Article published In:
CommitmentEdited by Philippe De Brabanter and Patrick Dendale
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 22] 2008
► pp. 101–136
Edited by Philippe De Brabanter and Patrick Dendale
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 22] 2008
► pp. 101–136
A question of commitment
This paper addresses certain restrictions on the use of declaratives as questions in English. Declaratives are taken to express commitment by the speaker, even in a questioning use. The analysis traces the restrictions to two distinct contextual factors: (i) a general principle requiring that a commitment have a recognized source, i.e., a discourse agent who plausibly has independent evidence supporting the content committed to; (ii) specific to a questioning interpretation, the need for the context to support the inference that the speaker’s commitment depends upon the addressee’s anticipated confirmation. Rising intonation contributes a very general element of meaning, indicating that the utterance it marks is contingent upon some discourse condition obtaining; the specific conditions required for a questioning interpretation instantiate one such type of contingency. The proposals are modeled via elaboration of standard contextual structures in a possible-worlds framework.
Article language: German
Cited by
Cited by 58 other publications
Alberti, Gábor, Mónika Dóla, Eszter Kárpáti, Judit Kleiber, Anita Viszket & Anna Szeteli
2021. Lehetséges lehetséges világaink. Jelentés és Nyelvhasználat 8:1 ► pp. 105 ff. 
ASU, EVA LIINA, HEETE SAHKAI & PÄRTEL LIPPUS
2023. The prosody of surprise questions in Estonian. Journal of Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff.
Bhadra, Diti
2018. Evidentials are syntax-sensitive: The view from Bangla. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1
Bhadra, Diti
2020. The Semantics of Evidentials in Questions. Journal of Semantics 37:3 ► pp. 367 ff.
Biezma, María & Kyle Rawlins
2012. Responding to alternative and polar questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 35:5 ► pp. 361 ff.
Cornillie, Bert
2018. On speaker commitment and speaker involvement. Evidence from evidentials in Spanish talk-in-interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 128 ► pp. 161 ff.
Crone, Phil
2019. Assertions of Clarity & Raising Awareness. Journal of Semantics 36:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Djärv, Kajsa
2022. On the interpretation and distribution of embedded main clause syntax: new perspectives on complex discourse moves. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7:1
Déchaine, Rose-Marie, Clare Cook, Jeffrey Muehlbauer & Ryan Waldie
2017. (De-)constructing evidentiality. Lingua 186-187 ► pp. 21 ff.
Falbo, Arianna
2022. Inquiry and confirmation. Analysis 81:4 ► pp. 622 ff.
Faller, Martina
2023. Conjectural speech acts in Cuzco Quechua. Journal of Pragmatics 214 ► pp. 144 ff.
Farkas, D. F. & K. B. Bruce
2010. On Reacting to Assertions and Polar Questions. Journal of Semantics 27:1 ► pp. 81 ff.
Farkas, Donka F
2022. Non-Intrusive Questions as a Special Type of Non-Canonical Questions. Journal of Semantics 39:2 ► pp. 295 ff.
Farkas, Donka F. & Floris Roelofsen
2017. Division of Labor in the Interpretation of Declaratives and Interrogatives. Journal of Semantics ► pp. ffw012 ff.
Gadanidis, Timothy, Angelika Kiss, Lex Konnelly, Katharina Pabst, Lisa Schlegl, Pocholo Umbal & Sali A. Tagliamonte
2023. Integrating qualitative and quantitative analyses of stance: A case study of English that/zero variation. Language in Society 52:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Gast, Volker
2022. Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus. In Particles in German, English, and Beyond [Studies in Language Companion Series, 224], ► pp. 117 ff.
Gyuris, Beáta
2018. Ugye in Hungarian: Towards a Unified Analysis. In Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics [Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 94], ► pp. 199 ff.
Gärtner, Hans-Martin & Beáta Gyuris
2012. Pragmatic markers in Hungarian: Some introductory remarks. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 59:4 ► pp. 387 ff.
Hara, Yurie
2023. *Daroo ka↑: the interplay of deictic modality, sentence type, prosody and tier of meaning. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
Harris, Jesse A.
2021. Extended Perspective Shift and Discourse Economy in Language Processing. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Heeren, Willemijn F.L., Sarah A. Bibyk, Christine Gunlogson & Michael K. Tanenhaus
2015. Asking or Telling – Real-time Processing of Prosodically Distinguished Questions and Statements. Language and Speech 58:4 ► pp. 474 ff.
Heidinger, Steffen & Edgar Onea
2021. Focus affinity in Spanish. An experimental study. Journal of Pragmatics 186 ► pp. 100 ff.
Heim, Johannes M.
