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## Wh-headlines in German. What they communicate and whether they optimize relevance

Rita Finkbeiner Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz fi  nkbeiner@uni-mainz.de

Abstract: Th is  paper  is  about  a  particular  wh-clause  type  in  German that  is  restricted  in  its  usage  to  headlines.  Th is  clause  type,  exemplifi  ed  by the  newspaper  headline Wie  Kassen  an  Kranken  verdienen ('How  health insurance  companies  make  money on sick people'),  formally  looks  like  an embedded interrogative wh-clause, but is used independently as a headline with  a  particular,  non-questioning  illocution.  Th e  main  question  raised  in this paper is how the illocution of wh-headlines is to be specifi  ed, and how it can be accounted for. Th e paper suggests an analysis of wh-headlines as both backward- and forward-referring means that are very well-suited to fulfi  ll the two main functions of headlines, namely, to arouse the reader's interest and to direct the reader's attention to the subsequent text. Th e complex illocution of wh-headlines is derived from an interaction between formal properties of the clause type and contextual restrictions. In the fi  nal section of the paper, the more general question is raised whether wh-headlines can be regarded as relevance optimizers, as has been suggested for other kinds of newspaper headlines.  Th is  question  is  discussed  based  on  a  comparison  between  whheadlines, assertive headlines and click baits. *

## Keywords

illocution, newspaper headline, quotation, relevance, sentence type, syntaxpragmatics interface, wh-headline

## 1. Introduction

In German newspapers, one frequently comes across verb-fi  nal wh-clauses as headlines, e.g. 1-3. I will refer to them, henceforth, as wh-headlines.

- (1) Wie Kassen an Kranken verdienen (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 June 2017) how health insurance companies on sick people make money 'How health insurance companies make money on sick people'
2. (2)
3. (3)
4. Warum die Hungersnot uns angeht why the hunger crisis us concerns 'Why the hunger crisis concerns us'
5. (Frankfurter Rundschau, 26 February 2017)
6. Was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun
7. (Frankfurter Rundschau, 24 March 2017) what women for their wish to have children do 'What women do for their wish to have children'

Wh-headlines share the formal features of German dependent interrogative clauses, as exemplifi  ed in 4, which are embedded under a questioning matrix verb. Th ey display a wh-element in left  -most position and the fi  nite verb in clause-fi  nal position.

- (4) (Heinz fragt,) warum die Hungersnot uns angeht. (Heinz asks) why the hunger crisis us concerns. '(Heinz asks) why the hunger crisis concerns us'

However, it is obvious that 1-3 are not syntactically dependent on a matrix verb,  but  are  used  as  independent  utterances.  Th e  default  speech  act  that is  performed  with  the  utterance  of  an  independent  interrogative  clause is  a  question.  Characteristic  properties  of  questions,  as  held  in  standard approaches to speech acts (Searle 1969), include that there is a knowledge gap on the side of the speaker, that the speaker believes that the addressee knows the answer, and that the speaker wants the addressee to provide the answer. However, in the newspaper context of 1-3, we cannot plausibly assume that there is a knowledge gap on the side of the author, nor that the author attempts to make the reader provide the answer. Rather, there seem to be other, specifi  c communicative eff  ects that are reached by a wh-headline.

Comprehensive and systematic studies on the communicative eff  ects of wh-headlines are lacking, though. Despite their pervasive use in the media, which  seems  to  be  intimately  connected  with  their  specifi  c  functional potential,  wh-headlines  have  been  largely  neglected  in  previous  research on  the  syntax-pragmatics  interface,  text  linguistics,  stylistics,  and  media studies. All one can fi  nd are some sparse remarks on wh-headlines in older monographs on headlines, such as Sandig (1979) and Mårdh (1980), and as well as in some earlier work on German verb-fi  nal clause types (e.g. Weuster 1983, Oppenrieder 1989). Th is is all the more remarkable since wh-headlines are  pervasive  not  only  in  German-speaking  newspapers,  but  also  in  other discourse types such as chapter headings in fi  ction and non-fi  ction, book titles, or  fi  lm  titles.  Furthermore,  wh-headlines  can  be  found  in  other  European languages as well, cf., e.g., 5-8.

- (5)
- English Why our Soccer stars are in trouble (cf. Mårdh 1980: 129)
- (6) Swedish Hur man botar en fanatiker 1

'How one cures a fanatic'

- (7) Danish

Hvad vi ved om udsatte unge 2

- 'What we know about vulnerable youth'
- (8) French

Comment les riches échappent à l'impot (cf. Held 2005: 189) 3

'How the rich elude taxes'

While these examples are not verb-fi  nal - this being a feature specifi  c to German embedded  clauses  -,  they  nevertheless  display  the  respective  language's subordinate  syntax  while  being  used  in  main  clause  fashion.  Compare  the following contrasts, which indicate that the wh-headline syntactically patterns with the subordinate clause, not the main clause.

## English

- (9) a. Why our Soccer stars are in trouble (wh-headline) b. (John asks) why our Soccer stars are in trouble. (subordinate clause)
- (10) Why are our Soccer stars in trouble? (main clause)

## Swedish

- (11) a. Hur man botar en fanatiker (wh-headline)
- b. (Pelle frågar) hur man botar en fanatiker. (subordinate clause)
- (12) Hur botar man en fanatiker? (main clause)

## Danish

- (13) a. Hvad vi ved om udsatte unge (wh-headline)
- b. (Jesper spørger) hvad vi ved om udsatte unge. (subordinate clause)
- (14) Hvad ved vi om udsatte unge? (main clause)

## French

- (15) a. Comment les riches échappent à l'impot (wh-headline)
- b.  (Laurent  demande)  comment  les  riches  échappent  à  l'impot. (subordinate clause)
- (16) Comment est-ce que les riches échappent à l'impot? (main clause)

As to the communicative eff  ects of canonical questions in headlines, there are a number of studies, mainly from the perspective of social psychology and behavioral sciences (e.g. Moore et al. 2012, Lai & Farbrot 2014). It has been claimed in these studies that questions lend themselves to the use as headlines because of their ability to initiate cognitive processes and to generate attention and curiosity (Lai & Farbrot 2014: 290). However, a linguistic explanation of the alleged suitability of questions as headlines is lacking. Aft  er all, questions are, in the default case, requests for answers, whereas headlines, in the default case, do not ask the readers for answers.

