On a dichotomy of question types: the case of Mandarin Chinese and Changsha Xiang

One-Soon Her; Dewei Che; Adams Bodomo

doi:10.1515/tlr-2022-2087

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On a dichotomy of question types: the case of Mandarin Chinese and Changsha Xiang

One-Soon Her , Dewei Che and Adams Bodomo

Published/Copyright: March 4, 2022

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From the journal The Linguistic Review Volume 39 Issue 2

Abstract

Contrary to the conventional three-way distinction of questions: polar questions, disjunctive questions, and wh-questions, we argue for a more revealing two-way distinction of polar versus constituent questions, the latter with two subtypes: disjunctive and wh-questions. Following Bhatt, Rajesh & Veneeta Dayal. 2020. Polar question particles: Hindi-Urdu kya. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 38. 1115–1144 proposal that polar questions denote singleton sets of propositions and the standard view that disjunctive and wh-questions denote sets with multiple propositions, we further characterize this dichotomy pragmatically as confirmation-seeking (CS) and information-seeking (IS), i.e., polar questions seek confirmation of the proposition put forth, while constituent questions seek information specifically targeted by the interrogative constituent. This dichotomy is formally detected in Mandarin Chinese via the question particle ma versus ne, dichotomy of fragment questions, adverb nandao ‘don’t tell me’ versus daodi ‘after all’, respective (in)ability to serve as indirect questions, and an intervention effect on constituent questions. We then discuss the typological implications of this two-way distinction and demonstrate that the Changsha dialect of Xiang, another Sinitic language, has no CS polar questions as the alleged polar questions are all disjunctive questions. This fact suggests that, while there are two major types of questions cross-linguistically, CS polar questions are not universal.

Keywords: confirmation-seeking; constituent question; disjunctive question; information-seeking; polar question

Corresponding author: One-Soon Her, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan; and Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, E-mail: hero@thu.edu.tw

Funding source: Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology

Award Identifier / Grant number: 108-2410-H-029-062-MY3

Award Identifier / Grant number: 109-2811-H-004-522

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the paper. However, we are solely responsible for any remaining errors. He is also thankful to the following scholars for their discussions and suggestions: Giorgio Arcodia, Bianca Basciao, Yupin Chen, Liching Chiu, Guglielmo Cinque, Pei-Yi Hsiao, Hung-Hisn Hsu, Haiping Long, Kun-Han Lin, Anna Morbiato, Hongquan Rao, Marc Allassonnière-Tang, Aurelijus Vijūnas, Jiun-Shiung Wu, and Niina Zhang.

Research funding: O.-S. Her received the grants awarded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST): 108-2410-H-029-062-MY3 and 109-2811-H-004-522.

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Published Online: 2022-03-04

Published in Print: 2022-06-27

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2022-2087

Keywords for this article

confirmation-seeking; constituent question; disjunctive question; information-seeking; polar question