Metalinguistic Semantics for Echo Questions

This paper proposes a novel formal semantic analysis of echo questions built upon the idea that they are questions about expressions. Although similar concepts have been occasionally expressed in the literature, no formal models have been proposed that directly reflect this metalinguistic concept. Specifically, we propose a compositional semantics of echo questions formulated in the structured meanings theory of questions. The novelty of our analysis is the use of variables that range over natural language expressions, which allow natural language to express quantified statements about itself. We also criticize two previous semantic analyses of echo questions by Ginzburg and Sag (2001) and Artstein (2002), neither of which is metalinguistic unlike our model.