In  this  paper,  I  will  argue,  with  respect  to  wh-headlines  in  German newspapers, that the syntactic properties of the clause type play an important role  in  the  determination  of  its  functional  potential.  It  will  be  shown  that because of their having the syntax of a subordinate clause, wh-headlines are especially apt to fulfi  l the main functions of headlines: to catch the reader's interest, and to direct her attention to the subsequent text.

Previous studies on the pragmatic functions of headlines have argued that headlines function as relevance-optimizers for readers (Dor 2003, Ifantidou 2009). As Dor (2003: 705) points out, as a short and simple text, a headline optimizes the relevance of the story for the reader by minimizing processing eff  ort  while  making  sure  that  a  suffi cient  amount  of  contextual  eff  ects  are deducible within the most appropriate context possible. Against this backdrop, a further issue this paper raises is whether wh-headlines can be regarded as relevance optimizers. It will be argued that as a forward-referring expression, a wh-headline is always intimately connected to its subsequent text and can reach optimal relevance for the reader only if the reader also reads (at least part of) the text.

Th e structure of the paper is as follows. In section 2, I will discuss a number of previous suggestions as to the communicative potential of wh-headlines, arguing that the emerging picture is rather heterogeneous and inconsistent. Against this backdrop, I will present my own hypothesis as to the illocutionary force of wh-headlines, which states that wh-headlines are meta-representative speech acts that are both quotational, i.e.  backward-referring to a (virtual) reader question, and forward-referring to the subsequent text. In section 3, I outline the basic assumptions of compositional theories on the interrelation between clause types and speech acts and discuss the question whether the ability of wh-headlines to carry illocutionary potential can be accounted for within these approaches. It will turn out that the illocutionary potential of wh-headlines cannot be derived from formal properties alone. In section 4, I pursue, in more detail, the question why wh-headlines communicate what they communicate. I argue that their illocutionary function can be derived from an interaction between formal properties of the clause type and contextual restrictions  on  the  headline.  In  section  5,  I  widen  the  perspective,  turning to  the  question  whether  wh-headlines  optimize  relevance  for  the  reader.  I discuss this question against the backdrop of a comparison with click baits and assertive headlines. Section 6 summarizes the paper.

## 2. What wh-headlines communicate

In a number of earlier work on German verb-fi  nal clause types, wh-headlines are  recognized  as  a  special  wh-clause  type  that  can  be  found  in  headlines (e.g.,  Stojanova-Jovčeva  1980,  Weuster  1983,  Winkler  1989,  Oppenrieder 1989). However, to date, wh-headlines have not been subject to systematic theoretical or empirical investigation. As to the question which illocutionary function wh-headlines fulfi  l, various tentative answers have been suggested. In her survey on German verb-fi  nal clause types, Weuster (1983: 54) suggests that wh-headlines are 'verweisende Ergänzungsfragen ohne Frageillokution' ('referring  wh-questions  without  question  illocution').  Altmann  (1987:  28), who mentions wh-headlines in passing, claims that speakers do not have clear intuitions about the function of wh-headlines. Luuko-Vinchenzo (1988:118), in a monograph on the functions of interrogative clauses in German and Finnish, assigns to wh-headlines 'ein assertives oder direktives Illokutionspotential' ('an  assertive  or  directive  illocutionary  potential'),  and  Oppenrieder  (1989: 215)  characterizes  wh-headlines  functionally  as  having  'eine  spezialisierte assertive Funktion der Ankündigung' ('a specialized assertive function of an announcement'). In a recent article on sentence mood in German, Pafel (2016: 412)  subsumes  wh-headlines  under  the  declarative  mood.  Taken  together, it  becomes clear that the various authors have diverging opinions as to the illocutionary functions of wh-headlines.

While I would agree with Weuster (1983) and Oppenrieder (1989) that one  function  of  wh-headlines  is  to  direct  the  reader  to  the  accompanying text,  this  function  must  be  spelled  out  in  more  detail.  Weuster's  rather unfortunate  terminology  ('wh-questions  without  question  illocution')  is misleading in this connection, and Oppenrieder's 'announcement' function is  not  specifi  c  enough.  Headlines  are  textual  building  blocks  that  are  part of a specifi  c confi  guration of headline and text. If they 'point' to a text, or 'announce' a text, this must be some kind of meta-representational function. However, a prototypical announcement, such as, e.g., the utterance Me and Agnetha are going to marry ,  with which the speaker announces a marriage, is not meta-representational. Turning to Altmann's claim that readers do not have  clear  intuitions  about  the  function  of  wh-headlines,  this  claim  is  not empirically substantiated. While readers may well have clear intuitions about the functions of wh-headlines, it seems that wh-headlines do not fi  t properly into Altmann's system of sentence moods in German. So the task would be to adjust the system, rather than exclude wh-headlines because of an alleged lack of speaker intuitions. Regarding Luuko-Vinchenzo's alternative 'assertive or directive' , this is based on the intuition that wh-headlines may be paraphrased by assertions such as Here you can read how health insurance companies make money on sick people , or by directives such as Inform yourself here (about) how health insurance companies make money on sick people. However, it remains unclear in Luuko-Vinchenzo's account how this alternative is to be explicated. Is this a choice the reader has? Are some wh-headlines assertive, while others are  directive?  Or  do  wh-headlines  fulfi  l  both  functions  simultaneously? Finally,  Pafel's  move  to  subsume  wh-headlines under the declarative mood is not unproblematic either. Within Pafel's system of intentional moods, the declarative is represented as 'S intends to inform A that p' . However, it is not fully correct to say that by uttering a wh-headline, an author intends to inform a reader that p. Rather, by uttering the subsequent text , the author intends to inform the reader that p.

In what follows, I would like to outline an account of the illocutionary function of wh-headlines that is informed by analyses of a sample of more than 3.000 wh-headlines that were collected from newspaper corpora of the DeReKo (Deutsches Referenzkorpus). 4   Th is  account  is  a  refi  nement  of  the approach taken by Finkbeiner (2018). Aft  er presenting what I take to be the main communicative eff  ects of wh-headlines, I will argue that these eff  ects result from an interaction of the specifi  c formal properties of the clause type and specifi  c contextual requirements of the headline format. Before I turn to the illocutionary functions of wh-headlines, a methodological remark is in order. Th e functional analyses that are presented below - as, arguably, all kinds of functional analyses - are to some extent subjective. While the argumentation is based on a large sample of attested examples of wh-headlines, I also rely on linguistic intuition when explicating their illocutionary functions. Th is is due to the fact that the headline corpus is of limited expressivity when it comes to the question of headline functions. Eventually, headline functions must be investigated  by  psycholinguistic  experimentation,  something  which  I  must leave for further work.

