Abstract
Despite a large body of research, the linguistic nature of exhaustivity in single wh-questions is unresolved. Moreover, little empirical evidence exists as to which related structures pattern with bare wh-questions regarding exhaustivity. This paper explores the felicity of various exhaustivity violations in unembedded single bare wh-questions in German and compares them to related structures. In two novel felicity judgment experiments, a total of 441 participants rated exhaustive as well as non-exhaustive plural and non-exhaustive singleton answers to wh-questions or statements in a questionnaire. Answers were based on picture stimuli depicting individuals performing various actions. The felicity of non-exhaustive answers was compared across four main test conditions: bare wh-questions (wer ‘who’), wh-questions with a lexical exhaustivity marker (wer alles ‘who all’), plural definite descriptions contained in a restrictive relative clause (e.g., “the people who are fishing in the garden”), and the scalar quantifier “some” (e.g., “some people who are fishing in the garden”).We employ a novel methodological approach to improve the interpretability of statistical differences between experimental conditions by using the statistical measure of Minimal Important Difference (MID). Our results from estimated MIDs reveal that adults’ felicity judgments of non-exhaustive plural answers to bare wh-questions pattern with those to wer alles-questions and to plural definite descriptions: exhaustivity violations in the bare wh, the wer alles and the plural definite conditions were rated as less felicitous than exhaustivity violations in the some-condition.
Highlights
Speaking, an exhaustive answer is a true and complete answer to a request or a question
We explore the nature of exhaustivity in single bare subject wh-questions by comparing participants’ judgments of non-exhaustive and exhaustive answers to wer-questions to wer alles and plural definite descriptions, which do not allow for non-exhaustive answers, as well as to einige, which can prompt a ‘some but not all’ response
We addressed the following question: Do bare wh-questions pattern with the wer alles-structure, with plural definite descriptions triggered by the determiner die, or with einige (‘some’)? Based on Schulz & Roeper (2011) we explored whether the judgment of answers to wer patterns with that to wer alles and plural definite descriptions, which do not allow for non-exhaustive answers, or with einige, which can prompt a ‘some but not all’ response, in a fashion similar to wer
Summary
Speaking, an exhaustive answer is a true and complete answer to a request or a question. A true, exhaustive answer to the request “Name all the students who failed the test”, for example, would consist of a complete list of all those students who in a specific situation failed the test. An exhaustive answer specifies the maximal set of individuals satisfying the predicate in question, which in our case denotes the property of having failed the test. This answer is maximally informative in that it tells the addressee to which set of possible worlds her actual world belongs (see Zimmermann 2007b). A true, non-exhaustive answer, in contrast, is not maximally informative It would consist of a list of just some students who in this situation failed the test. Albeit true, answers, in this context they would violate the exhaustivity requirement imposed by the legal context
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