mage as a bias particle in interrogatives (2023)

Abstract: This paper investigates Farsi particle ‘mage’ in interrogatives, including both polar and constituent/Wh questions. I will show that ‘mage’ requires both contextual evidence and speaker’s prior belief in the sense that they contradict each other. While in polar questions (PQs) both types of bias can be straightforwardly expressed through the uttered proposition (cf. Mameni 2010), Wh-questions (WhQs) do not provide such a propositional object. To capture this difference, I propose Answerhood as the relevant notation that provides the necessary object source for ‘mage’ (inspired by Theiler 2021). The proposal establishes the felicity conditions and the meaning of ‘mage’ in relation to the (contextually) restricted answerhood in both polar and constituent questions.

## introduction discourse particles are useful tools for organizing conversations by fitting an utterance into the context. the small words (usually) do not contribute to the core propositional content but convey expressive meaning. they indicate information that would otherwise need to be described by the speaker or inferred by the addressee. therefore, many studies investigate the intended meaning expressed by these particles, as well as the felicity conditions that capture the necessary properties of the discourse or the interlocutors. zimmermann (2011) introduces three semantic core functions for discourse particles (in german): (i) marking the expression as part of the common ground (e.g., ja), (ii) indicating that the expression is not activated with one of the discourse participants (e.g., doch), and (iii) weakening the commitment to the expression (e.g., wohl). more recently, @xcite provides examples of the particle denn being felicitous in whqs but not in pqs, which could not be explained neither by the expressive meaning nor by the felicity conditions of denn. theiler claims that for certain particles, such as denn, we also need to consider which notion of semantic content are linked to them. she argues that while discourse particles are usually relevant to the informativity notion in declaratives (modeled as a proposition), this notion becomes more tricky in questions that seek information. following @xcite , she suggests highlighting as the relevant notion in questions. in her proposal, particle denn indicates that learning the highlighted proposition is a necessary precondition for the speaker to proceed the discourse. particle mage in farsi seems to require a similar consideration. it is worth noting that mage literally means 'unless' in non-interrogatives (see section 5 for some examples), however, this paper focuses only on its discursive function in interrogatives. like many other discourse particles that have double lives (e.g., ja and denn in german @xcite , i consider particle mage in interrogatives as a homonymous with the conditional mage in non-interrogatives. i leave the discussion about its conditional mage for future studies. a comparison between minimal pairs of polar and constituent questions with and without mage reveals that the particle carries additional information about both speaker's prior belief and contextual evidence in the given context. example (1) presents a canonical polar question in farsi (in the form of a rising declarative), simply asking whether or not ali came to the party (p?). example (2), which asks the same question, not only signals the speaker's prior belief/expectation against the uttered proposition p, that ali didn't come @xcite , but also requires contextual evidence for p. ali mehmuni party umad? came 'did ali come to the party?' (2) mage mage ali ali mehmuni party umad? came 'did ali come to the party?' (3) ki who mehmuni party umad? came 'who did come to the party?' (4) mage mage ki who mehmuni party umad? came 'who did come to the party?' on the other hand, examples (3) and ( 4 ) are minimal pairs of whqs in farsi, both seeking the list of people at the party. while in pqs, the meaning of mage, as the speaker's contrary expectation, has been interpreted in relation to the uttered proposition, it cannot be reconstructed in whqs as in (4). to understand the exact function of mage in whqs, further discourse analysis is required. in the next section, i will present examples of mage in pqs, arguing that it necessarily requires contextual evidence. then, we will see examples of mage in whqs, and i will demonstrate that mage perform the same function in both types of questions (with respect to their alternative set of answers). in section 3, i propose a unified analysis based on the answerhood notation for the meaning of the discourse particle mage in both polar and constituent questions. section 4 introduces further issues about mage. we will have a look at the previous studies about mage in section 5. finally, the conclusion will be presented in section 6. ## the data a large and growing body of literature has investigated the questions that require original bias (ob) as