Approaching  the  question  which  illocutionary  function  wh-headlines fulfi  ll,  let  us  take  the  wh-headline  1,  here  repeated  as  17,  as  an  illustrative example.

## (17) Wie Kassen an Kranken verdienen

'How health insurance companies make money on sick people'

Th e  headline  17  is  taken  from  a  news  article  on  how  health  insurance companies  manipulate  doctors  to  falsely  diagnose  severe  illnesses,  e.g.,  a In tne context or the news articie.

Versicherungen drängen Ärzte zu Falschdiagnosen, kritisieren Experten

depression instead of a temporary blues, in order to gain extra money from the German Health Fonds (Gesundheitsfonds). Figure 1 depicts the headline in the context of the news article. schlechter - was auch daran liegen könne,

ner eine von 80 ausgewählten Krankhei-

Bundesversicherungsamts stehen, darun-

ten diagnostizieren, die auf einer Liste des

ter eben Depressionen, bekommen die Kas-

sen Extrageld aus dem deutschen Gesund-

heitsfonds. Diesen Mechanismus hat die

Politik vor acht Jahren eingeführt, um die-

jenigen Kassen zu unterstützen, die beson-

ders viele kranke Menschen versichern. Er

heißt Risikostrukturausgleich. Damals

ging es um Gerechtigkeit.

Bloß: Gerecht geht es bei diesem Aus-

gleich schon lange nicht mehr zu, dafür

gibt es immer mehr Hinweise. Weil es sich

an schweren Krankheiten leiden, haben sie

für Kassen lohnt, wenn ihre Versicherten

offenbar damit begonnen, Ärzte zu lukrati-

<!-- image -->

ven Diagnosen zu überreden. Im April

Figure 1. Headline 'Wie Kassen an Kranken verdienen' in the context of the news article (excerpt), Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 June 2017.

What  are  the  specifi  c  communicative  eff  ects  of  a  17?  To  begin  with,  17 suggests that the accompanying text will tell the reader how health insurance companies make money on sick people. Importantly, while 17 does contain a knowledge gap, marked by the wh-phrase wie ('how'), the utterance of 17 does not count as a request for information, in the sense of Searle's (1969) essential condition. Rather, the illocutionary point of 17 is that of an assertion that the text will provide information related to the wh-gap. However, this is not all there is to say about the illocutionary force of wh-headlines. As I will argue in more detail below, 17 also suggests that at some point in previous discourse, the question has been asked how insurance companies make money on sick people. Th us, while the utterance of 17 itself is not a question, it is interpreted as  taking  up,  or  as  backward-referring  to  a  previously  raised  question.  In this respect, as well as to its subordinate syntax, it bears resemblance to echo questions as discussed by Nielsen (2020, this issue), cf. 18.

- (18) What the reason is? [continued by: Th e  reason  is  that  we  have  been insulted  by  the  attitude  of  Russia ;  example  taken  from  Nielsen,  this issue]

dass die AOK vor Ort meist gut vernetzt sei.

According  to  Nielsen,  18  'is  characterized  by  the  fact  that  the  sender  is not  responsible  for  the  speech  act  of  asking,  but  rather  for  the  speech  act of  reproducing  an  already  stated  question' .  However,  18  still  is  a  question, albeit not a wh-question, but a yes/no question: In uttering 18, the speaker asks whether it is the case that the addressee wants to know what the reason is, thereby intending to provide the reason in the subsequent speech act. By contrast, a wh-headline such as What the reason is (with falling intonation) neither  is  a  wh-question  nor  a  yes/no  question.  While  it  also  refers  to  an already stated question, it does not ask whether the addressee wants to know what the reason is, but it asserts that the subsequent text will tell what the reason is.

Apart from these two main communicative eff  ects - to orient the reader towards  the  subsequent  text  and  to  backward-refer  to  a  previously  asked question  -,  17  contains  the  presupposition  that  it  is  the  case  that  health insurance companies make money on sick people. Depending on whether this can be assumed to be a previously accepted truth or not, this presupposition contributes to a certain manipulative potential of the wh-headline. Note that while wh-headlines consistently entail the factivity of their proposition, verbsecond wh-questions not necessarily do. A case in point are so-called police questions (Meibauer 1991), cf. the contrast in 19.

- (19) a. Mit wem Heinz M. kurz vor seinem Tod noch telefoniert hat 'Whom Heinz M. talked to on the phone shortly before his death' b. Mit wem hat Heinz M. kurz vor seinem Tod noch telefoniert? 'Whom did Heinz M. talk to on the phone shortly before his death?'

19a raises the strong expectation that the accompanying text will tell us about the person, or will present us with a list of people, whom Heinz M. talked to on the phone shortly before his death. It is thus taken for granted that Heinz M. talked to somebody before his death. However, the police detective asking 19b must be prepared to fi  nd out that Heinz M. did not talk to anybody on the phone shortly before his death; and this fi  nding would not be pragmatically inconsistent with 19b.

Taken together, my hypothesis is that wh-headlines are meta-representative speech acts operating in two directions. Th ey are both backward-referring to a question from previous discourse and forward-referring to the subsequent text. Furthermore, they consistently presuppose the factivity of their proposition. Th e illocutionary force thus outlined seems to be one that is especially wellsuited for a newspaper headline: In forward-referring to the accompanying text, the wh-headline fulfi  ls a basic task of a newspaper headline, namely to direct  the  reader's  attention  to  the  news  article.  In  backward-referring  to  a previously asked question, the headline fulfi  ls a second basic task of a newspaper headline, namely to arouse the readers' interest. From this perspective, one can say that a wh-headline is a mediator between what readers want to know and what they can learn from the newspaper text.

