Noncompositional

Another “no yeah” that came out of my mouth. This time I was quite clear on why I said it, at least on introspection after the fact (I didn’t consciously try to produce one, or think about it while I was saying it).

Me and my friend (call him Theo) were walking to class, and I had a slice of coffee cake that we were going to share in the class. As we walked up the stairs leading up to the building where the class was held, we had a little exchange (paraphrasing / remembering as best I can):

Me: Would you mind taking this? I’m gonna head to the bathroom. Theo: Actually, I’m also going there. Me: Ah, okay. Theo: You could just [maybe "I would just"] put the plate on the shelf in there, or something. I mean, I don’t really care about that. Me: No, yeah, that’s what I was gonna do.

We both rather quickly realized what I had said, so I started to think about why. I felt very strongly that the reason I said “no” was as a way to say “no, I don’t care about food being momentarily in the bathroom.” The “yeah” was, then, a way to indicate uptake or agreement with his implicit suggestion to take the food in.

You might look at the previous line and say: hey, there’s a negative statement with contrastive focus on “I.” Maybe this has an implied question, like “do you care?” Then that would be what my “no” was in response to. Now, I’m no expert on the exact interpretations of such focused items (and to be honest, I’m actually not entirely sure that it was prosodically focused; it’s just a guess), but it seems easier to say that rather than evoking an implicit question, the focusing evokes an implicit assertion. Namely, “(perhaps) you/others do care about it.” The “no” then acts to negate this assertion; it would not be answering a question.