“Won’t you?” reverse-polarity question tags in American English as a window into the semantics-pragmatics interface
نویسندگان
چکیده
Abstract We model the conventional meaning of utterances that combine two distinct clause types: a (positive) declarative or imperative (in rare cases, interrogative) anchor and (negative) interrogative tag, such as won’t you? . argue express single speech act, in fact, update conversational scoreboard. The proposed this effect is straightforward extension prior proposals for semantics declaratives, imperatives, preposed-negation interrogatives. Ours first unified account these phenomena addresses sentential force outlines how act effects arise from scoreboard contextual factors. enrich scoreboard, interpreted force, to include graded commitments non-at-issue meanings. A consequence our modified can create “blended” acts which share some, but not all, properties with unmodified utterances. proposal has implications models other utterance modifiers, well negative interrogatives negation general, imperative/jussive constructions.
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Linguistics and Philosophy
سال: 2023
ISSN: ['0165-0157', '1573-0549']
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-023-09385-2