Before I continue with the question how the functional potential of whheadlines is related to properties of the clause type, a brief remark as to other contexts  in  which  wh-headlines  occur  is  in  order.  As  pointed  out  above, wh-headlines are not restricted to headlines in newspapers. Other contexts in  which  wh-headlines  occur  are  catch  lines  on  magazine  covers,  chapter headings in fi  ction as well as non-fi  ction, titles of books and fi  lms, captions, and marginalia. One may ask the question whether wh-headlines fulfi  ll the same  illocutionary  function  in  all  of  these  contexts.  Generally,  it  can  be assumed that in all of these contexts, the common function of the wh-headline is of a discourse-deictic nature, in that the wh-headline, induced by its specifi  c syntactic properties (see Section 3), refers to a certain piece of discourse which may be represented in a textual or pictorial mode - that is related to the headline by local proximity or multimodal attachment (e.g., in the case of a fi   lm title printed on a DVD case). However, the diff  erent contexts also diff  er considerably with respect to a number of features, e.g., discourse level (the whole of a book, a chapter in a book, a paragraph in a chapter) or discourse type  (e.g.,  fi  ction  vs.  non-fi  ction,  textual  vs.  pictorial),  which  may  lead  to the development of more specifi  c functions in specifi  c contexts (e.g., mainly discourse  structuring  functions  in  marginalia  vs.  mainly  attention-getting functions in catch lines on magazine covers). With regard to this potential functional diversifi  cation, the restriction of the present study to newspaper contexts as one of the main context types of wh-headlines is warranted. Further work must show whether the results of the present study can be generalized with respect to occurrences of wh-headlines at other discourse levels and in other discourse types.

I  will  argue in the following sections that it is not arbitrary that exactly this specifi  c clause type has become conventionalized as a headline. Rather, I  will  show that the verb-fi  nal wh-clause has certain formal properties that make it especially well-suited for the illocutionary functions outlined above. However, as I will argue subsequently, the properties of the clause type alone do not suffi ce to fully explain the functional potential of wh-headlines. Th e second important factor are specifi  c contextual requirements of the headline that have to be taken into account.

## 3. How clause types are related to speech acts

It is a standard assumption in the literature on the syntax-pragmatics interface that clause types are related in fundamental ways to speech acts. Searle (1969) regards clause types as a kind of illocutionary indicator. In subsequent work, e.g.,  Bierwisch  (1980),  Bach  &  Harnish  (1979),  Sadock  &  Zwicky  (1985), this interrelation has been elaborated on, with the notion of sentence mood becoming a key notion to account for the sentence type-speech act relation

(for  a  recent  discussion,  cf.  Portner  2018).  In  the  literature  on  German sentence types, the account of Altmann (1993) is widely accepted in which he takes it that sentence mood is a complex sign composed of a form type and a functional type, where a bundle of formal properties on the formal side corresponds to a certain speaker attitude and/or an illocutionary potential on the functional side. For example, a verb-second declarative clause corresponds to  a  belief  attitude,  which  is  compatible  with  assertive  speech  acts,  while  a verb-second wh-interrogative clause corresponds to the attitude of a desire to get to know something, which is compatible with questioning speech acts. While Altmann's  approach  can  be  said  to  be  a  'correspondence  approach' (Reis 1999:200), or a constructionist approach avant la lettre (cf. Finkbeiner & Meibauer 2016:2), another line of research into the sentence type-speech act interface is represented by compositional ('derivational') approaches that try to derive the ability of a sentence type to convey a certain illocutionary force from particular syntactic properties.

In particular, there is the standard assumption in compositional approaches to sentence types that the ability of a sentence to be used as an independent utterance with a certain illocutionary potential is bound to the movement of the fi  nite verb to the C-position (V-to-C-movement, cf. Truckenbrodt 2004, 2006; Lohnstein 2000). Th is assumption can account for the observation that it is typically verb-second and verb-fi  rst sentences, so-called root sentences, that are used as independent utterances with their own illocutionary potential, while verb-fi  nal sentences typically are used as embedded sentences that do not convey an illocution on their own. However, it is clear that there exist also a number of verb-fi  nal clause types in German that carry illocutionary force.  Within  the  domain  of  wh-clauses,  there  are,  in  particular,  two  types of  independent  verb-fi  nal  types  in  German,  namely  verb-fi  nal  refl  ective wh-questions (Truckenbrodt 2013b), cf. 20, and verb-fi  nal wh-exclamatives (d' Avis 2001), cf. 21.

- (20) Was Frauen (wohl/nur/bloß) für ihren Kinderwunsch tun? what women mp for their wish to have children do '(I wonder) what women do for their wish to have children'
- (21) Was FRAUen (nicht alles) für ihren KINderwunsch tun! what women mp for their wish to have children do '(I am surprised about) what women do for their wish to have children'

By  the  utterance  of  20,  the  speaker  conveys  that  she  poses  to  herself  the question what women do for their wish to have children, thereby not expecting an answer from the addressee. By the utterance of 21, the speaker expresses that she is astonished or surprised about what women do for their wish to have children; this is the typical exclamative speaker attitude. Th e question then is how one can account for the ability of the verb-fi  nal types 20 and 21

to carry illocutionary potential without abandoning the standard assumption. One line of argument is that the sentence types 20 and 21 display additional formal  and  prosodic  features  that  contribute  to  their  potential  to  carry illocutionary force (e.g., Altmann 1993). For refl  ective questions such as 20, it has been argued that the rising intonation [/], together with a near-obligatory modal particle that comes out of the set { wohl, nur, bloß } are the key features that  are  responsible  for  their  specifi  c  illocutionary  potential  (Truckenbrodt 2013a). For 21, it can be argued that it is the specifi  c exclamative stress pattern (indicated by capitalization) to which the expression of the specifi  c exclamative speaker attitude must be connected (d' Avis 2001).

However, if we compare this to wh-headlines, we fi  nd that wh-headlines behave diff  erently. As to their formal properties, wh-headlines share with 20 and 21 the fi  nal position of the fi  nite verb and the occurrence of a wh-phrase in left  -most position. However, while refl  ective questions such as 20 typically have rising intonation (indicated by [/]), wh-headlines must be realized, when read aloud 5 , with falling intonation (indicated by [\]), cf. the contrast in 22a-b.

- (22) a. Was Frauen (wohl/nur/bloß) für ihren Kinderwunsch tun? [/] '(I wonder) what women do for their wish to have children' b. Was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun [\] 'What women do for their wish to have children'

Moreover, 22 indicates that while refl  ective questions typically display a modal particle of the set { wohl, nur, bloß }, wh-headlines typically do not display any modal particles. In a subsample of my corpus, a collection of wh-headlines taken  from  commentaries  and  editorials,  only  two  of  a  total  of  2.098  whheadlines  were  exhibiting  modal  particles. 6 Finally,  whereas  verb-fi  nal  whexclamatives such as 21 exhibit the characteristic exclamative stress pattern, wh-headlines do not, cf. the contrast in 23a-b.