speaker's prior (epistemic) belief @xcite , or contextual bias (cb) as evidence mutually available to all participants in a conversation @xcite or their combinations @xcite . particle mage, which can appear in both positive and negative polar questions, expresses speaker's prior belief (ob) contrary to the uttered proposition in the question (cf. really-questions in @xcite . in positive polar questions, such as in (5), the speaker has the prior belief that ali didn't come to the party, while in negative polar questions like (6), it signals the reverse belief that ali came. regarding the implication of the speaker's belief, @xcite shows that mage is felicitous in contexts that carry the speaker's prior expectation. thus, since example (7) implicates that the speaker didn't expect ali went to the party, it is truly predicted to be infelicitous (#) in context 1 (as well as in out-of-the-blue contexts). although the ob is implemented in the continuation as in context 1.1, it is still infelicitous (#). in other words, the suggested implicature (of the speaker's belief) is not enough to predict the infelicity of context 1.1. when context 1 is continued as in context 1.2, it provides the proper setting ( ) for example (7). therefore, the felicitous context for mage requires both cb and ob. furthermore, particle mage can be used in different whqs as in examples (8)-(11) (the negative forms are omitted for brevity). let's focus on the first example with ki 'who' and find a felicitous context. in the given context in (12), mage indicates that the speaker did not expect any celebrities to be at the party and is now inquiring about which celebrities were there. that implies that although question (12) does not explicitly state a specific proposition as the speaker's belief, the context suggests that the speaker held a contrary belief regarding the restriction of the guests who were celebrities over all of the guests who went to the party. to figure out the meaning of mage in whqs, we need to investigate the domain of the wh-phrase, which is somehow restricted by mage. assume that we have the following list of professors in context (13): {valeria, wolfgang, xavier, yara, and zachary}, where only {yara and zachary} are the famous ones. semantically, the same question who did you invite? is asked in (a1) and (a2). considering the context, both answers in (b1) and (b2) are acceptable in response to (a1), albeit with different preference order. however, only (b2) is the felicitous answer to (a2). in other words, the speaker in (a1) would be looking for either all the invited professors or just the famous ones. therefore, both (b1) and (b2) are felicitous responses, respectively. it is worth noting that prosody, such as an enthusiastic intonation, and/or expressives like awesome, could help guide the interpretation towards the contextually restricted set of famous professors rather than all guests. for instance, if speaker a expresses âlie! 'awesome!' at the beginning of the question in (a1) and/or asks the question with an enthusiastic intonation, then (b2) is more likely to be the answer rather than (b1). a: let's make a list. who did you invite? b: i invited some professors, two of them are so famous. a1: ki-â awesome ro who-pl davat acc kardi? invite did? 'who did you invite?' a2: mage mage ki-â who-pl ro acc davat invite kardi? did? 'who did you invite?' the speaker didn't expect any famous professors. b1: i invited valeria, wolfgang, xavier, yara and zachary b2: i invited yara and zachary the question in (a2) implies that the speaker didn't expect any famous professors and further restricts the question to only the famous ones. hence, if b starts listing all the invited professors as in (b1), speaker a would complain and explicitly mention that she meant which famous professors. consequently, only (b2) is the appropriate answer to question (a2). it is important to note that any expressive term like awesome or prosody, whether usual or enthusiastic intonation, does not affect the acceptability of the answers to (a2). it is worth emphasizing that while both answers are somewhat acceptable in response to (a1), in the case of (a2), it is not a matter of answer preference but rather a matter of felicity. overall, the mandatory presence of contextual evidence in mage questions introduces a certain semantic object, which then becomes available as an anaphoric reference. the context restricts the question under discussion by narrowing down the alternative set of answers. more specifically, in mage-pqs, the uttered proposition in the question indicates the restriction over the contextual evidence. similarly, the evidence in mage-whqs obligatorily restricts the alternative set of answers to a subset list. in both types of questions, mage refers to the restricted set object, indicating that the speaker did not expect such a restriction. in the next section, i will propose an account based on the answerhood of the questions. ## proposal the discursive function of mage in