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From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel)
Subject: Re: Nit-picking
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Message-ID: <1995Mar22.053153.25760@chemabs.uucp>
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Sender: Rick Turkel (rturkel@cas.org)
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References: <> <D5r09K.2qM@indirect.com> <1995Mar21.211920.391@kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw>
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Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 05:31:53 GMT
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In article <1995Mar21.211920.391@kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw>,
 <tim@kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw> wrote:
>In Article <D5r09K.2qM@indirect.com>
>stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer) writes:
>>Not so very long ago, Paul Sampson <paul.sampson@octacon.co.uk> said...
>>>'Ere! You deleted my terminating question mark!
>>
>>  Oh.  Okay.  Let me do that over again, then.
>>
>>Lastatempe skribis Paul Sampson <paul.sampson@octacon.co.uk> jene:
>>>English has a future tense?
>>
>>  Yes?  We know?  Japanese, however, does not?
>>
>>  I wonder why people insist on putting question marks at the ends of
>>declarative sentences?
>>
>
>It makes perfect sense to me?  But then I've always tried to write the way
>people speak?  I was out of the U.S. for fifteen years?  I couldn't believe
>how often so many people end their sentences with a rising inflection?
>It makes me wince, but that's how so many people talk?
>
>It's a fairly good reproduction of some speech patterns, but it sounds.  Like.
>Shit.

There was a lengthy story on NPR's _All Things Considered_ a year or two
on just this subject.  If I remember correctly, it was first attested on
the West Coast among teenage girls, and was thought to have evolved as
an implicit request for approval or verification from the listener.  I,
too, find it quite, like, annoying?
-- 
Rick Turkel         (___  _____  _  _  _  _  __     _  ___   _   _  _  ___
rturkel@freenet.columbus)oh.us|   |  \  )  |/  \     |    |   |   \__)    |
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Rich or poor, it's good to have money.  Ko rano rani | u jamu pada.