- (23) a. Was FRAUen für ihren KINderwunsch tun! '(I am surprised) what women do for their wish to have children' b. Was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun 'What women do for their wish to have children'

Th us, wh-headlines do not exhibit any additional formal features that would allow us to distinguish them, formally, from the dependent interrogative type of verb-fi  nal wh-clauses, cf. 24-25.

- (24) Heinz fragt, was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun 'Heinz asks what women do for their wish to have children'
- (25) Was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun 'What women do for their wish to have children'

Note that it is not trivial that 25 is, semantically, an interrogative sentence. As the wh-headline does not occur with an embedding matrix verb, it is, in principle,  ambiguous  between  a  wh-interrogative  and  a  (free)  wh-relative. Th is ambiguity can be made explicit if one embeds 25 under an interrogativeembedding matrix verb such as ask ,  and  a  relative-embedding matrix verb such as like , respectively.

- (26)
- (27)
- Heinz fragt, was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun. (interrogative clause)

'Heinz asks what women do for their wish to have children'

- Heinz mag, was Frauen für ihren Kinderwunsch tun. (free relative clause) 'Heinz likes what women do for their wish to have children'

However, we may employ tests (cf. Bausewein 1990) that indicate that whheadlines  are  indeed,  semantically,  interrogative  sentences.  First,  as  whinterrogatives,  also  wh-headlines  allow  for  multiple  wh-elements,  whereas free relative clauses don't, cf. 28-30.

| (28)   | Heinz fragt, welche Versicherung was zahlt. 'Heinz asks which insurance pays for what.   | (interrogative)   |
|--------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------|
| (29)   | *Heinz mag, welche Versicherung was zahlt. 'Heinz likes which insurance pays for what'   | (free relative)   |
| (30)   | Welche Versicherung was zahlt 7 'Which insurance pays for what'                          | (wh-headline)     |

Second, as wh-interrogatives, wh-headlines allow for the quantifi  er alles ('all'), whereas free relative clauses don't, cf. 31-33.

- (31) so alles ankommt.
2. Heinz fragt, worauf es bei der Weltmeisterschaft   im Treppenlaufen (interrogative) Heinz asks on what it at the world championship in stair climbing so all depends
3. 'Heinz asks what counts at the world championship in stair climbing'
- (32) *Heinz mag, worauf es bei der Weltmeisterschaft   im Treppenlaufen so alles ankommt. (free relative) Heinz likes on what it at the world championship in stair climbing so all depends

'Heinz likes what counts at the world championship in stair climbing'

- (33) Worauf  es  bei  der  Weltmeisterschaft    im  Treppenlaufen  so  alles ankommt 8 (wh-headline) on what it at the world championship in stair climbing so all depends 'What counts at the world championship in stair climbing'

Taken  together,  it  becomes  clear  that  wh-headlines  are  verb-fi  nal  whinterrogatives that diff  er, syntactically, from embedded wh-interrogatives in not  being  dependent  on  a  matrix  verb.  As  against  refl  ective  questions  and wh-exclamatives, they do not exhibit any additional formal markers such as a special intonation contour or a restrictive selection of modal particles which could explain their ability  to  carry  an  illocution.  Th erefore,  the  strategy  to derive the illocutionary force of wh-headlines from formal features alone will not work. In order to account for the assignment of illocutionary force to whheadlines, it is indispensable to also refl  ect on their contexts of use. In the following,  I  will  argue  that  the  illocutionary  potential  of  wh-headlines  can be derived from the interaction of formal properties of the clause type and contextual restrictions of the headline.

## 4. Why wh-headlines communicate what they communicate

Above,  the  illocutionary  function  of  wh-headlines  was  characterized  as  a meta-representative act that is both backward-referring to previous discourse and  forward-referring  to  the  subsequent  text.  I  will  show  now  that  the backward reference can be accounted for by an analogy with quotational uses of verb-fi  nal sentences, which share with wh-headlines verb-fi  nal order and intonation, and that the forward reference can be accounted for by the role of the wh-phrase in the context of a headline.

Starting with the backward-referring function, it is the specifi  c confi  guration  of  verb-fi  nal  position  and  falling  intonation  in  wh-headlines that elicits an interpretation as quotational utterance. To show this in more detail, I will fi  rst look at the diff  erent possible confi  gurations of verb position and intonation, assuming here a simplifi  ed dichotomy of falling [\] and rising [/] intonation (cf. Altmann 1993).

In the default case, a German verb-second wh-clause with rising intonation such as 34a receives a questioning interpretation.

```
(34) a. Was hat Steinmeier erreicht [/] 'What did Steinmeier achieve' b. Was hat Steinmeier erreicht [\] 'What did Steinmeier achieve'
```

As  has  been  pointed  out  repeatedly  in  the  literature  (e.g.  Altmann  1993), verb-second  wh-clauses  in  German  can  be  realized  with  either  rising  or falling  intonation.  Th erefore,  nothing  changes  if  we  realize  the  clause  with falling intonation, and thus, also 34b in the default case gets a questioning interpretation.

Next, also a verb-fi  nal wh-clause with rising intontation will normally get a questioning interpretation, cf. 35a.

- (35) a. Was Steinmeier erreicht hat [/]

'What Steinmeier has achieved'

b. Was Steinmeier erreicht hat [\]

'What Steinmeier has achieved'

35a can be either the refl  ective question type mentioned earlier, in which the speaker  asks  herself  a  question,  not  expecting  an  answer  from  a  potential addressee (the acceptability of this reading is enhanced if we insert a modal particle such as wohl ). Alternatively, 35a may be interpreted as echo question, i.e. as a question of the speaker as to whether this is what someone else asked before ('Did you ask what Steinmeier has achieved?'; cf. also 18 above). In any case, 35a is a kind of question.

However, if we change the intonation of the verb-fi  nal clause to falling intonation, as in 35b, the questioning interpretation disappears. What we get instead is a quotational reading. Th is reading has been described for usages such as 36 (cf. Oppenrieder 1989, Truckenbrodt 2013a,b).

- (36) A: Wie verdienen Kassen an Kranken?

A: 'How do health insurance companies make money on sick people?'

- B: Wie bitte?
- B: 'Pardon me?'
- C: Wie Kassen an Kranken verdienen.
- C: 'How health insurance companies make money on sick people.'