both polar and constituent questions can be formulated based on the answerhood notation (instead of the uttered proposition in mage-pqs). according to the literature, the denotation of a question is a set of propositions that correspond to the possible answers @xcite ). in the case of polar questions (pqs) (φ?), the denotation returns a binary set {φ, ¬φ}, including the positive and negative answers. on the other hand, for whqs (wh x p?), the denotation may generate multiple members {p(x)|@xmath0, where each member represents a possible answer to the question. the alternative set of answers can be contextually restricted, meaning that the restricted set is a subset of all possible alternatives (cf. contextual variables in @xcite . these (evidential) restrictions, particularly in whqs, introduce specific semantic objects that can be referred to anaphorically using mage (cf. theiler 2021). in this context, the restriction generates a proper subset from the alternative set. based on this understanding, the denotation of mage can be formulated as follow: following (14), the contextual evidence captures the discourse anaphoricity of mage to the subset answerhood, while the particle expresses that the speaker didn't expect such a restriction to hold. now, let's go through the examples and see if the account can explain the data. starting with polar questions as in (7), which is repeated here in (15), the denotation of the question is the alternative set of answers, as shown in (a). the context implies that ali came, as in (b). regarding the (semantic) alternative set in (a) and the (contextually) restricted set in (b), the required proper subset condition is satisfied in (c) and (d), where mage indicates that the speaker didn't expect the restriction to hold. moving on to whqs as in example (13), repeated here in (16), the non-restricted set of alternatives results in a list of all invited professors, as shown in (a). however, the context suggests that there is a restricted list of famous invited professors, which narrows down the answerhood to a subset list, as illustrated in (b). in such cases, mage can felicitously appear since the subset condition is supported by the context in (c), and the particle signals that the speaker did not expect the restriction. in summary, mage is felicitous in both polar questions with a binary set of alternatives, as well as in whqs with a multiple member set, when the context indicates a restriction for a proper subset of the possible answers. in pqs, the evidence signals a single proposition, while in whqs, it can result in a subset of multiple members. the contextual evidence provides the subset answerhood object, and particle mage implies that the speaker did not expect such restrictions to hold. lastly, it is worth noting that the proposal predicts that mage is not felicitous in alternative questions (altqs) like those in (17) and ( 18 ). altqs, as unbiased questions, express a symmetric interest of the speaker in either of the alternatives offered disjunctively, for example, do you come or not? @xcite . therefore, they are not felicitous in settings where either the speaker or the context indicates a bias towards a proposition rather than its alternative. roughly speaking, the intended meaning of examples (17) and ( 18 ), presented in (19), is the set of answers similar to pqs, as shown in (a). while the question without mage is felicitous in neutral contexts (b), we have no subset object as in (c), and the contextual support condition fails. furthermore, in altqs, the speaker is open to either of the answers, i.e., she has no idea whether or not ali came (d). thus, the speaker's prior expectation of mage contradicts the felicitous context for al-tqs. in other words, none of the bias conditions of mage would be met in contexts that are felicitous for altqs. ## further issues it is worth mentioning two outstanding points about mage. first, while i have characterized mage as anaphoric to the contextual evidence, it can also be used deictically and pick up nonlinguistic contextual information as its antecedent. that is, the variable that shrinks the alternative set could be implemented by either being anaphoric to a piece of contextual evidence or deictic to extralinguistic information. the speaker can felicitously use mage if she can reasonably assume that the addressee can identify the intended referent. otherwise, the use of mage is infelicitous. for instance, in example (20), the information that they might have an important guest is perceived through extralinguistic evidence, i.e. a and b know that they only clean the house when they have important guests. a: mage mage ki who miyâd? comes 'who does come?' the speaker didn't expect any important guests. thus, i follow the intentional view, on which reference resolution of the restriction is a prag-matic process that succeeds if the addressee can correctly recognize speaker's referential intention. second, the negative expectation in mage implicature doesn't need