CRISSP is happy to announce another installment in the CRISSP Seminar series:
Lecturer: Anders Holmberg (Newcastle University/University of Cambridge)
Title: The syntax of negative questions
Date & time: Monday December 16, 2013, 17.00-18.30
Location: CRISSP/KULeuven HUBrussel, Stormstraat 2 (Hermes building), room 3112
Handout: Download the presentation (pdf)
Participation: free
Abstract
A theory of the syntax of questions, particularly yes-no questions, is presented, based on Hamblin’s theory of the meaning of questions, but articulated to account for the syntax of answers, particularly to yes-no questions. There are two types of negative yes-no questions (in many languages, though possibly not all): those with negative bias and those with positive bias. They have quite different syntactic structure, which will be discussed, again using constraints on answers as one criterion.