Th e interpretation of 36C is that C is reminding B of the content of the previous question of A. Importantly, C is not herself asking this question. Rather, what C conveys is something like 'I say that A asked how health insurance companies make money on sick people' ,  thus  an  assertion  about  what  somebody  else asked. 9

At  this  point,  the  analogy  between  utterances  such  as  36C  and  whheadlines becomes apparent. Wh-headlines share all the formal features of quotational uses of wh-clauses such as 36C. Th erefore, a quotational reading for wh-headlines suggests itself. Arguably, in the context of a headline, there is no previous co-text in which a question would be manifest, as is the case in the example 36. However, the total formal overlap with the quotational use can be assumed to coerce the quotational reading also for the headline, resulting in an interpretation where the author reminds the readers of a question that is, if only latently or virtually, part of previous discourse. Th is interpretation is all the more likely in the context of a headline, whose primary task it is to arouse a readers' interest. What could be more interesting to a reader than a question that is part of the current news discourse, but that has not been answered yet?

I  will  now  turn  to  the  forward-referring  function  of  wh-headlines.  A crucial formal aspect of wh-headlines that contributes to the determination of the forward-referring function is the occurrence of a wh-phrase in the left periphery of the clause. According to a standard semantic analysis, the whphrase opens an alternative space, i.e. a set of possible answers (Hamblin 1973, Lohnstein 2013). A wh-headline thus is a sentence that semantically contains an open slot, a knowledge gap, that carries the requirement to be fi  lled. Different kinds of wh-sentences come with diff  erent expectations as to who is supposed to fi  ll the knowledge gap. For standard verb-second wh-questions, it is the addressee that is supposed to fi  ll the knowledge gap. For wh-headlines, it' s diff  erent.

Th e  crucial  point  is  that  wh-headlines are  restricted to  the  context  of  a headline. Th at is, they cannot be used independently outside of the context of a headline. While it is safe to say that, in principle, any German clause type i.e., imperative, declarative, or interrogative clauses - can be used as headline, wh-headlines are the only clause type in German that can only be used as a headline.

- (37) Macht's noch einmal, Jungs! 'Do it again, guys!'
- (38) Boateng muss gehen 'Boateng must leave. '
- (39) Was essen unsere Stars im Trainingslager? 'What do our stars eat at the training camp?'
- (40) Was unsere Stars im Trainingslager essen [\] 'What our stars eat at the training camp'

While 37-39 would make both fully acceptable headlines and fully acceptable utterances  outside  the  context  of  a  headline,  40  is  not  mandated  as  an acceptable, independent utterance outside the context of a headline. (Th e only exception being quotational usages of verb-fi  nal wh-clauses, see above.)

Crucially, as headlines, verb-fi  nal wh-clauses appear in text-initial sequential position. If there is an occurrence of a wh-phrase within a headline, in text-initial position, one may assume that this strongly invites a forward bridging inference to the eff  ect that it is the propositions of the subsequent text that will fi  ll the knowledge gap contained in the proposition of the headline. Th is  inference,  of  course,  is  largely  based  on  readers'  cultural  knowledge about typographic and textual conventions in headline-text confi  gurations. If  this  is  true,  then  the  forward-referring  function  of  wh-headlines  can  be said to be the result of an interaction between the semantics of wh-phrases and the conventionalized usage of the clause in a specifi  c position within a conventionalized headline-text confi  guration.

Now,  it  is  clear  that  wh-phrases  are  not  a  particular  property  of  whheadlines, but occur in a number of diff  erent wh-clause types that might be used as headlines. Th e wh-phrase should contribute the same meaning aspect in all wh-clause types, and therefore, one might conclude that all wh-clause types should be equally well-suited as headlines. But the diff  erent wh-clauses types diff  er in important aspects, and crucially, they are not all equally wellsuited as headlines.

- (41) Was hat Steinmeier erreicht? [/] / [\] 'What has Steinmeier achieved?'
- (42) Was Steinmeier wohl erreicht hat? [/] '(I wonder) what Steinmeier has achieved'
- (43) Was Steinmeier erreicht hat [\] 'What Steinmeier has achieved'

Th e verb-second wh-question 41 conveys that there is a knowledge gap on the side of the speaker S and that S wants the addressee A to fi  ll this knowledge gap. According to Truckenbrodt (2004, 2013a,b), both meaning components can be derived from the syntactic structure of the sentence. Th e component 'S wants to know something' is induced by an abstract +wh-feature (which has a visible correlate in the wh-phrase), the component 'from A ' is induced by verb movement to the C-position (i.e., to the verb-second position).

Th e refl  ective question 42 also conveys that S wants to know something, but it does not convey that S wants A to provide the answer. Th is can be accounted for, in Truckenbrodt's account, by the fact that 42 does contain a +wh-feature in its syntactic structure, inducing the meaning component 'S wants to know something' , but no V-to-C-movement, so the meaning component 'from A ' is not induced.

What about the wh-headline 43? Obviously, while 43 does convey that there  is  a  knowledge  gap,  it  neither  conveys  that  this  knowledge  gap  is  on the side of S, nor that S wants A to fi  ll this knowledge gap. However, as 43 shares its syntactic features with 42, one would expect that it also shares the interpretation of 42. What is it that induces the deviant interpretation of 43? On my account, we may explain this as follows. First, the fact that 43 does convey that there is a knowledge gap can be motivated by the occurrence of a +wh-feature. Th e fact that the knowledge gap is not on the side of the speaker, but on the side of the addressee, follows from my quotational analysis of whheadlines. With a quotation, a speaker does not refer to her own attitudes, but to the attitude(s) of the speaker of the original utterance (which is taken to be the addressee - the reader has asked this question before). Th e quotational interpretation thus shift  s the epistemic attitude, the existence of a knowledge gap,  to  the  addressee.  It  can  be  made  explicit  in  the  paraphrase  'I  say  that readers ask what/why/how …' . In accordance with Truckenbrodt's prediction, 43 does not contain the meaning component 'from A ' , as there is no V-to-Cmovement. But as the wh-phrase occurs in a headline context, the forward bridging inference is invited that the text will fi  ll the knowledge gap.

Along these lines, the special 'headline affi nity' of wh-headlines, compared to  other  kinds  of  wh-clauses,  can  be  derived  from  an  interaction  between their specifi  c structural properties and a pragmatic exploitation of their being bound to the sequential position of headlines.

In the following section, I would like to widen the perspective somewhat, asking  the  more  general  question  whether  wh-headlines  can  be  seen  as relevance optimizers for readers.

