Abstract
In this paper we examine the distribution and functions of two optional particles found in polar questions in central Sicilian: chi and cusà. The import of these particles can best be understood if their distribution in various types of ‘non-canonical’ questions is analysed, based on the typology outlined in Farkas (2020). In Farkas’s account, canonical questions are characterized by the default assumptions of speaker ignorance and addressee competence about the question’s propositional content, while non-canonical questions lack at least one of these assumptions. This characterization of (non)-canonical questions in terms of speaker ignorance and addressee competence allows us to capture the distribution of the two particles, which strengthen these assumptions to conventional implicatures. In particular, we show that chi is conventionally associated with addressee competence, while cusà is conventionally associated with speaker ignorance. We frame this analysis in a version of the inquisitive semantics model, according to which sentence types are characterized by two parameters: the informativeness of the propositional content relative to the participants’ information state, and its inquisitiveness, that is, its potential to raise an issue. This perspective allows is to develop a formal explicit analysis of the particles’ meaning, which can in turn be successfully extended to capture their use beyond polar questions.
Highlights
An empirical phenomenon that has recently attracted a great deal of attention in Romance linguistics is the distribution of so-called ‘discourse particles’ in main questions
Summarizing so far, we have shown that Farkas’s characterization of-canonical questions in terms of speaker ignorance and addressee competence allows us to capture the distribution of the two particles in polar questions (PQs)
In this paper we have analysed two optional discourse particles, chi and cusà, that appear in PQs in central Sicilian
Summary
An empirical phenomenon that has recently attracted a great deal of attention in Romance linguistics (and beyond) is the distribution of so-called ‘discourse particles’ in main questions These differ from interrogative particles proper in being optional, rather than obligatory; at the interpretive level, they do not contribute to determining the question denotation or to the marking of the illocutionary sentence type, but instead convey non-at-issue meanings such as a presupposition, contrast against expectations, or a rhetorical effect (see, e.g., Munaro & Poletto 2003, 2008, Garzonio 2004, Obenauer 2004, on Italo-Romance dialects). Speas & Tenny (2003), whereby the clausal structure includes two Speech Act projections encoding the speech participants
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