The semantics of questions

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan C. Moyer ◽  
Kristen Syrett
Keyword(s):  
Semantics Of Questions

scholarly journals When-questions and tense in Inquisitive Semantics

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Jos Tellings
Keyword(s):  
Present Perfect ◽  
Inquisitive Semantics ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Semantics Of Questions ◽  
Present Tense

Temporal questions with when and their counterparts in other languages display tense restrictions: they are incompatible with the present tense that is interpreted as 'currently ongoing', and English when-questions are incompatible with the present perfect. The existence of tense restrictions is one of the reasons why a theory of the semantics of questions should include an account of tense and aspect. I first propose an explanation of the tense restrictions based on the pragmatics of questions and partial answers. Then, I discuss how tense and aspectual operators can be added to Inquisitive Semantics (Ciardelli, Groenendijk & Roelofsen 2018).

Semantics of Questions

2015 ◽  
pp. 271-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Semantics Of Questions

scholarly journals Attention, consciousness, and the semantics of questions

Synthese ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 191 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Koralus
Keyword(s):  
Semantics Of Questions

Attention, phenomenology, and the semantics of questions

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Koralus
Keyword(s):  
Semantics Of Questions

Question-based Models of Information Structure

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Velleman ◽  
David Beaver
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Alternative Semantics ◽  
Presupposition Projection ◽  
Semantics Of Questions ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics

We present approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of information structure which centre on Questions Under Discussion (QUDs). Questions, explicit or implicit, are seen as structuring discourse, and information structural marking is seen as reflecting that underlying discourse structure. Our presentation of the model is largely cast in terms of extensions of Roberts’s (2012b) analysis, which is itself related to Rooth’s (1985/1992) Alternative Semantics and Hamblin’s (1973) approach to the semantics of questions. We present the model in terms of a range of constraints that relate information structure to discourse structure, notably constraints on the ‘Relevance’ of utterances, on the ‘Congruence’ of answers to questions, and on the ‘Availability’ of discourse antecedents. We discuss the application of the approach to the interpretation of focus and some cases of contrastive topics, to discourse structure, to the interpretation of focus sensitive operators, and to certain cases of presupposition projection.

The Semantics of Questions and the Questions of Semantics: Case Studies in the Interrelations of Logic, Semantics, and Syntax.

Noûs ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 95 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harrah ◽  
Jaakko Hintikka
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Semantics Of Questions

Syntax and Semantics of Questions

2008 ◽  
pp. 382-420
Author(s):  
Lauri Karttunen
Keyword(s):  
Semantics Of Questions

Alternative Semantics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Rooth
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Alternative Semantics ◽  
Recursive Definition ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Additional Layer ◽  
Semantics Of Questions ◽  
Contrastive Topic ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Prosodic Focus

This chapter presents the semantics and pragmatics of prosodic focus in alternative semantics. Half a dozen examples are given of empirical phenomena that are to be covered by the theory. Then a syntax marking the locus, scope, and antecedent for focus is introduced. The syntax is interpreted semantically and pragmatically by a presupposition involving alternatives. The alternative sets that are used in the definition are computed compositionally using a recursive definition. Alternatives are also employed in the semantics of questions, and this ties in with the phenomenon of question-answer congruence, where the position of focus in an answer matches questioned positions in the question. A different semantic interpretation for focus is entailment semantics, which uses a generalized entailment condition in place of a condition involving alternatives. The semantic and pragmatic interpretation for contrastive topic uses an additional layer of alternatives. Independent of focus, alternatives are deployed in the semantics of disjunction and of negative polarity items.

On the interpretation of multiple questions

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Željko Bošković
Keyword(s):  
Single Pair ◽  
Relativized Minimality ◽  
Semantics Of Questions ◽  
Minimality Effect

The paper shows that crosslinguistically, overt movement of a wh-phrase to SpecCP results in the loss of the single-pair interpretation for multiple questions, i.e. it forces the pair-list interpretation. It is shown that the damaging effect of overt movement to SpecCP on the availability of single-pair answers can be accounted for with an extension of Hagstrom’s (1998) semantics of questions to languages with overt wh-movement. More precisely, the effect is argued to follow from Relativized Minimality: In questions with a single-pair interpretation, the Q morpheme, which is base-generated below C, induces a relativized minimality effect when a wh-phrase crosses it on its way to SpecCP.

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