Remarks on epistemically biased questions

31st Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 31), pages 169–177 Cebu City, Philippines, November 16-18, 2017 Copyright c⃝2017 David Yoshikazu Oshima Remarks on Epistemically Biased Questions David Y. Oshima Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Japan 466-8601 davidyo@nagoya-u.jp Abstract Some varieties of polar interrogatives (polar questions) convey an epistemic bias toward a positive or negative answer. This work takes up three paradigmatic kinds of biased polar in- terrogatives: (i) positively-biased negative po- lar interrogatives, (ii) negatively-biased nega- tive polar interrogatives, and (iii) rising tag- interrogatives, and aims to supplement exist- ing descriptions of what they convey besides asking a question. The novel claims are: (i) a positively-biased negative polar interrogative conveys that the speaker assumes that the core proposition is likely to be something that is or should be activated in the hearer’s mind, (ii) the bias induced by a negatively-biased neg- ative polar interrogative makes reference to the speaker’s assumptions about the hearer’s beliefs, and (iii) the biases associated with the three constructions differ in strength, the one of the rising tag-interrogative being the strongest. 1 Introduction Some varieties of polar interrogatives (polar ques- tions) convey an epistemic bias toward a positive or negative answer. While previous research has revealed much on how different varieties of biased interrogatives contrast with each other in their syn- tactic and semantic properties, there is a great deal of complexity and subtlety concerning the usage of each type that calls for further investigations. This work takes up three paradigmatic kinds of biased interrogatives, (i) positively-biased negative polar interrogatives (Isn’t she home already?), (ii) negatively-biased negative polar interrogatives (Isn’t she home yet?), and (iii) rising tag-interrogatives (She is home, isn’t she?), and aims to supplement ex- isting descriptions of what they convey besides ask- ing a question. 2 Negative Polar Interrogatives and Tag-Interrogatives This section provides a brief overview of the basic facts about the three kinds of marked polar interrog- atives. 2.1 Positively-Biased Negative Polar Interrogatives Positively-biased negative polar interrogatives, or “outside-negation (outside-NEG)” interrogatives (the term due to Ladd, 1981), convey a positive bias toward the core proposition (pc), i.e., the proposition denoted by the radical minus the negation.1 (1) H: John is such a philanthropist. S: Yeah, doesn’t he even run some sort of charity group? (S thinks that pc: “John (even) runs some sort of charity group” is likely to be true.) (2) H: OK, now that Stephen has come, we are all here. Let’s go! S: Isn’t Jane coming too? (S thinks that pc: “Jane is coming (too)” is likely to be true.) (adapted from Romero and Han, 2004: 611) 1In examples and main text, “S” and “H” are used as abbre- viations of “the speaker” and “the hearer” respectively. 169 Outside-NEG interrogatives (i) are compatible with a positive polarity item (e.g., too as in (2)) and (ii) do not license a negative polarity item. On this ground, McCawley (1988: 499, 571) char- acterizes the negations in outside-NEG interroga- tives (and some instances of …

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