Schedule StuTS 65

This presentation aims to produce an account of the performance of specific English tag questions and polar questions with compelling contextual evidence i.e. evidence that has just become mutually available to the participants in the current discourse situation (Büring & Gunlogson 2000). The question at hand is whether English tag questions are similar to negative polar questions.
After a brief overview of the different types of English polar questions, special attention is given to negative polar questions and the two possible readings they may receive. Two parameters that can disambiguate the readings of a question are introduced and exemplified with regards to polar questions; namely compelling contextual evidence and morphosyntactic probes i.e. polarity items. Tag questions are then examined in terms of structure, polarity, tense with the addition of intonation. The latter is a salient feature that uses phrasing and stress to determine whether a tag question bears a nuclear or a postnuclear tag. The ensuing analysis is based on tag questions with respect to contextual evidence and polarity items. After comparing the obtained results of tag questions with those of polar questions, it appears that the two types of questions share very little at the compelling contextual level. This presentation is built on my Bachelor's thesis as well as preexisting work on the topic (cf. Ladd 1981, Büring & Gunlogson 2000, Sudo 2010).

Info

Day: 2019-05-24
Start time: 17:00
Duration: 00:30
Room: 114 / Seminarraum links
Track: Theoretical Linguistics
Language: en

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