Wh-interrogatives in Brazilian Portuguese: The Influence of Common Ground

This paper analyzes the influence of common ground (Clark 1996, Stalnaker 2002) on the variable use of Whinterrogatives in Brazilian Portuguese, in which four different structures are employed with semanticpragmatic equivalence: (1) Onde você mora? (Where you live?); (2) Onde que você mora? (Where that you live?); (3) Onde é que você mora? (Where is-it that you live?); and (4) Você mora onde? (You live where?) ‘Where do you live?’. Two discourse-pragmatic factor groups are discussed, Type of Question (information, rhetorical, and semi-rhetorical) and Givenness of the Presupposition (when last activated in the conversation, if at all). Results of multivariate analyses contrasting wh-in-situ (4) with all other structures (1−3) show that wh-in-situ is favored by semi-rhetorical questions (.68), for which the current speaker provides an answer, which suggests that they may be part of a strategy for turn-keeping. Further, the more activated the presupposition (in one of the first two preceding clauses), the greater the tendency to employ wh-in-situ (.66). The main argument is that variation in the position of the wh-word is sensitive to the hic et nunc of conversation, as speakers make their conversational contributions and common ground is updated. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/