This chapter has proposed one way to organise the multiplicity of possible readings that are found with embedded interrogatives. To this end, a set of interpretive features was intro- duced: embedding verbs can be categorised along the veridicality and the literalness dimen- sion, while questions can be categorised along the completeness and exhaustivity dimension. Among these, exhaustivity, completeness and veridicality relate to well-known distinctions in the semantics of questions, while literalness to the best of my knowledge has not been ex- plicitly treated in the field. We found that the[+/–lit]contrast has repercussions on mono- tonicity behaviour. Examining the entailment patterns licensed by different embedders, we arrived at a slightly non-standard understanding of weak exhaustivity and mention-some interpretations: our weakly exhaustive readings are completely non-monotonic, while our mention-some readings are subject to a no-false-answers constraint. This constraint gener- alises a notion discussed in the literature under the heading of intermediate exhaustivity. The [+/–lit] contrast further seems to be associated with the ambiguity between [+/– exh]and [+/–cmp]: for example, we found [–exh, +cmp](weak exhaustivity) tied to a
[+lit]reading, while[+exh, +cmp](strong exhaustivity) seems go hand in hand with a
[–lit]interpretation. The desiderata for the implementation in the next chapter are sum- marised again in Figure10. The presentation should be relatively self-explanatory. Observe, however, that the readings falls into three different categories with respect to the NFA:ap- plies non-vacuouslymeans that the NFA applies and that it makes a difference (that is, the reading would have different truth-conditions without the NFA);vacuously satisfied on the
be surprised [–lit] [+cmp, +exh] strong exh. ↓-monotonic NFA: does not apply [–cmp, –exh] mention-some ↓-monotonic NFA: does not apply tell predict [+lit] [+cmp, –exh] weak exh. non-monotonic NFA: vacuously satisfied know be certain [–lit] [+cmp, +exh] strong exh. ↑-monotonic NFA: vacuously satisfied [–cmp, –exh] mention-some ↑-monotonic NFA: applies non-vacuously ([+ver]) or vacuously ([–ver])
Figure 10: Summary of available readings, monotonicity properties and applicability of the NFA
other hand means that the NFA applies, but that it does not effect the truth-conditions of the respective reading; does not apply means what it says. Also, as before, the downward- monotonicity ofsurpriseis to be understood modulo knowledge presupposition.
So, cutting a long story short—the familiar categories are all indeed still there: the weakly exhaustive, the strongly exhaustive and the mention-some reading. We did deviate from the canon somewhat, but not by excluding any readings. The changes we made are merely aimed at more fine-grained predictions about which readings are available for which embedders and what exactly the truth-conditions are for these readings. The insights gained in the preceding sections will be put to critical use in the next chapter. There we will actually implement anInqλ
Bfragment for embedded questions.
This chapter contained countless oversimplifications and idealised assumptions, which are relatively standard in question semantics, but which will need to be addressed at some point (to name but one, fixed and mutually known domains of discourse). Likewise, there is a multitude of facets to the semantics of embedded questions which would warrant further investigation but which we have hardly touched. In particular, this is the case for presuppo- sitions, both arising fromwh-questions themselves and from interrogative-embedding pred- icates. Another area worthwhile exploring concerns the surface form of interrogatives: are there inherent differences betweenwho- andwhich-interrogatives, for example, and can these differences perhaps be linked to already established interpretive categories like exhaustivity and completeness? Finally, the proposed ambiguity between literal and deductive readings is afirst attemptat a distinction that I think should be made. Likely, this attempt is still at fault
in several aspects and would have to be critically reconsidered in the future. The apparent unavailability of[+exh,+lit]readings the one hand and [–exh, +cmp, –lit]readings on the other hand has not been satisfactorily explained and would warrant further attention. Finally, since the literal/deductive distinction is posited here as a lexical ambiguity, it would be interesting to see whether some languages actually possess distinct lexical items for literal and deductive embedders.
4
Embedded questions in typed
inquisitive semantics
At this point, we are already acquainted with typed inquistive semantics and have seen how this framework can be used to account for root questions (Chapter 2). We have further explored the rather nuanced empirical picture of question embedding (Chapter3). Now we are about to combine the insights from these two areas; theInqλ
Bgrammar fragment will be extended to coverembeddedinterrogatives andembeddeddeclaratives.
This extension will build on elements that are already available inInqλ
B(the basic denota- tion of root questions, the exhaustivity operator), but will of course add elements that are specific to clause embedding (most prominently, the embedding predicates). In particular, the focus will be on determining what kind of relations are expressed by the embedding predicates and which pieces of information from the question denotation enter into this re- lation. The semantics we give will beflexible,uniformandmodular: flexible in that it allows for all the different interpretive dimensions that were teased apart in the previous chapter; uniform in that the same lexical entry will cover both the declarative- and the interrogative- embedding uses of responsive verbs; and modular in that the task of establishing the inter- pretive differences will be distributed over several distinct lexical items.
Additionally, it will emerge that the concept of inquisitiveness and its propagation in dif- ferent syntactic constructions extends naturally to constructions with embedded clauses. Certain embedding predicates act as holesfor inquisitiveness: if the embedded clause is in- quisitive, then the matrix clause will be inquisitive as well. Other predicates areinquisitive- ness plugs: even if the embedded clause is inquisitive, the matrix clause need not be so.
The route we will take is this. First we will—still somewhat informally—take stock of which results we would like the eventual semantics to produce (Section4.1). Only then will we give thought to how to actually obtain these results. That is, we will return to the set of interpretive features from Chapter3and implement the distinctions associated with these features. We will start with exhaustivity (Section4.3), then continue with completeness and discuss in some detail how the no-false-answers constraint can be implemented (Section4.4 and 4.5.2). Subsequently, we will turn to embedding verbs and examine different aspects of their semantics, especially veridicality (Section4.5.1), literalness (Section4.5.5and4.5.6) and differences with respect to the propagation of inquisitiveness (Section4.5.3and4.7).
Something that is not provided here, on the other hand, is a systematic comparison of the proposed semantics with other more recent works in the field. While Chapter1has indeed given a brief overview over the classical accounts in question semantics, any more state-of- the-art treatments (e. g.Beck and Rullmann,1999;Guerzoni,2007;George,2011;Égré and
Spector,2014) have not been discussed in technical detail. This is largely due to the limited scope of this thesis project; a rigorous comparison is left for future work.