True to Form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English

True to Form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English Christine Gunlogson This dissertation is concerned with the meaning and use of two kinds of declarative sentences: (1) It’s raining? (2) It’s raining. The difference between (1) and (2) is intonational: (1) has a final rise (indicated by the question mark), while (2) ends with a fall. The central claim of the thesis is that the meaning and use of both kinds of sentences must be understood in terms of the meaning of their defining formal elements, namely declarative sentence type and rising vs. falling intonation. I support that claim through an investigation of the use of declaratives as questions. On the one hand, I demonstrate that rising and falling declaratives share an aspect of conventional meaning attributable to their declarative form, distinguishing them both from the corresponding polar interrogative (Is it raining?) and constraining their use as questions. On the other hand, since (1) and (2) constitute a minimal pair, differing only in intonation, systematic differences in character and function between them – in particular, the relative ‘naturalness’ of (1) as a question compared to (2) – must be located in the contrast between the fall and the rise.