Constraints on Wh-Question Formation in Gichuka

Local and Global Implicatures in Wh - Question

The unacceptability of wh-question disjunctions can be given a semantic explanation if we take the partition theory of questions as a basis (Groenendijk and Stokhof 1982, 1984). According to this theory, a question defines a partition of the logical space. A disjunction of two questions is then a union of two partitions, which is not again a partition: there are overlapping cells. Thus the disj...

Grammar, Performance, and the Wh-Question Typology

Local and Global Implicatures in Wh-Question Disjunctions

It has been observed that wh-questions cannot be joined disjunctively, the suggested reasons being semantic or pragmatic deviance. We argue that wh-question disjunctions are semantically well-formed but are pragmatically deviant outside contexts that license polarity-sensitive (PS) items. In these contexts the pragmatic inadequacy disappears due to a pragmatically induced recalibration of the i...

The Pragmatics of WH-Question Intonation in English

How does Prosody Distinguish Wh-statement from Wh-question? A Case Study of Standard Chinese

There are wh-sentences which express speech acts of interrogative or declarative with the same syntactic structure in standard Chinese, such as, "bǎobao chīdiănr shénme?"(What does the baby intend to eat?) and "bǎobao chīdiănr shénme."(The baby intends something to eat.) The interrogative pronoun "shénme" (what)has different semantic functions, such as specific reference in the interrogative se...