Semantics and Pragmatics of Questions

In this class, we investigate the semantics and pragmatics of questions. We will examine a large variety of questions: polar questions (eg, Do you like chocolate ice-cream?), alternative questions (eg, Do you like chocolate or strawberry ice-cream?), wh-questions (eg, What kind of ice-cream do you like?), and non-canonical questions (eg, You like chocolate ice-cream?). Several classic and modern semantic theories are introduced: alternative semantics, partition semantics, and inquisitive semantics. Additionally, we will explore the role questions play in analyzing other linguistic phenomena such as focus, discourse coherence, rhetorical relations, and informational oddness.