"HI? I'M SUZIE? I'll be your server for today?"

Most of us are so used to hearing statements asked in the form of questions that we hardly think about it anymore. While it might make the more language conscious among us cringe, for York linguistics Professor Greg Guy it posed a research challenge.

Guy first heard the "high-rising intonation in a declarative sentence" when he was an academic working in Australia in the '80s. Apparently, like kangaroos, that particular speaking style was indigenous only to down under at the time.

His fellow Australian colleagues insisted the irritating interrogative was not in vogue with students in the '60s. They proved it by playing tapes of students from that era. No highrise in sight. So where did it come from? Guy and his colleagues were intrigued. They began studying the new style by testing 130 subjects ­ from adolescents to people in their sixties, both native and non-native speakers.

They found ethnicity was not a factor in what was dubbed the "Australian Questioning Intonation". Researchers did find, however, that more young people than old, and more women than men had adopted the interrogative style. Social class played a role too. More upper-working and lower-middle class people used it, compared to other social strata.

"Australia is likely where the interrogative way of talking originated," says Guy. " But we still don't know why it spread so rapidly to Canada, parts of the US and much of the anglophone world." Guy theorizes the linguistic anomaly began in response to the huge influx of immigrants to post-World War II Australia.

"We think it was a way of asking for feedback. Native English speakers wanted to know if the [immigrant] listener was following what they were saying."

Illustration: Peter Harris