Uninquisitive questions (2023)

Abstract: The sort of denotation a sentence is assigned is typically motivated by assumptions about the discourse function of sentences of that kind. For example, the notion that utterances which are functionally inquisitive (asking a question) suggest denotations which are semantically inquisitive (expressing the multiple licit responses to that question) is the cornerstone of interrogative meaning in frameworks like Alternative Semantics (Hamblin, 1973) and Inquisitive Semantics (Ciardelli et al., 2018). This paper argues that at least some kinds of questions systematically do not involve utterances with inquisitive content, based on novel observations of the Estonian discourse particle ega. Though ega is often labeled a ‘question particle’, it is used in both assertions and questions with sharply divergent discourse effects. I suggest that the relevant difference between assertive and questioning uses of ega is not semantic or sentence type-related, but rather reflects an interaction between a unified semantics for declaratives ega-sentences and different contexts of use. I then show that if we assume that ega presupposes that some aspect of the discourse context implicates the negation of ega’s prejacent, and that it occurs only in declarative sentences, we can derive its interpretation across a range of contexts: with the right combination of ingredients, we can ask questions with semantically uninquisitive sentences.

## introduction a fundamental question in inquisitive semantics @xcite is what sorts of linguistic items generate semantic inquisitivity, in the sense of raising multiple mutually non-entailing alternatives. polar interrogative clauses, for example, are a paradigmatic example of an inquisitive object, characterized by an inquisitive operator int which is responsible for contributing inquisitivity, reminiscent of influential analyses of questions as denoting sets of answers to those questions (e.g. @xcite @xcite . how can we tell what linguistic objects are inquisitive? in the case of interrogatives, their characteristic inquisitivity correlates with the fact that they canonically raise issues with multiple possible resolutions. this can be formally cashed out in various ways. for example, @xcite propose a general-purpose utterance function that applies equally to both declaratives and interrogatives; the 'questioning' effect of interrogatives comes from an interaction between their inquisitive denotation and this utterance function. the difference between declaratives and interrogatives in this view comes from the assumption that declarative sentences denote a singleton set of propositions, and therefore raise issues with only a single maximal resolution. but we cannot always straightforwardly link inquisitive denotations to inquisitive speech act functions. for instance, english rising declaratives (you're in london?) seem to ask questions, despite their declarative form. this pragmatic observation has motivated analyses of rising declaratives as having a (possibly compositionally determined) inquisitive denotation à la interrogatives (roelofsen @xcite @xcite , but many others aim to derive their question-asking pragmatic function from the interaction between non-inquisitive declarative semantics per se and rising intonation @xcite @xcite @xcite @xcite , to name but a few). whatever the right analysis of rising declaratives is, they raise the much larger issue of what path(s) languages make use of to get from denotations to pragmatic functions. to put a finer point on it: do question-y pragmatics point to inquisitive denotations, or can pragmatic 'inquisitivity' arise via other means? and if the latter is true, what are those means? this paper aims to shed light on the sentential denotation-speech act mapping through the lens of the estonian left-periphery discourse particle ega. ega is an interesting case from this perspective because it occurs in both questions (1) and assertions (2), but makes sharply different interpretive contributions in each case. 1 also strikingly, ega only occurs in sentences with sentential negation (with some rare exceptions, see §4 in questions, ega conveys a 'checking' function similar to tag questions, though it also is used in polite requests. by contrast, in assertions, ega offers a sense of 'epistemic reinforcement' that its prejacent is true, in contrast to some prior assumption. despite this apparent duality of function, much more attention has been paid to the former use of ega, and it is often explicitly described in both formal and descriptive work as a 'negative question particle' (e.g. @xcite @xcite . the two guises of ega seem to be at odds with one another: ega-assertions convey epistemic certainty, but ega-questions solicit addressee responses in a similar manner to interrogatives. we could reconcile these facts by assuming that there are two distinct versions of ega in the lexicon, one for declaratives, and one for interrogatives. this approach might well be sufficient for a description of ega's discourse effects in various contexts, but it also leaves any similarities between the two com-pletely accidental, such as their tendency to occur alongside sentential negation. in this paper, i propose a different approach: we have the same ega in both questions and assertions, but its divergent behavior arises from interactions between this unified meaning and general pragmatic principles. i argue that ega-sentences are never inquisitive in the formal sense-they do not denote non-singleton sets of propositions-but they do come with a presupposition that generates a pragmatic clash with their prejacent in most discourse contexts, giving the sense that the addressee in fact has an issue to resolve. in this way, the apparent 'inquisitivity' of ega-questions is epiphenomenal, adding to a body of