Polar questions and interrogative particles: a crosslinguistic investigation

Abstract

The strategy used for forming polar questions varies across languages. In languages like Finnish and Turkish, polar questions are formed using interrogative particles, which I call polar interrogative particles. The main goal of this dissertation is to identify the signature properties of these interrogative particles, and to develop a full-fledged semantic analysis of them and a compositional account of the questions where they occur. Drawing from novel data in Finnish and Turkish, I start in Chapter 2 by introducing the signature properties of polar interrogative particles. I show how these particles differ from other types of interrogative particles discussed in the semantic literature (i.e., particles like Japanese ka and particles like Hindi-Urdu kyaa). Chapter 3 focuses on presuppositions that can be found in questions. I argue that we must distinguish two types of presuppositions in questions: (i) propositional presuppositions, which can also be found in declaratives, and (ii) question-specific presuppositions, which are restricted to questions. I identify two distinct presuppositions which come with questions involving polar interrogative particles and show that both of them are instances of question-specific presuppositions. Chapter 4 provides a multi-dimensional analysis of these questions, which offers a compositional way to (i) combine the focus alternatives with the interrogative C-head and (ii) derive the presuppositions of the resulting questions. Specifically, I propose that these particles are focus markers which are interpreted within the proposition out of which a question is formed. They carry an interrogative feature which must agree with an interrogative C-head. The focus alternatives triggered by the constituent they combine with project all the way up to the interrogative C-head. In Finnish and Turkish, C[+Q] is a focus operator which triggers two presuppositions: an existential and an ignorance presupposition. The proposed account addresses important theoretical questions concerning the interaction between different sets of alternatives (in this case, question and focus alternatives) and presuppositions projection in questions.