The functions of grammaticalized complement-taking-predicate clauses in interrogatives: a typology
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Jiqiang Lu
Jiqiang Lu is a PhD student within the Research Group Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology at KU Leuven. His research interests include functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, modality, grammaticalization, and semantic change.
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Kristin Davidse
Kristin Davidse received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Leuven. She is Professor Emerita in English Linguistics at KU Leuven. Her research interests include: discourse patterns and grammaticalization in the English noun phrase, existential clauses and cleft constructions in English. Her most recent book-length publication is: Davidse, Kristin, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende & Gerard O’Grady,
Specificational and Presentational there-clefts: Redefining the Field of Clefts (2023, Palgrave Macmillan).
Abstract
Grammaticalized complement-taking-predicate (CTP) clauses like I think have been much studied in declaratives but not in interrogatives. We propose a typology of the grammatical functions that these CTP-clauses can convey, i.e., polarity bias, polarity reversal, modal orientation and opinion marker, and we relate these to the different dialogic functions that interrogatives can serve, i.e., Question, Query and Challenge. We apply the proposed analysis to samples of are you sure, do you think and is there a chance from the British Spoken sub-corpus of WordbanksOnline and discuss how their source semantics influences the grammatical and dialogic functions they specialize for: are you sure reverses polarity, typically in Queries; do you think is used mainly as opinion marker in Questions; and is there a chance marks modal orientation in Questions.
Funding source: China Scholarship Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: 202207650045
About the authors
Jiqiang Lu is a PhD student within the Research Group Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology at KU Leuven. His research interests include functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, modality, grammaticalization, and semantic change.
Kristin Davidse received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Leuven. She is Professor Emerita in English Linguistics at KU Leuven. Her research interests include: discourse patterns and grammaticalization in the English noun phrase, existential clauses and cleft constructions in English. Her most recent book-length publication is: Davidse, Kristin, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende & Gerard O’Grady, Specificational and Presentational there-clefts: Redefining the Field of Clefts (2023, Palgrave Macmillan).
Acknowledgments
We are greatly indebted to the four anonymous referees for their generous and incisive comments that helped us remove major flaws from the first version. For any remaining flaws, we are solely responsible. We also offer sincere thanks to Srikant Sarangi for his careful editing of this article. We gratefully acknowledge the doctoral scholarship granted by the China Scholarship Council to Jiqiang Lu (grant no. CSC202207650045).
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Research funding: This work was supported by China Scholarship Council under grant 202207650045.
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