a strong belief/expectation. regarding the negative raising constructions, the interpretation of negation in the embedded clause, e.g. sara expected that ali doesn't come, can have a stronger reading in which the speaker is opinionated about the complement proposition. while it feels weaker in the matrix clause, e.g. sara didn't expect that ali comes, in the sense that the speaker could be unopinionated and the complement clause was not simply in her (active) mental state. in mage-qs, it is possible that either the speaker has some opinion about the restriction or she did not expect the restriction simply because it was not in her mental state. ## previous accounts surprisingly, there is little published research on mage. here, i will review @xcite , who introduces mage as a genuine interrogative morpheme, similar to âyâ 'whether', which only differs in the not-at-issue content. the claim for a genuine interrogative function brings up discussions about mage in non-interrogatives and the types of sentences in farsi. let's start with mage in non-interrogatives as a conditional operator. mage morphologically means 'not if', consisting of ma-as an allophone of the negative prefix na-and the conditional operator age 'if' in farsi. hence, it is close enough to translate it as 'unless' in english. examples ( 21 ) and ( 22 ) are minimal pairs with the same truthvalue meaning: ¬study(ali) → fail(ali). the difference between the examples above is that (22) has an exceptive reading @xcite . roughly interpreting, it indicates 'except if ali studies, he doesn't fail'. in this paper, i focused only on the role of mage in interrogatives. regarding the distinct function and (surface) forms of mage in non-interrogatives versus interrogatives, i proposed its second role as a discourse particle. however, i would not be surprised if we can extend the account to cover both interrogative and non-interrogative conditionals. 1 mameni (2010) was aware that the noninterrogative use of mage could be an objection against his claim for mage as a genuine question morpheme. although i consider it to be a significant objection, the author briefly addresses it in a footnote by suggesting that if we assume question particles to be morphemes that operate over a proposition and result in multiple possibilities, the objection may not hold (cf. inquisitive proposition in @xcite . mameni argues that conditionals like (23) (adopted from mameni 2010:p. 13) proposes two possibilities: the one in which it rains and the one in which it doesn't rain. thus, truth-conditionally, the sentence denotes both possibilities, including 'milad comes if it doesn't rain' and 'milad doesn't come if it rains'. he then argues that since mage can only scope over irrealis predicates, the speaker does not commit to either of the possibilities. hence, the conditional meaning is similar to questions, both of which introduce the set of alternatives/partitions. the discussion about conditionals and and their discourse commitments is beyond the scope of this study. however, in (23), the speaker committs to the consequent that milad will come under the specific circumstance that it doesn't rain. that is, if it doesn't rain and milad doesn't come, he has to retract his commitment. neither mameni nor i fully consider the non-interrogative use of mage in our studies. however, he underestimates such a role without delving into its properties, and i consider it to be polysemous. while i leave the study of conditionals for future research, i argue that it is a crucial objection for claiming mage is genuinely a question morpheme. let's move on to mage in interrogatives. farsi is an sov language in which falling (↓) and rising (↑) intonations are required for declarative and interrogative sentences, respectively. examples ( 24 ) and ( 25 ) are minimal pairs, where the former is a declarative (assertion) sentence, and the latter is an interrogative (question). mameni claims that in farsi, the presence of a (polar) question morpheme is optional. he introduces âyâ and mage as genuine question operators with different implicatures, and he argues that the default reading of non-morpheme questions is the one with âyâ. thus, (25) has the same meaning as (26). foot_0 i follow his coding for q and !q as the question operators for âyâ and mage, respectively. mameni proposes that both examples (26) and ( 27 ), similar to ( 25 ), ask whether or not ali comes to the party, while they express different not-atissue contents. âyâ in (26) expresses the speaker's ignorance about the answer, while mage in (27) signals that the speaker has a (tentative) commitment against the uttered proposition. now, let's delve into his argument for proposing mage as a genuine question operator. mameni examines the environments that only select questions and preclude other types of sentences like assertions and commands. he uses the "let me ask you a question" test @xcite to identify the questions from other types. example (28) is adopted from mameni (2010): p. 