ศาลาชุมนุม

[Naga]

I've seen numerous sentence that end in the form บ้างไหม but I really don't understand the purpose of using the word บ้าง unless there is a direct reference to the word some.

Examples:
มีใครรู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม

คุณเห็นสุนัขของฉันบ้างไหมคะ

Why use บ้าง in these sentences?

[Tgeezer]

Fashion again I suppose. If you examine what we say in English you will find lots of redundancy, languages grow. Take บ้าง out and there will be people will swear that the meaning changes. มีใครรู้จักคนนี้ไหม
Or it could be that รู้จัก has grown from merely having encountered someone to being bosom pals, by adding บ้าง you are asking for any knowledge of the person however little.
The short answer, (difficult for me) is just find the context.

[David and Bui]

See David Smyth's "Thai, An Essential Grammar", page 168, section 12.2.13, which answers the functional "how" question, rather than the linguistic "why" question:

"The patter VERB (PHRASE) + WH- QUESTION + baang[F] anticipates a list of things, people, places, etc. in the response. . . . "

Examples:

คำถาม "เขาซื้ออะไรบ้าง ?"
คำตอบ "(ซื้อ)ผัก ขิง แล้วก็ปลา

คำถาม "คุยกับใครบ้าง"
คำตอบ "(คุยกบับ)นก อู๊ด แล้วก็เจี๊ยบ

ตำถาม "คุณไปเที่ยวที่ไหนบ้าง"
คำตอบ "(ไปเที่ยว)ลาว พม่า แล้วก็จีน"

I would say that the use of บ้าง in a question implies expectation of a certain non-specificity in the answer. If the บ้าง is omitted, the questioner expects a specific answer:

ไปไหนครับ - Where did you go? Where have you been?
ไปไหนบ้าง - Whereabouts have you been? What places have you been to?

What do you think?

[Tgeezer]

Fashion again I suppose. If you examine what we say in English you will find lots of redundancy, languages grow. Take บ้าง out and there will be people will swear that the meaning changes. มีใครรู้จักคนนี้ไหม
Or it could be that รู้จัก has grown from merely having encountered someone to being bosom pals, by adding บ้าง you are asking for any knowledge of the person however little.
The short answer, (difficult for me) is just find the context.

I have a modification.
I assumed that you were asking because you knew what บ้าง does to nouns Alan, and saw ใคร....บ้าง .
I have made it an adjective of 'knowledge' in my second option but there is a third option, that of คนนี้ being a group of people, so then บ้าง is not so redundant (คนนี้บ้าง )
Does anyone know any of these people?
But David's reference where บ้าง follows the noun directly asks:
อะไรบ้าง what things?
ใครบ้าง which of them?
ที่ไหนบ้าง which places? and leads to
คนนี้บ้าง which people.
Now you just have to decide whether ไหม changes that.

If the question word is at the end ใคร means 'someone' doesn't it? So what does มีใคร .....ไหม say?
It fries my brain to have so many unknowns, someone take a fresh look at it.
This is why I say that if we knew what went on before which led to this question being asked we wouldn't take any note of individual words. Is "someone" is getting "something" out of this topic?

[Toffeeman]

Examples: มีใครรู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม

This sentence sounds a little strange to my ear or it maybe that I misunderstand the sentence.

To me the sentence sounds better like this? มีใครบ้างที่รู้จักคนนี้ไหม
So I understand the บ้าง to refer to the ใคร even though it is at the end of the sentence.
The person is asking more than 1 person if they know this person rather than asking 1 person if they know any of these people?

Is this just 2 ways of saying the same thing or are there in fact 2 different meanings?
Which one sounds more natural to your ear?

[ttthai]

มีใครบ้างที่รู้จักคนนี้ไหม?
and
มีใครที่รู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม?

feel the same to me.

[Tgeezer]

มีใครบ้างที่รู้จักคนนี้ไหม?
and
มีใครที่รู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม?

feel the same to me.

Languages are changing constantly and at my age I can see how it has changed. Thai is not supposed to be verbose but verbosity is seen as erudition sometimes. I think that we should all be trying to see how little needs to be said.
ใคร คน มณุษย์ ผู are all related and are plural.
มีใคร there are people มีใครบ้างที่รู้จักคนนี้ไหม there are people some of them, who know these people/ this person or not?
มีใครที่รู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม there are people who know these people some of them or not?


The thing is, the original poster recognised บ้างไหม (some or not) as a question word I think, so if it is then the question is wide open: Are there any people who know any of these people? So a general question to a group about a group, some people may know some of them or somebody may know some of them, somebody may know one of them, basically who knows who? That is not uncommon in English.

[Tgeezer]

I've seen numerous sentence that end in the form บ้างไหม but I really don't understand the purpose of using the word บ้าง unless there is a direct reference to the word some.

Examples:
มีใครรู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม

คุณเห็นสุนัขของฉันบ้างไหมคะ

Why use บ้าง in these sentences?

Having mentioned this original post I thought that I should take a look and I see the second question คุณเห็นสุนัขของฉันบ้างไหม You see dog of mine some or not? Which explains why my original answer holds out the possibility of บ้าง being seen as an adverb but to be pedantic we must assume that there are several dogs.
I would be willing to bet that there is no answer to this grammatically, I think that it is likely that บ้าง softens the ไหม and shows that the question is being asked but the answer is not vital. Does anybody happen to know anybody here? Do you happen to see my dog? Or more likely คุณได้เห็นสุนัขของฉันบ้างไหม

[กินข้าว]

I've seen numerous sentence that end in the form บ้างไหม but I really don't understand the purpose of using the word บ้าง unless there is a direct reference to the word some.

Examples:
มีใครรู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม

คุณเห็นสุนัขของฉันบ้างไหมคะ

Why use บ้าง in these sentences?

For me it reads like
มีใครรู้จักคนนี้บ้างไหม
Does anyone here have any knowledge/familiarity of this person.

คุณเห็นสุนัขของฉันบ้างไหมคะ
Have you seen "any/some" sign of my dog.

[Alan]

Following up on the กินข้าว's idea - "บ้าง" as "Some/Any"...

In a scene of a Thai comedy, a Drill Seargant rips into one of his men - saying something like:

เคยคิดบ้างไหม...ว่าเกิดมาเพื่ออะไร! เกิดมาทำไม่! ไอ้เนรคุณแผ่นดิน!
My rough translation: "Have you ever thought at all (any/some)...What's the purpose of our existence? [or] Why we're born? Ya good for nothing traitor to the land!"

"บ้าง" puts a bit of a "jab" in the sentence as it seems to come across with a bit of cynicism.

Here's another: แกน่าจะทบทวนตัวเองเสียบ้าง ก่อนจะร่วมกิจกรรมกับเราอีกนะ
You ought to take a bit of inventory of yourself before you join our activities again.

Sometimes, just go with มั่ง when speaking because it's more "ห้วนๆ".