Abstract
The English lexical item why can be used metacommunicatively in response to a previous question act. In these cases, its meaning is similar to “Why are you (the original questioner) asking me (the original addressee) that question?” This is also true of why’s counterparts in a range of other languages. We demonstrate how metacommunicative, or meta, why’s use and meaning is similar to and different from the paraphrase above, proposing a modal-driven ontology for why, and explore how different constructions involving meta-why are derived. We argue that meta-why is derived by eliding a question act, a syntactic object larger than a proposition, and provide support for theoretical frameworks in which discourse management and interlocutor commitment acts are encoded in syntax.
Highlights
IntroductionThe speech act syntax enterprise of the 21st century (inspired by Ross’s 1970 work) has advanced the claim that there are syntactic projections concerned with the expression of information about interlocutors and discourse structure (Speas & Tenny 2003; Hill 2007a; b; 2013; Krifka 2014; 2021; Wiltschko & Heim 2016; Woods 2016; 2021 inter alia) rather than leaving these types of information to fall solely within the purview of pragmatics or sociolinguistics
We have shown that meta-why-fragments are fragments of sentential utterances, contra Ginzburg (2012), on the basis of their interaction with illocutionary force and clause type, as well as meta-why’s compatibility with overt material as large as full wh-questions
We proposed a brief ontology of why-questions based in part on Koura (1988) and Bromberger (1992), in which we claim that meta-why differs from reason- and purpose-whys in terms of the conversational backgrounds that determine possible answers
Summary
The speech act syntax enterprise of the 21st century (inspired by Ross’s 1970 work) has advanced the claim that there are syntactic projections concerned with the expression of information about interlocutors and discourse structure (Speas & Tenny 2003; Hill 2007a; b; 2013; Krifka 2014; 2021; Wiltschko & Heim 2016; Woods 2016; 2021 inter alia) rather than leaving these types of information to fall solely within the purview of pragmatics or sociolinguistics. This article will support the speech act syntax enterprise and the postulation of speech act-specific syntactic projections by using the following data point as a springboard:
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