Abstract
Polar Questions such as “is the light on?” (henceforth, PQs) and Negative Alternative Question such as “is the light on or not?” (henceforth, NAQ), despite being seemingly semantically equivalent, are known to differ pragmatically (Bolinger, 1978, van Rooy and Safařova 2003, Biezma 2009). This paper explores the difference between these two question types and Complement Alternative Questions (henceforth, CAQ), a type of question that mentions two mutually exclusive propositions but makes no use of negation (e.g., “is the light on or off?”). Based on experimental evidence, we show that CAQs feature a different pragmatic profile from the other two question types. First, while PQs and NAQs are homogeneously felicitous or infelicitous as invitations, rhetorical questions or inference-corroborating questions, CAQs do not behave uniformly in such contexts. Second, while NAQs are confirmed to be infelicitous discourse-initially, neither NAQs nor CAQs are not necessarily limited to a discourse-final position. We take these findings to suggest that all accounts proposed cannot fully capture the full paradigm of these questions types and highlight several areas of future research to revise them. EARLY ACCESS Supplementary materials available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CNINZM
Highlights
Consider the following two questions. (1) is a Polar Question (PQ), which mentions only one proposition; (2) is a Negative Alternative Question (NAQ), which mentions one proposition and its negated alternative.(1) Is the light on? (2) Is the light on or not? PQ NAQIn a world in which light switches only have two possible states, a S(peaker) using either of these moves presents two possible resolutions: one in which the switch is on, and one in which the switch is off
This study explores the distribution of NAQs, CAQs and PQs in three special uses described by Bolinger: making an invitation; asking a rhetorical question; and corroborating an inference
The model reveals a main effect of Context (β =0.79, se= 0.12, p
Summary
In a world in which light switches only have two possible states, a S(peaker) using either of these moves presents two possible resolutions: one in which the switch is on, and one in which the switch is off. Despite their seeming logical equivalence, the two question types are known to differ pragmatically. NAQs convey a sense of insistence, known as the Cornering Effect, that makes them perfectly felicitous in discourses like (4), where S is trying to force A to answer the question (Biezma 2009).
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