On the interpretation of two Hungarian question types

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Published: Dec 4, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14232/JENY.2019.2.6
Keywords:
interrogative, (negative) alternative question, -e interrogative particle, (contextual) presupposition

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Beáta Gyuris
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Institute of Linguistics

Abstract

The paper investigates the use conditions of the construction referred to as negative alternative question (NAQ) in Hungarian. We review the proposals made in the literature for determining the semantic values of NAQs in general, as well as existing accounts for how the choice is made between positive and negative polar interrogatives and NAQs in particular situations in English (e.g. van Rooy–Šafářová (2003), Biezma (2009)). After comparing the contexts in which interrogatives containing the particle -e and NAQs are licensed in Hungarian, we propose that the felicitous appearance of the latter depends on two conditions. The first of these has to do with the preceding discourse, and the second with evidence available in the context.

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How to Cite
[1]
Gyuris, B. 2019. On the interpretation of two Hungarian question types. Jelentés és Nyelvhasználat. 6, 2 (Dec. 2019), 73–84. DOI:https://doi.org/10.14232/JENY.2019.2.6.
Issue
Vol. 6 No. 2 (2019)
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Article
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Beáta Gyuris, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Institute of Linguistics

Beáta Gyuris is a senior researcher at the Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She works on topics in formal semantics and pragmatics, such as information structure, quantifier scope, prosody, pragmatic markers and the relations between sentence types and the speech acts expressed by them. She published a monograph entitled The Semantics of the Contrastive Topic in Hungarian, and co-authored a textbook on formal semantics.

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