Toward a unified semantics for English "either"

This paper proposes that the additive and disjunctive uses of English either share a semantic core. Formulated in Inquisitive Semantics, this core involves a requirement that either apply to an inquisitive proposition, which accounts for either’s co-occurrence with disjunction. It also includes an additive presupposition that is more flexible than has previously been assumed in the literature, which allows the analysis to account for novel data in which additive either conveys that a proposition is unexpected or undesirable. The inability of either to appear in alternative questions is also pointed out and accounted for.

INVESTIGATING SEVERAL SIMILAR QUESTIONS TYPES IN TURKISH, KURDISH, ENGLISH, RUSSIAN AND GERMAN

Language is used as a tool of communication in all over the world, and each society or country may adopt a different language leading various dialects or language usages. In order to interrogate different aspects, multiple question types are utilized in a language. Also, questions are globally used to get information about a topic / issue, ask for confirmation, request something or clarify some controversial aspects almost in all languages. In addition, some questions are directed to speakers via question words such as what, where or how; on the other hand, some questions are conducted via helping verbs, adjuncts or question tags. Foreign language learners first learn affirmative, then negative and finally questions forms in the target language that is why it may be inferred that using questions in a language requires improvement and experience. The current study aims to find out some similar questions types in Turkish, English,Kurdish, Russian and German; hence, an analysis has been conducted on question samples obtained descriptively in those languages. The results of the analysis indicated that there are some similar types of questions such as general questions, special questions, tag questions and alternative questions in both languages. Key Words: Types, question, Kurdish, English, Turkish, Russian, German

Or not Alternative Questions, Focus and Discourse Structure

Or not alternative questions like Are you coming or not? give rise to so-called ‘cornering effects’ (Biezma 2009), consisting of two parts: (i) they cannot appear discourse-initially, and (ii) they do not allow for follow-up questions. Building on recent experimental data (Beltrama, Meertens & Romero 2020), the present paper raises problems for current analyses (Biezma 2009, Biezma & Rawlins 2012, 2018), reframes the second part of cornering as not specific to NAQs but as a general constraint on questions in general, and develops a novel proposal for the first part of cornering. The key ingredients of the new proposal are the intrinsic focus structure of or not questions and its effects on discourse trees.

The question-response system in Mandarin conversation

This article provides an overview of the question-response system in Mandarin Chinese from a conversation analytic perspective. Based on 403 question-response sequences from natural conversations, this study discusses the grammatical coding of Mandarin questions, social actions accomplished by questions, and formats of responses. It documents three grammatical types of questions, that is, polar questions (including sub-types), Q-word questions, and alternative questions. These questions are shown to perform a range of social actions, confirmation request being the most frequent. Also, this article reveals that the preferred format for confirming polar answers is interjection, while that for disconfirming polar answers is repetition. It provides a starting point for future studies on Mandarin questions and responses as well as a reference point for further crosslinguistic comparison.

Question Understanding from the Perspective of Context Theory

This paper uses context theory to study the question in natural language. In syntax, questions can be classified into polar questions, alternative questions, concealed questions, and inquisitive questions. In semantics, it can be divided into polar questions and inquisitive questions. Only inquisitive questions with characteristics of inquisitiveness, informativeness, compliance, and transparency need to be studied by context theory. There are three levels for question context: question-answer facts, background knowledge, and question presupposition. The question context composes the possible world where the question is. Question understanding is a function of the mapping of the question through the possible worlds, and the set of propositions consisting of different possible worlds of the question context and the set of propositions consisting of different possible answers to the question are mapped to each other, resulting in different answers in different possible worlds of the same question.

The role of focus marking in disjunctive questions: A QUD-based approach

Disjunctive questions are ambiguous: they can either be interpreted as polar questions (PolQs), as open disjunctive questions (OpenQs), or as closed alternative questions (ClosedQ). The goal of this paper is to show that the difference in interpretation between these questions can be derived via effects of focus marking directly. In doing so, the proposal brings out the striking parallel between the prosody of questions with foci/contrastive topics on the one hand and that of alternative questions on the other. Unlike previous approaches, this proposal does not rely on structural differences between AltQs and PolQs derived via ellipsis or syntactic movement. To show how this works out, an account of focus and contrastive topic marking in questions is put forward in which f-marking in questions determines what constitutes a possible answer by signaling what the speaker's QUD is like. By imposing a congruence condition between f-marked questions and their answers that requires answers to resolve the question itself as well as its signaled QUD, we predict the right answerhood conditions for disjunctive questions.

Characterising the alternative and polar questions of Irish

This paper gives an account of the similarities and differences between alternative and polar questions, where these question forms stand at the intersection of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We contrastively examine the nature of alternative and polar yes-no questions. We characterise the forms of these question types and the functions they serve. We examine the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of each question form and their answers. We characterise the felicity conditions necessary for their successful realisation of the speech act of requesting information via the alternative and yes-no interrogatives and assume that information is freely exchanged under a Gricean presumption of cooperation. We show that alternative questions have some similarities, but also significant differences, to polar yes-no questions. Alternative questions do not allow for yes-no answers. Instead, an appropriate answer must contain one of a selection from the alternative choice options listed in the framing of the question. Alternative questions are dependent on the presence of disjunction. We characterise the syntax and semantics of polar yes-no questions. We demonstrate in respect of the answers to polar yes-no questions of Irish that they contain instances of ellipsis and are full clausal expressions with a complete semantics where the elided elements are from the question part of the question-answer pair. The propositional content of polar yes-no questions is inferred from the context, specifically from the question with which the answer is paired. Irish does not have any exact words which directly correspond to English ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and so employs different strategies where a yes-no answer is required.

Alternative questions and their responses in English interaction

This conversation analytic study investigates the sequential organization and question constraints of alternative questions in English with a focus on response formats. Building on research on polar and wh-questions (among others, Enfield, Stivers and Levinson 2010; Raymond 2003; Thompson, Fox and Couper-Kuhlen 2015), this article shows that responses to alternative questions that include a repeat of one of the alternatives are type-conforming, those that do not are nonconforming. Additionally, even though the concept of contiguity (Sacks 1973/1987) might suggest that the second alternative be confirmed, participants confirm either alternative unproblematically. Finally, my work shows that alternative questions can create difficulties for action ascription, because as they are being produced, they often resemble polar questions. My study adds to our understanding of question-answer sequences in English by providing an overview of an understudied question type in English. The data are in American English.

Deriving Chinese alternative questions

This study proposes an approach which derives Chinese alternative questions by means of feature percolation and LF movement. This approach is argued to fare better than a movement approach as proposed by C.-T. Huang (1998) and a non-movement binding approach as proposed by R.-H. Huang (2010) in that it may successfully explain why Chinese alternative questions are only sensitive to the wh-island constraint, but not to other types of island constraints. The LF movement analysis may receive empirical support from the observed fact that Chinese alternative questions exhibit focus-intervention effects, generally assumed to be induced by LF movement.

Why *if or not but ✓whether or not

This squib provides an account of a contrast between whether and if in English, manifested in the contrast between the grammaticality of I don't know whether or not Pat will arrive and the ungrammaticality of I don't know if or not Pat will arrive. I argue that this contrast can be explained if we assume that whether can pied-pipe, but there is no pied-piping in if-questions. Strikingly, once we eliminate the pied-piping parse for whether, it behaves like if. Then I show that this contrast exists cross-linguistically: Polish alternative questions behave like whether-questions because pied-piping is possible, and Bengali alternative questions behave like if-questions because of the unavailability of pied-piping.