Focus and uninformativity in Yucatec Maya questions

AnderBois, Scott

doi:10.1007/s11050-012-9084-3

Cited by 32 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Namely, [?ϕ] is the join of [ϕ] and [ϕ] * , and the join operation, also associated with disjunction and existential quantification, is the essential source of inquisitiveness in Inq B . This fact may provide the basis for an explanation of the well-known observation that in many languages, question markers are homophonous with words for disjunction and/or indefinites (e.g., Japanese ka) (see Jayaseelan 2001Jayaseelan , 2008Bhat 2005;Haida 2007;AnderBois 2011AnderBois , 2012, among others).…”

Section: Fact 14 (Division) ϕ ≡ ?ϕ ∧ !ϕmentioning

confidence: 92%

Algebraic foundations for the semantic treatment of inquisitive content

Roelofsen

2013

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In classical logic, the proposition expressed by a sentence is construed as a set of possible worlds, capturing the informative content of the sentence. However, sentences in natural language are not only used to provide information, but also to request information. Thus, natural language semantics requires a logical framework whose notion of meaning does not only embody informative content, but also inquisitive content. This paper develops the algebraic foundations for such a framework. We argue that propositions, in order to embody both informative and inquisitive content in a satisfactory way, should be defined as non-empty, downward closed sets of possibilities, where each possibility in turn is a set of possible worlds. We define a natural entailment order over such propositions, capturing when one proposition is at least as informative and inquisitive as another, and we show that this entailment order gives rise to a complete Heyting algebra, with meet, join, and relative pseudo-complement operators. Just as in classical logic, these semantic operators are then associated with the logical constants in a first-order language. We explore the logical properties of the resulting system and discuss its significance for natural language semantics. We show that the system essentially coincides with the simplest and most well-understood existing implementation of inquisitive semantics, and that its treatment of disjunction and existentials also concurs with recent work in alternative semantics. Thus, our algebraic considerations do not lead to a wholly new treatment of the logical constants, but rather provide more solid foundations for some of the existing proposals.

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Section: Fact 14 (Division) ϕ ≡ ?ϕ ∧ !ϕmentioning

confidence: 92%

Algebraic foundations for the semantic treatment of inquisitive content

Roelofsen

2013

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“…On the one hand, inquisitive semantics provides a framework in which declarative and interrogative clauses can be given a uniform analysis; on the other hand, by refining the notion of meaning, it also allows for a more fine-grained analysis of the semantics of some operators, such as disjunction. These features have been fruitfully exploited in recent work, both in linguistics (a.o., AnderBois 2012AnderBois , 2014Coppock & Brochhagen 2013;Szabolcsi 2015;Roelofsen & Farkas 2015;Theiler, Roelofsen & Aloni 2016), and in logic (a.o., Ciardelli & Roelofsen 2015b;Ciardelli 2016). …”

Section: Inquisitive Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifting conditionals to inquisitive semantics

Ciardelli

2016

SALT

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This paper describes how any theory which assigns propositions to conditional sentences can be lifted to the setting of inquisitive semantics, where antecedents and consequents may be associated with multiple propositions. We show that the lifted account improves on the original account in two ways: first, it leads to a better analysis of disjunctive antecedents, which are treated as introducing multiple assumptions; second, it extends the original account to cover two further classes of conditional constructions, namely, unconditionals and conditional questions.

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“…This is especially pressing, given that Kratzer and Shimoyama's operator above is vacuous. In fact, AnderBois () (discussed below) argues that in some languages, there is not even evidence for general question operators. Consequently, much research pursues a more reductionist agenda for polar and alternative questions.…”

Section: How Many Operators?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…AnderBois (), dealing with Yucatec Maya, takes an even more reductionist approach: he argues that whether a move is a question in this language is determined by the alternative structure itself – not by any sort of semantic operator, and that the Yucatec Maya analogue of alternative questions involve a focused disjunction. Hence, the only operator present in a disjunctive question is a general focus operator.…”

Section: How Many Operators?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…AnderBois shows that this language does not have a grammaticalized polar question operator at all, reducing polar questions to alternative questions. It remains to be seen whether such an analysis could be applied in some way to languages with richer interrogative morphosyntax; AnderBois' () analysis also raises the important question of whether there could be cross‐linguistic variation is cross‐linguistic variation in the operator structure of AltQ s.…”

Section: How Many Operators?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Alternative Questions

Biezma

Rawlins

2015

Language and Linguist. Compass

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This paper surveys the current state of art in research on alternative questions. Alternative questions stand at the conf luence of three major topics in semantics, pragmatics, and syntax: questions, disjunction, and intonational meaning/focus. We focus on these components of alternative questions as themes in our survey, arguing for an emerging consensus that (i) disjunction in alternative questions must be modeled in an alternative-sensitive way, leading to 'non-classical' treatments where disjunction interacts directly with the semantics and/or pragmatics of questioning (here the debate is about the exact details of this interaction), (ii) to understand alternative questions the interaction of the question structure with intonation and especially focus must be explored, and (iii) a major missing piece in existing work is an exploration of the cross-linguistic picture. In particular, there are many languages where alternative questions involve a specialized coordinator, which calls into question the uniform treatment of disjunction in alternative questions in general. Alternative QuestionsAlternative questions (ALTQs) are one of the main types of questions that appear in natural language, together with polar ('yes/no') questions and constituent ('wh') questions. Three key properties of this question type are (i) question or interrogative marking, (ii) disjunction, and (iii) a particular intonational pattern. For example, a canonical English alternative question is given in (1), and two minimal variants, varying the pitch contour, and the interrogative morphology respectively, in (2) and (3).Intuitively, the question in (1) offers the hearer a complete list of choices: Bill liking tea, or coffee. The disjunctive polar question in contrast asks the hearer to choose between him liking teaand-or-coffee and not liking either of these two. The declarative in (3) does not intuitively ask a question at all but rather asserts something about Bill's preferences up to certain limits. These limits can be epistemic, in which case the speaker knows that Bill likes one of the two but not which, or simply about Bill's preferences -they are satisfied by either tea or coffee. A central question of this survey is understanding how these minimal changes in this paradigm lead to meaning differences, in the semantics and pragmatics. While these properties are present in English, it remains unclear how stable they are cross-linguistically, and thus, a second key desideratum is understanding the range of variation. We return to this issue in §6.2 and focus on English for now.The task of analyzing alternative questions lies at the conf luence of the analysis of disjunction, questions, and intonational meaning at the interface of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Consequently, ALTQs are a key window into all of these important topics. In this article, we will

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Focus and uninformativity in Yucatec Maya questions

Cited by 32 publications

References 25 publications

Algebraic foundations for the semantic treatment of inquisitive content

Algebraic foundations for the semantic treatment of inquisitive content

Lifting conditionals to inquisitive semantics

Alternative Questions

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