Alternative Questions in the Syntax-Semantics Interface

ALTERNATIVE QUESTIONS IN THE SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE Eun-Jung Y oo Department of English Language and Literature Seoul National University Seoul 151-742, Korea Email: ejyoo@snu.ac.kr ABSTRACT This paper deals with alternative questions in English, and proposes an analysis employing an alternative operator. I claim that the alternative question interpretation is not obtained by such syntactic processes as movement or gapping, but by scoping of an alternative operator that originates from the conjunction or. Accordingly, while the syntactic forms of alternative questions contain nothing more than a coordinate structure, their semantic component will be analyzed as including an alternative operator. Furthermore, using a 'multiple inheritance' type hierarchy of clauses, I will show that how the relationship between alternative questions and other types of questions can be represented. 1. INTRODUCTION Questions can be classified into three types according to the kind of reply they elicit, polar questions (or yes-no questions), wh-questions, and alternative questions. Compared to other types of questions, alternative questions have not received as much attention. It is perhaps because the relationship between alternative questions and the other two types of questions is often not very clear; furthermore, an analysis of alternative questions usually requires dealing with various syntactic and semantic issues, such as disjunction, coordination, syntax and semantics of interrogatives, and treatment of whether and if. In this paper, we deal with English alternative questions such as (1) within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. (1) Did Mary buy books or video tapes? There are two issues to focus on regarding the analysis of (1). First, it should be explained how the alternative question interpretation of (1) is obtained. Some previous semantic analyses assume that the interpretation of (1) involves a semantic version of conjunction reduction, with its denotation corresponding to a set of propositions (Karttunen [5], Groenendijk & Stokhof [4], Roberts [10]). On the other hand, there can be other semantic mechanisms that yield wide scope of disjunction in ( I ). In this paper, I will pursue an approach that posits a disjunction operator associated with or. Second, the syntactic representation of (1) should be determined in conjunction with its semantic interpretation. After examining two possible syntactic analyses, one involving movement of disjunction scope indicator, and the other employing syntactic reduction process, I will claim that (1) can be analyzed without assuming either movement or a reduction process. In the analysis to be proposed, (1) simply involves coordination of noun phrases. With the base-generated disjunction in syntax, I will present an analysis where alternative question interpretation is obtained by scoping of a disjunction operator originating from or. In section 2, I will discuss some basic properties of alternative questions. In particular, it is pointed out that an analysis of alternative questions should explain the fact that questions like (1) may receive a polar question interpretation as well as an alternative question interpretation. Section 3 deals with the semantic and syntactic behaviors of disjoined phrases in alternative questions. Based on Rooth & Partee [11], I will show that the …

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