On a dichotomy of question types: the case of Mandarin Chinese and Changsha Xiang

Abstract

Contrary to the conventional three-way distinction of questions: polar questions, disjunctive questions, and wh-questions, we argue for a more revealing two-way distinction of polar versus constituent questions, the latter with two subtypes: disjunctive and wh-questions. Following Bhatt, Rajesh & Veneeta Dayal. 2020. Polar question particles: Hindi-Urdu kya. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 38. 1115–1144 proposal that polar questions denote singleton sets of propositions and the standard view that disjunctive and wh-questions denote sets with multiple propositions, we further characterize this dichotomy pragmatically as confirmation-seeking (CS) and information-seeking (IS), i.e., polar questions seek confirmation of the proposition put forth, while constituent questions seek information specifically targeted by the interrogative constituent. This dichotomy is formally detected in Mandarin Chinese via the question particle ma versus ne, dichotomy of fragment questions, adverb nandao ‘don’t tell me’ versus daodi ‘after all’, respective (in)ability to serve as indirect questions, and an intervention effect on constituent questions. We then discuss the typological implications of this two-way distinction and demonstrate that the Changsha dialect of Xiang, another Sinitic language, has no CS polar questions as the alleged polar questions are all disjunctive questions. This fact suggests that, while there are two major types of questions cross-linguistically, CS polar questions are not universal.