Veneeta Dayal
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199281268
- eISBN:
- 9780191757396
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199281268.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Theoretical Linguistics
The study of questions is one of the major success stories in modern semantics. This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with ...
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The study of questions is one of the major success stories in modern semantics. This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax. The topics covered are extensive and varied: direct–indirect questions, weak–strong exhaustiveness, maximality, mention-some answers, functional answers, single-multiple-trapped list answers, higher order questions, embedding predicates, selection, quantificational variability, concealed questions, weak islands, pied piping, focus, intervention, polar and alternative questions, bias, negative polarity, non-canonical questions. The literature on this rich set of topics, theoretically diverse and scattered across multiple venues, is often hard to assimilate. The author, drawing on her own research, brings them together for the first time in a coherent, concise, and well-structured whole. Readers will find in this book a lucid exposition of the classics as well as discussion of the most recent, cutting edge research on questions. Each chapter begins with a non-technical introduction to the issues. Semantically sophisticated accounts are presented incrementally and major points summarized at the end of each section. Individual accounts of phenomena are placed in the relevant context. Issues that remain open are highlighted and promising lines of further inquiry sketched out. It constitutes at the same time a comprehensible guide to one of the most vibrant areas of research in natural language semantics and a compass for how this area of study is developing.Less
The study of questions is one of the major success stories in modern semantics. This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax. The topics covered are extensive and varied: direct–indirect questions, weak–strong exhaustiveness, maximality, mention-some answers, functional answers, single-multiple-trapped list answers, higher order questions, embedding predicates, selection, quantificational variability, concealed questions, weak islands, pied piping, focus, intervention, polar and alternative questions, bias, negative polarity, non-canonical questions. The literature on this rich set of topics, theoretically diverse and scattered across multiple venues, is often hard to assimilate. The author, drawing on her own research, brings them together for the first time in a coherent, concise, and well-structured whole. Readers will find in this book a lucid exposition of the classics as well as discussion of the most recent, cutting edge research on questions. Each chapter begins with a non-technical introduction to the issues. Semantically sophisticated accounts are presented incrementally and major points summarized at the end of each section. Individual accounts of phenomena are placed in the relevant context. Issues that remain open are highlighted and promising lines of further inquiry sketched out. It constitutes at the same time a comprehensible guide to one of the most vibrant areas of research in natural language semantics and a compass for how this area of study is developing.
Roland Hinterhölzl and Nicola Munaro
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198871217
- eISBN:
- 9780191914225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198871217.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Syntax and Morphology
On the basis of evidence from German and Italian, it is argued that non-canonical wh-questions and wh-exclamatives involve the expression of surprise about an unexpected state of affairs; however, ...
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On the basis of evidence from German and Italian, it is argued that non-canonical wh-questions and wh-exclamatives involve the expression of surprise about an unexpected state of affairs; however, they exhibit a difference in illocutionary force: while non-canonical questions constitute directive speech acts which request the hearer to provide an explanation for the unexpected state of affairs, wh-exclamatives are more akin to assertions, since they are used to indicate the speaker’s surprise about the difference between the expected state of affairs and the actual one. These interpretive differences are syntactically codified by the presence and absence of Verb Second in German and by a difference in the final landing site of the wh-element in standard questions, non-canonical questions, and wh-exclamatives in Italian.Less
On the basis of evidence from German and Italian, it is argued that non-canonical wh-questions and wh-exclamatives involve the expression of surprise about an unexpected state of affairs; however, they exhibit a difference in illocutionary force: while non-canonical questions constitute directive speech acts which request the hearer to provide an explanation for the unexpected state of affairs, wh-exclamatives are more akin to assertions, since they are used to indicate the speaker’s surprise about the difference between the expected state of affairs and the actual one. These interpretive differences are syntactically codified by the presence and absence of Verb Second in German and by a difference in the final landing site of the wh-element in standard questions, non-canonical questions, and wh-exclamatives in Italian.