## 5. Whether wh-headlines optimize relevance

In  the  pragmatic  literature  on  the  communicative  functions  of  newspaper headlines, it has been claimed repeatedly that relevance is a key concept in explaining the overall impact of newspaper headlines. Dor (2003: 696) puts forward the hypothesis that newspaper headlines are 'relevance optimizers' . He  uses  the  term  'relevance'  in  the  technical  sense  of  Relevance  Th eory (Sperber/Wilson  1995,  Carston  2002).  In  Relevance  Th eory,  relevance  is  a meta-principle of human cognition, which states - in the Cognitive Principle of  Relevance - that human cognitive processes are geared to achieving the greatest possible cognitive eff  ect for the smallest processing eff  ort, and - in the  Communicative  Principle  of  Relevance  -  that  an  utterance  raises  the expectation  of  optimal  relevance  in  its  addressees.  Th us,  the  relevance  of an utterance is the greater, the greater the ratio of its cognitive eff  ects to the processing eff  ort it requires.

Dor (2003: 705) applies the notion of relevance to headlines such that 'a short and simple text, it [the headline] optimizes the relevance of the story by minimizing processing eff  ort while making sure that a suffi cient amount of contextual eff  ects are deducible within the most appropriate context possible' (Dor 2003: 705). Th e most appropriate headline for a news item is then the one which optimizes the relevance of the story for  the  readers  (Dor  2003: 707). Th is can be achieved, according to Dor, by ten diff  erent strategies; for example, a headline may be more appropriate than some other one because it  is  shorter;  because  it  is  clearer;  because  it  is  more  interesting;  because  it is  more  informative;  and  so  on.  From  the  assumption  that  headlines  are relevance optimizers, it follows that if a headline is optimally relevant, a reader who has fi  nished reading a headline 'has already received the optimal amount of relevance for its story' (Dor 2003: 718). Th erefore, according to Dor, 'the reader who decides to read the headline […] and move on to the next headline, rather  than  delve  into  the  story,  makes  a  perfectly  rational  decision,  and actually gets the best (informational) value for (cognitive) money possible' (Dor 2003: 718).

Similarly,  Ifantidou  (2009:  699)  suggests  that  readers  'select  headlines guided  by  expectations  of  relevance' .  However,  according  to  Ifantidou, the  relevance  of  a  headline  cannot  be  determined  by  using  'appropriacy lists'  such  as  the  one  used  by  Dor  (2003),  because  it  is  unclear,  e.g.,  what status  the  suggested  properties  have,  whether  there  is  a  single  overarching property,  or  whether  some  properties  have  priority  over  others  (Ifantidou 2009:700).  Furthermore,  Ifantidou  argues  against  the  mediating  (between story and reader) status of headlines, claiming that in many cases, headlines are  purposely read for the sake of a quick and loose news update, without referring to 'the story' at all. Instead, the focus of Ifantidou (2009) is on the 'reader-eff  ectiveness'  of  headlines  and  the  role  of  inferences  in  headline interpretation. Th e most reader-eff  ective headline, according to Ifantidou, is a creative, underinformative headline that is contextually enriched via diff  erent kinds of pragmatic inferences.

Interestingly,  although  Dor's  and  Ifantidou's  views  on  the  relevance of  headlines  diff  er  in  important  points,  they  both  come  to  the  conclusion that optimally relevant headlines are those that can be read as autonomous texts, i.e. instead of the story. In Ifantidou's view, headlines are 'autonomous meaningful constructions and are (or should be) designed to be interpreted as such' (Ifantidou 2009: 702); in Dor's (2003:718) view, the best headline for the story is 'not supposed to make the ordinary reader go on reading the story, but to make sure that the reader has indeed received the best 'deal' in reading the headline itself ' (original emphasis).

While this may be true for headlines of a standard assertive format, e.g., John Kennedy Jr. 's body found (Dor 2003) or Kate's back in therapy (Ifantidou 2009), it seems that things are diff  erent with wh-headlines. As pointed out above,  the  main  communicative  purpose  of  a  wh-headline  is  to  direct  the readers to the subsequent text, as well as to remind the readers of a question that is (virtually) present in previous discourse. Th e communicative functions of wh-headlines are to a large extent determined by their form. As the whheadline contains an open wh-slot, a reader cannot be supposed to achieve a suffi cient amount of cognitive eff  ects from reading only the wh-headline. As a forward- (and backward)-referring device, a wh-headline is not, at least not in the same way as a standard assertive headline, an autonomous text. Rather, it is to be seen as a text that is very closely entangled, not only because of its content, but also because of its linguistic form, with the text that it introduces.

A similar observation has been made by Blom & Hansen (2015) for click baits.  Click  baits,  as  illustrated  below  in  examples  from  the  German  MSN news site (see 44-45), are a certain kind of forward-referring headlines that primarily occur in online news media and that can be assumed to be used in order to generate clicks and reading activity for commercial reasons.

- (44) Diese Stars haben die Model-Gene in der Familie 10 these stars have the model genes in the family 'Th ese stars have the model genes in the family'
2. 163 (45) So überrascht GoT-Star seine Fans jedes Mal aufs Neue 11 so surprises GoT star his fans each time anew 'Th is is how a GoT [game of thrones] star surprises his fans each time anew'

Th e forward-referring potential of click baits is determined by their containing text-deictic or cataphoric expressions, e.g., demonstrative pronouns such as dies - ('this, these'), cf. 44, or adverbs such as so ('so'), cf. 45. According to Blom & Hansen (2015: 96), and contra Dor (2003) and Ifantidou (2009), optimal relevance of a click bait headline can only be reached if the reader clicks on the headline and reads (parts of) the story, but not if she scans the headline and moves on to the next story straight away.

Similarities between click baits and wh-headlines can be found in the fact that both headline types contain linguistic expressions whose content must be  determined  in  context,  thus  directing  the  reader  to  the  accompanying text.  However, there are also important diff  erences between click baits and wh-headlines.  Syntactically,  click  baits  are  verb-second  declarative  clauses that are associated with an own illocution for purely syntactic reasons, while wh-headlines are verb-fi  nal wh-clauses that only receive their interpretation as  independent  utterances  in  the  context  of  a  headline.  While  click  baits contain  indexicals  that  point  to  the  subsequent  text,  wh-headlines  contain wh-phrases that project an answer into the subsequent text. Because of their being interrogative clauses, wh-headlines also have a refl  ective component, which is absent in click baits. Th us, while 46 engages the reader in some kind of refl  ective activity, 47 doesn't.

