A word like Huh?–used as a repair initiator when, for example, one has not clearly heard what someone just said– is found in roughly the same form and function in spoken languages across the globe. We investigate it in naturally occurring conversations in ten languages and present evidence and arguments for two distinct claims: that Huh? is universal, and that it is a word. In support of the first, we show that the similarities in form and function of this interjection across languages are much greater than expected by chance. In support of the second claim we show that it is a lexical, conventionalised form that has to be learnt, unlike grunts or emotional cries. We discuss possible reasons for the cross-linguistic similarity and propose an account in terms of convergent evolution. Huh? is a universal word not because it is innate but because it is shaped by selective pressures in an interactional environment that all languages share: that of other-initiated repair. Our proposal enhances evolutionary models of language change by suggesting that conversational infrastructure can drive the convergent cultural evolution of linguistic items.

Copyright: © 2013 Dingemanse et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Introduction

A fundamental tenet of linguistic science is that the sound of a word has a purely arbitrary connection to the word's meaning [1], [2]. Thus, the sound of the word dog in English is connected to the concept ‘dog’ by historical accident and not by any natural connection; roughly the same concept is just as well denoted in French by chien, in German by hund, and in Japanese by inu. But it is not that a word can have just any vocal sound. While the possibility space for sound systems of the world's language is enormous, any given language makes use of only a restricted portion of the possible sounds [3], [4]. It follows from these two basic principles –the ‘arbitrariness of the sign’, and the ‘selectiveness of particular sound systems’– that the words that exist in the world's languages should sound quite different from each other, and that the likelihood that there are universal words is extremely small. But in this study we present a striking exception to this otherwise robust rule. From a systematic comparison of 10 spoken languages from 5 continents we find evidence suggesting that a word like ‘Huh?’–used as a ‘repair initiator’ when, for example, one has not clearly heard what someone just said [5], [6]–is a universal word.

There are two distinct claims being made here: 1. that Huh? is universal, and 2. that Huh? is a word. In support of the first claim, we show that the similarities in form and function of an interjection with the specific function of repair initiation are very much greater across languages than chance coincidence would admit. In fact the variation in form in unrelated languages across the globe is about the same as the variation we find in the way any regular word (e.g., dog) is pronounced across dialects of English. In support of the second claim, we show that Huh? meets the criteria of a word in the sense of being a conventional lexical sign which must be learnt. Thus, in contrast to what has been presumed for interjections in general [7], [8] and for huh? in particular [9], [10], we find that this item is linguistic in nature rather than being a mere grunt or non-lexical sound. We show that the form is locally calibrated in ways that show it fitting within different language systems. Huh? may be a non-prototypical word, but it is a word.

Finally, we address the question of why all languages should have such a word and why its form should be so similar across languages. We observe that this item fulfils a crucial need shared by all languages –the efficient signalling of problems of hearing and understanding– and we propose that its form is constrained by selective pressures in a conversational environment that is essentially the same in all languages. Consider a case from English [10]:

Extract 1 American English [NB, 1:1:19]

After speaker G makes a statement, speaker E utters the interjection huh?. This is followed by a repetition of the original statement by G. The technical term for this type of sequence is “open other-initiated repair”: repair is initiated not by the speaker of the first turn but by the other participant (“other-initiated”), and the repair initiator signals that there is a problem, but it leaves open what the problem is (“open”) [11]. The actual repair operation in response to this interjection is usually simply repetition, sometimes with slight modification. Extracts 2 and 3 show structurally identical sequences in two other languages: Siwu, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, and Lao, a Tai-Kadai language spoken in Laos.

Extract 2 Siwu (Ghana) [Maize1_1017013]

Extract 3 Lao (Laos) [CONV_050815c_03.10]

These examples show that it is possible to identify the same conversational structure in unrelated languages. Essentially, this method gives us a natural control over conversational data, making possible systematic comparison across languages [12], [13]. Sequences of other-initiated repair have been identified in every spoken language investigated so far [14], [15], and as the examples show, the interjection in the pivotal turn can be remarkably similar. This leads to the question driving our study: is huh? in this context a universal word?

By compiling data from published literature we found that in thirty-one languages around the world, the interjection for other-initiated repair appears to be strongly similar (Figure 1). However, written sources are rarely explicit about the precise form, meaning, and use of interjections. The most reliable way to study a conversational interjection is by examining cases of actual use. Therefore we collected data from recordings of naturally occurring informal conversations in a sample of 10 languages from 5 continents, varying fundamentally in terms of phonology, word structure, and grammar (languages 1–10 in Figure 1). For optimal comparability, we studied the exact same conversational environment across languages: that of other-initiated repair (OIR), in which one participant produces a turn at talk, the other then signals some trouble with this turn, and finally the first produces a next turn which aims to solve the trouble, usually by means of repetition and/or modification. In some languages the interjection, or an item similar to it, was also found in other sequential environments, for instance to mark surprise or to pursue a response. Such alternative (and probably derived) uses provide insight in possible paths of semantic change, but we exclude them here to make sure we are comparing like with like.

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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. Interjections for other-initiation of repair in thirty-one languages. A word like huh? –used to initiate repair when, for example, one has not clearly heard what someone just said– is found in roughly the same form in spoken languages across the globe. Languages 1–10 are examined in detail in the present study, 11–20 from [14], 21–31 from sources cited. Locations are approximate. 1. Cha'palaa 2. Icelandic ha 3. Spanish e↗ 4. Siwu ã:↗ 5. Dutch h ↗ 6. Italian ε:↗ 7. Russian a:↗ 8. Lao hã:↗ 9. Mandarin Chinese ã:↗ 10. Murrinh-Patha a:↗ 11. ‡Âkhoe Hai//om hε↗ 12. Chintang hã↗ 13. Duna 14. English hã↗ 15. French 16. Hungarian hm↗/ha↗ 17. Kri ha:↗ 18. Tzeltal hai↗ 19. Yélî Dnye 20. Yurakaré æ↗ 21. Lahu hãi [38] 22. Tai/Lue hy ˘↗/há↗ [92] 23. Japanese e↗ [93] 24. Korean e↗ [94] 25. German h [95] 26. Norwegian h ↗ [96] 27. Herero e↗ [97] 28. Kikongo e↗ [98] 29. Tzotzil e↗ [99] 30. Bequia Creole ha:↗ [100] 31. Zapotec aj↗ [101]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078273.g001

Earlier we found that all 10 languages in the sample make available two types of expressions to initiate repair in this conversational environment [14]: an interjection (comparable to English “huh?”) and a question word-based expression (comparable to English “what?”) – with the interjection being a dedicated, default form for open other-initiated repair, and the question word being recruited from a larger grammatical paradigm of question words. The question words for initiating repair in the languages in our sample are very different in phonetic form, with varying numbers of syllables, a wide range of different consonants and vowels, and many different combinations of speech sounds (Table 1). This is just as expected in a diverse language sample given the principle of the arbitrariness of the sign. Compared to the question words, the interjections for initiating repair are strikingly similar in form (Table 1). It is this exceptional similarity that we investigated in this study.