Comparison to alternative approaches

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 9 compares inquisitive semantics with some other frameworks which have been proposed for the analysis of questions, in particular with alternative semantics (developed by Hamblin and Karttunen in the 1970s), partition semantics (developed by Groenendijk and Stokhof in the 1980s), and inquisitive indifference semantics (developed by Groenendijk and Mascarenhas in the 2000s). It is argued that inquisitive semantics preserves the essential merits of these previous approaches, while overcoming their main shortcomings. The chapter is also concerned with the division of labor between question semantics and other components of a general theory of interpretation, including a theory of speech acts and discourse pragmatics. It discusses the received view on what the role of a compositional semantic theory of questions should be within such a larger theory of interpretation, and compares it to the one taken in inquisitive semantics, which is argued to be more parsimonious.