14. (28) azat from ye one soâl question beporsam, ask ... let me ask you a question,... a. âyâ q milâd milad raft? left ≈'did milad leave?' b. mage !q milâd milad raft? left ≈'did milad leave?' c. # milâd milad raft. left 'milad left.' d. # boro! leave 'leave!' regarding the unacceptability of the declarative in (c) and the imperative in (d) compared to ( a ) and (b), mameni concludes that âyâ and mage are genuine interrogative morphemes. he did not provide further explanation or argument for this (crucial) claim. he only challenges the critics, stating that if mage is not a question morpheme, it is almost impossible to explain why declarative sentences with mage are necessarily interpreted as questions. notice that mameni provides sentences with mage in falling intonation and claims that such sentences have a question reading. overall, the argument presented by the author for mage as a question morpheme is based on its presence in interrogatives, and in order to support this argument, he stipulates conditional sentences as inquisitive. i start with his examples of questions with falling intonation. in farsi, rising intonation is necessary for polar questions, regardless of the presence of a question marker such as âyâ or mage. none of his examples with falling intonation on mage-questions were considered felicitous by my native speaker informants, including the author (some informants interpreted them as conditionals, with an elided antecedent). furthermore, while multiple wh-words can form a single whq as in (29), using a double polar question marker shouldn't be felicitous, as claimed by mameni in examples (30)-(31) (adopted from mameni 2010: p. 12). mameni footnoted that the judgments were inaccurate since many speakers reject (31), but find (30) possible. the author suggests two hatches for the judgment variation. 3 he, however, rejects these hatches as they could not explain why the acceptability of ( 30 ) is degraded, in addition to why the movement of mage is restricted when it is preceded by âyâ. therefore, he considers the sentences unacceptable and claims that the two morphemes cannot co-occur. i share the intuition with the informants in which (30) sounds better than (31). what is irritating and degrades the acceptability of the combination of âyâ and mage is more about their style difference. that is, while âyâ is used in very formal and literary settings, mage is a colloquial particle. a native speaker might find the examples better in a context where the speaker should be polite and formal, but also wants to be friendly and informal. in such cases, it is widely common for the speaker to use elements from different styles to express both formal politeness (e.g., âyâ) and informal friendliness (e.g., mage). it seems weird but is practically common. for instance, speaking with grandparents, on one hand, the grandchild wants to be polite regarding the age difference. on the other hand, she has a friendly relationship with her grandparents that allows her to speak in a friendly/informal style. in such cases, as in (32), the grandchild sometimes uses the pronoun šomâ plural pl-you (instead of to singular sg-you), but she conjugates the verb in singular. syntactically, the structure is ungrammatical, but pragmatically it is commonly used. in the context of (33), we can also see that the mother uses šomâ pl-you to treat her kid po-3 (i) he said that regarding the fact that mage is free to occur sentence-medially and sentence-finally, he assumes that if mage precedes âyâ, it cannot move. thus, (31) is ungrammatical according to the informants compared to the better form in (30). (ii) it could be the case that since the meaning of âyâ questions is distinct from the meaning of mage, in marginal cases like (30), the question is interpreted as mage-meaning. this is possible by hypothesising that there is a covert âyâ morpheme in every mage question. ## conclusion in this paper, i investigated the discursive function of particle mage in interrogatives. while the literature reported that mage in polar questions, [mage φ?], implicates speaker's prior belief against the uttered proposition φ, i presented that the felicitous context for the particle requires contextual evidence towards φ. i then extended the analysis to mage in whqs, where the required contextual evidence restricts the alternative set of answers. therefore, i proposed the meaning and felicity condition of particle mage based on the answerhood notation in interrogatives. the proposal for the role of two types of biases, including speaker's bias and contextual bias, in mage-questions could explain the data in both polar and constituent questions. furthermore, it provides a natural explanation for the unacceptability of mage in alternative questions, as altqs cannot be used in biased contexts. while the literal meaning of mage in conditionals is far-fetched from its bias-sensitive function in interrogatives, i leave the discussion about mage in non-interrogatives for future studies.