literature which teases apart semantic and pragmatic inquisitivity, and suggesting that questions can be derived pragmatically from the interaction between uninquisitive building blocks. ## whence the polarity generalization one outstanding issue given the analysis of ega thus far is its allergy to positive sentences: after all, the intuitive characterization of egasentences is that they presuppose there was good reason to believe p, but this presupposition does not in and of itself derive the polarity restriction on ega-sentences. to probe the polarity constraint, we must first make explicit what ega itself contributes to interpretation, rather than just its discourse effects in full utterances. there are two plausible logical forms for ega-sentences with negation if we treat ega as a propositional operator. one is that ega takes the prejacent ␣p as an argument (ega (␣p)) foot_9 and presuppose there is evidence for the negation of the argument, p. the other is that ega takes the positive prejacent as an argument, but occur itself within the scope of negation (␣(ega p)), and presuppose that there is evidence for that argument p. these lfs make different predictions for what ega should mean in non-negated contexts. if ega takes widest scope, we expect ega p to have an analogous reading to ega not-p: that is, ega p should assert p and presuppose evidence for ␣p. on the other hand, if ega scopes below negation, ega in a positive sentence should reinforce the alignment of the speaker's assertion that p with evidence for p. in fact, ega does show up in positive sentences, albeit rarely (25). such cases only exhibit the former reading, suggesting that ega takes wide scope: a comment on a newspaper article about cat rabies with a picture of a cat claimed to be unrelated to the story: ega ega see this pildil picture.ade olev be.pcp kass cat on is ka also kahtlase suspicious näoga... face.com 'in fact the cat in this picture looks suspicious too...' (keevallik and habicht 2017, ex. 27) the author of (25) asserts a positive p (the cat has a suspicious face), but indicates this is contrary to a contextually-supported assumption that the cat does not have rabies. @xcite take examples like (25) to indicate that ega in assertive contexts is not limited to negative sentences, and note that similar examples occur more commonly in spoken language. but if ega p is in fact possible, we have a conundrum: why is it nevertheless so rare in non-negated contexts? because the polarity restrictions on ega are not categorical, we don't want to derive its negative tendencies by all-or-nothing constraints, such as by stipulating that ega is a negative polarity item. a full account of the polarity sensitivity of ega is outside the scope of this paper, but i suggest that the paucity of positive ega-sentences could be a distributional artifact arising from an asymmetry in the pragmatics of uttering positive and negative declaratives. it is a longstanding observation that negative assertions are pragmatically marked: uttering ␣p often presupposes (in a weak, defeasible sense) that there was reason to believe that p or that p was under discussion, where uttering p has no analogous implications @xcite . given independently-motivated pressures to presuppose as much as possible (perhaps analogous to a principle like maximize presupposition, e.g. heim 1991), we might expect that negative sentences are preferred utterances over logically equivalent positive sentences (e.g. john is not married vs. john is a bachelor) in contexts where there is evidence to believe that these sentences are false (i.e. that john is married). of course, ega itself also presupposes the existence of evidence which conflicts with a prejacent proposition, so the explanation could be that ega requires the exact kind of input contexts which would lead one to prefer a negative sentence over a positive alternative, so we expect the negative version to be used unless there is some special independent pressure to pick the positive alternative specifically, whatever this pressure might be. this story generates the testable hypothesis that positive ega-sentences are generally less acceptable than interpretively equivalent negative ega-sentences. for example, we might expect that (25) would be less acceptable in the same context than a similar version where the prejacent of ega is a negative proposition, e.g., this cat isn't healthy. i leave exploration of this hypothesis for future research. ## conclusion a major project at the semantics-pragmatics interface is understanding the relation between the denotation of a sentence and the function of uttering that sentence in context. this paper brings new data from estonian to bear on this task. i have argued that the discourse particle ega, despite having a seemingly expansive range of potential discourse effects, can receive a single unified denotation if we make sensible assumptions about the way its semantics interacts with contexts of use. the apparent 'inquisitivity' of ega in some contexts, rather than being a result of inherently inquisitive semantics, comes from the tension inherent in making assertions that presuppose there is evidence to the contrary in contexts where the addressee is better equipped to adjudicate between these conflicting sources. the role that discourse particles have in determining discourse function remains a fertile ground for cross-linguistic exploration. just as interrogative sentences can serve many different kinds of communicative functions besides just asking questions @xcite , there are likewise multiple pathways to generating questioning speech acts, and this paper represents an attempt to chart a new part of this underexplored terrain. a broader view of the typology of inquisitive pragmatics may help us get closer to understanding the ur-question: what is a question, anyway?