- (46) Wie ein GoT-Star seine Fans jedes Mal aufs Neue überrascht 'How a GoT star surprises his fans each time anew'
- (47) So überrascht GoT-Star seine Fans jedes Mal aufs Neue 'Th is is how a GoT star surprises his fans each time anew'

Furthermore, while click baits are exclusively forward-referring, it has been argued  in  this  paper  that  wh-headlines  are  both  forward-  and  backwardreferring.  Th e  backward-referring  reading  of  wh-headlines  is  evoked  by structural  means,  i.e.  their  verb-fi  nal  order  in  combination  with  falling intonation,  which  is  reminiscent  of  quotational  uses.  As  argued  above, the  backward-referring  reading  plays  an  important  role  for  the  ability  of wh-headlines  to  arouse  a  reader's  interest.  While  both  click  baits  and  whheadlines share the function of directing the attention to the subsequent text, wh-headlines have the additional appealing eff  ect  to  act  as  if  they  pick  up one of the reader's own questions. Because of their refl  ective potential and their specifi  c reader-appeal, wh-headlines can be assumed to generate more cognitive eff  ects compared to click baits.

Th is is not to say that click baits are not appealing to readers. Click baits may well arouse the reader's interest by specifi  c techniques such as, e.g., directly addressing readers (e.g. So gelingt Ihr Garnelencurry mit Mango garantiert 12 '[If  you do it] like this, your shrimp curry with mango will succeed') or by choosing topics that can be expected to be of special interest to readers (e.g., Diese drei Dinge hassen Männer beim Küssen 13 , 'Th ese three things men hate while kissing'). What is special for wh-headlines, compared to click baits, is that their reader appeal is induced already at the structural level.

In how far is it then mandated to say that wh-headlines optimize relevance? As  argued  in  this  paper,  wh-headlines  achieve  their  special  functional potential  because  of  their  backward-  and  forward-referring  properties. Th erefore, wh-headlines in fact are very good examples of what Dor (2003) sees as 'mediators' between the reader and the story. Wh-headlines connect a reader's previous question to a news article which is expected to answer this question. Th at is, a wh-headline mediates in very specifi  c ways, induced by its specifi  c linguistic properties, between a reader's question and a textual answer. Because of this, one can expect that readers will reach a considerable amount of  cognitive  eff  ects  from  wh-headlines,  namely,  answers  to  their  questions. However,  these  cognitive  eff  ects  can  be  reached  only  if  readers  accept  the relatively  high  processing  eff  ort  it  will  take  to  not  only  read  the  headline, but  also  the  accompanying  news  article.  Th erefore,  as  click  baits,  also  whheadlines will become maximally relevant only if readers also read (parts of) the accompanying text.

## 6. Summary

In this paper, I have argued that verb-fi  nal wh-clauses with falling intonation are  particularly  apt  to  be  used  as  headlines  because  they  accomplish  two functions: Th ey remind readers of an open question that is part of previous discourse, and they direct readers to the accompanying text that will provide an answer to this question. I have derived these functions from an interaction between formal properties of the clause type and contextual restrictions of the  headline  format.  If  headlines,  more  generally,  can  be  said  to  optimize relevance  for  readers,  the  question  arises  whether  also  wh-headlines,  with their specifi  c functions, can be said to optimize relevance. I have suggested that wh-headlines may be assumed to generate more cognitive eff  ects compared to click baits, because they carry refl  ective potential and act as if they refer to a genuine reader question. On the other hand, wh-headlines and click baits, as compared to standard assertive headlines, become maximally relevant only if readers also read (parts of) the accompanying text. More generally, it follows that diff  erent types of headlines must be evaluated diff  erently as to their ability to optimize relevance.

## Notes

*  Th is work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), grant number FI-2297/1-1.
- 1 Newspaper headline, https://www.aft  onbladet.se/nyheter/a/zLjgdO/hurman-botar-en-fanatiker, 25 April 2019.
- 2 Book title, https://www.rockwoolfonden.dk/publikationer/hvad-vi-ved-omudsatte-unge/, 10 April 2020. Th anks to Simon Uff  e Borchmann for providing this example.
- 3 Catch line on a French magazine cover.
- 4 Th e account presented here is part of a larger project on wh-headlines in German that is currently carried out at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
- 5 It is clear that headlines are a phenomenon of written discourse. Nonetheless, every written text, and every headline, carries the potential to be read aloud. With respect to wh-headlines, experienced readers of German have the strong intuition that they must be recited with falling intonation.
- 6 Cf. the following examples: (i) Warum Warren Buff  et hier vorerst wohl nicht investieren wird [why Warren Buff  et here for now mp not invest will; 'Why Warren Buff  et is likely not to invest here for the time being'] (Focus, 31 March 2019); (ii) Warum Sie auch künft  ig ruhig Ihre Wurst aus England mitbringen können [why you also henceforward mp your sausage from England prt-bring can; 'Why you can bring your sausage from England also in the future'] (die tageszeitung, 5 March 2001). Interestingly, wohl belongs to the set of modal particles that are compatible with wh-questions, while ruhig belongs to the set of modal particles that are incompatible with wh-questions. Th e fact that question-compatible modal particles are possible follows from my quotational account, which states that a wh-headline behaves like a quote of a question that  was  raised  in  previous  discourse.  Th e  fact  that  question-incompatible modal particles can occur is an argument in favor of my claim that wh-headlines do not have questioning illocution.
- 7 Sonntags-Zeitung (Tages-Anzeiger), 28 August 2005.
- 8 Frankfurter Rundschau, 20 February 2017.
- 9 As to the illocutionary diff  erences between 36C and echo questions such as How health insurance companies make money on sick people ?, cf. Section 2 above.
- 10 https://www.msn.com/de-de/unterhaltung/celebrity/diese-stars-haben-diemodel-gene-in-der-familie-%e2%80%93-teil-1-2/vi-BBW6VPQ, 20 April 2019.
- 11 https://www.msn.com/de-de/unterhaltung/tv/got-star-isaac-fans-sind%c3%bcberrascht-dass-er-laufen-kann/vi-BBW9ekR, 20 April 2019.
- 12 Headline on MSN linked to a video showing how to make shrimp curry, https://www.msn.com/de-de/sport/soccer\_videos/so-gelingt-ihr-garnelencurry-mit-mango-garantiert/vi-BBTVQoe, 22 February 2019.
- 13 Headline on heute.at, https://www.heute.at/life/love/story/Diese-drei-Dingehassen-Maenner-beim-Kuessen-40232790, 6 October 2017.

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