Polar question semantics and bias: Lessons from Slavic/Czech
Radek Simik
August 2024 

This paper is concerned with the semantics and pragmatics of polar questions, i.e. questions which solicit a 'yes' or 'no' answer. It provides a survey of the main empirical and theoretical issues surrounding polar questions while concentrating on Slavic languages, and especially Czech. My main goals are (i) to provide an accessible introduction into the area of polar question meaning and bias, building primarily on evidence from Czech, (ii) to provide an overview of how polar questions are formally encoded in different Slavic languages, and (iii) to provide an analysis of Czech negative polar questions, with special attention paid to so-called outer (aka "pleonastic") negation and to the particle náhodou lit. 'by chance'.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007552 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in Topics in the semantics of Slavic languages, eds. Berit Gehrke and Radek Šimík. Berlin: Language Science Press
keywords:	polar questions, bias, particles, negation, word order, czech, slavic, syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology
previous versions:	v3 [September 2023] v2 [September 2023] v1 [August 2023]
Downloaded:	816 times

 

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