Echo answers

Abstract The topic of echo answers is vastly understudied in typology, with descriptive grammars primarily addressing how questions are formed rather than how they are answered. This paper offers a cross-linguistic investigation into the accessibility of echo answering strategies, specifically focusing on affirmative echo answers to affirmative polar questions. Based on questionnaire-elicited data from a convenience sample of 26 languages displaying echo answers, it has been found that, cross-linguistically, repeating the verbal predicate, either fully or partially, from the question, is the dominant echo answering strategy, and that there are two Echo-ability Hierarchies that impose constraints on which elements from the antecedent question can be repeated in an echo answer. After discussing the definition of echo answers, several related issues are also explored in detail, including the distinction between echo and repetitional answers, the polarity-based nature of the echo system, the range of accessible echo answering strategies across the world’s languages, the cross-linguistic gradience of pragmatic markedness in repetitional/echo answers, and potential explanations for the predicate-dominance in echo answering strategies.