Abstract
Abstract This paper offers a pragmatic account of two wh-questions in French used non-canonically - c’est quoi, ce N and qu’est-ce que constructions. It is claimed that in this non-canonical use, both constructions express surprise. As these constructions may be syntactically ambiguous between an information-seeking reading and a surprise reading, it is expected that the two readings differ in terms of prosody. This hypothesis is supported by the results of a production experiment. Experimental evidence shows significant prosodic differences between syntactically similar information-seeking questions and surprise questions. Surprise questions exhibit an increase in lengthening, slower speech rate and less frequent rising final contours.
Highlights
This paper focuses on two wh-questions used non-canonically in French - c’est quoi, ce N (C’est quoi, ce delire?; literally:`It is what, this delusion?’, What the hell is this mess?) and qu’est-ce que questions (Qu’est-ce que tu te plains?; literally: `What you are complaining?’, Why the hell are you complaining?)
We have established that surprise questions (SQs) differ from information-seeking questions (ISQs) with respect to lengthening, speech rate and final contour
Our step will be to conduct a perception experiment to check whether these prosodic features are necessary and sufficient for a listener to make the distinction between ISQs and SQs
Summary
This paper focuses on two wh-questions used non-canonically in French - c’est quoi, ce N (C’est quoi, ce delire?; literally:`It is what, this delusion?’, What the hell is this mess?) and qu’est-ce que questions (Qu’est-ce que tu te plains?; literally: `What you are complaining?’, Why the hell are you complaining?). Building on Obenauer (2004, 2005, 2006), we regard these two structures as surprise questions (SQs) This claim is substantiated by the results of a production experiment that show that prosodically (i) both constructions significantly differ from stringidentical information-seeking questions (ISQs) (ii) in the surprise reading the two constructions share similar features with respect to lengthening, speech rate and final contour. This suggests that in French, SQs can be defined as a question type alongside ISQs on the basis of a mapping between syntactic-prosodic features and functional meaning
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