed to; the way to San José, Costa Rica is very different from the way to San Jose, California (which is undoubtedly the one Hal David had in mind). Right then, I heard on the bookshop’s sound system:

doof … doof … doof … doof …  
woah … woah … woah.woah … woah … woah…woah.woah … woah … woah

The simplest answer to the question “Do you know the way to San Jose?” is “Yes” (or “No”), but communicative cooperation means we can’t actually say that.

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Romeo loves Juliet?

English has a number of ways to ask questions, with some smaller or bigger differences in effect.

We can ask:

Romeo loves Juliet?

by adding an upwards inflection at the end. This probably indicates that I haven’t heard you properly, or surprise on my part.

We can emphasise one, two or even all of the words:

Romeo loves Juliet? Who did you say? Did you say Romeo? or I thought Tybalt loved Juliet. 
Romeo loves Juliet? What did you say? Did you say he loves her? or I thought he hated her. 
Romeo loves Juliet? Who did you say? Did you say Juliet? or I thought he loved Rosaline.  

Romeo loves Juliet? Let me get this right – we’re talking about Romeo, and you’re saying he loves her.
Romeo loves Juliet? etc
Romeo loves Juliet?

Romeo loves Juliet? probably Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: RomeolovesJuliet? (I can’t even …)  

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