2019. Turn-peripheral management of Common Ground: A study of Swabian gell. Journal of Pragmatics 141 ► pp. 130 ff.
Heim, Johannes M. & Martina E. Wiltschko
2022. Timing of belief as a key to cross-linguistic variation in common ground management. Linguistics Vanguard 8:s2 ► pp. 261 ff.
Heritage, John & Chase Wesley Raymond
2021. Preference and Polarity: Epistemic Stance in Question Design. Research on Language and Social Interaction 54:1 ► pp. 39 ff.
Horn, Laurence R.
2016. Licensing NPIs: Some Negative (and Positive) Results. In Negation and Polarity: Experimental Perspectives [Language, Cognition, and Mind, 1], ► pp. 281 ff.
ITUARTE, AITOR LIZARDI
2022. Clause type vs speech act: Knowledge confirmation questions in Basque. Journal of Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff.
Jain, Kate Hazel
2022. You Hoboken! Semantics of an expressive label maker. Linguistics and Philosophy 45:2 ► pp. 365 ff.
Jeong, Sunwoo
2018. Intonation and Sentence Type Conventions: Two Types of Rising Declaratives. Journal of Semantics 35:2 ► pp. 305 ff.
Jeong, Sunwoo
2021. Deriving politeness from an extended Lewisian model: The case of rising declaratives. Journal of Pragmatics 177 ► pp. 183 ff.
Kang, Arum & Suwon Yoon
2020. From inquisitive disjunction to nonveridical equilibrium: Modalized questions in Korean. Linguistics 58:1 ► pp. 207 ff.
Kaufmann, Magdalena
2019. Fine-tuning natural language imperatives. Journal of Logic and Computation 29:3 ► pp. 321 ff.
Kiss, Angelika
2022. The Hungarian question tag mi? As characterized by dependent and independent commitments. Acta Linguistica Academica 69:2 ► pp. 206 ff.
Klecha, Peter
2018. On unidirectionality in precisification. Linguistics and Philosophy 41:1 ► pp. 87 ff.
Larrivée, Pierre
2017. A positive polarity focus particle under negation. In Negation and Contact [Studies in Language Companion Series, 183], ► pp. 63 ff.
Lee, Junwen
2022. An Analysis of Colloquial Singapore English lah and Its Interpretation across Speech Acts. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 203 ff.
Malamud, S. A. & T. Stephenson
2015. Three Ways to Avoid Commitments: Declarative Force Modifiers in the Conversational Scoreboard. Journal of Semantics 32:2 ► pp. 275 ff.
Matthewson, Lisa
2021. Verum in Gitksan. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 66:1 ► pp. 60 ff.
Michalsky, Jan
2023. Questioning questions – the perception of f0 scaling in German questions between categorical function and continuous attitude. Phonetica 0:0
Millson, Jared A
2021. Seeking confirmation: A puzzle for norms of inquiry. Analysis 80:4 ► pp. 683 ff.
Orrico, Riccardo & Mariapaola D'Imperio
2022. Intonational cues to speaker bias in questions and the role of language exposure. Journal of Pragmatics 200 ► pp. 242 ff.
Rubinstein, Aynat
2020. Weak Necessity. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Rudin, Deniz
2022. Intonational Commitments. Journal of Semantics 39:2 ► pp. 339 ff.
Ruytenbeek, Nicolas, Benjamin Bergen & Sean Trott
2023. Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests. Journal of French Language Studies 33:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
Scheffler, Tatjana & Sophia A. Malamud
2023. “Won’t you?” reverse-polarity question tags in American English as a window into the semantics-pragmatics interface. Linguistics and Philosophy
Schneider, Johannes
2022. Chapter 9. Three German discourse particles as speech act modifiers. In Discourse Particles [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 276], ► pp. 229 ff.
Seeliger, Heiko & Sophie Repp
2018. Biased declarative questions in Swedish and German. In The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 249], ► pp. 129 ff.
Seeliger, Heiko & Sophie Repp
2023. Information-structural surprises? Contrast, givenness, and (the lack of) accent shift and deaccentuation in non-assertive speech acts. Laboratory Phonology 14:1
Shiamizadeh, Zohreh, Johanneke Caspers & Niels O. Schiller
2019. Do Persian Native Speakers Prosodically Mark Wh-in-situ Questions?. Language and Speech 62:2 ► pp. 229 ff.
Silk, Alex
2018. Commitment and states of mind with mood and modality. Natural Language Semantics 26:2 ► pp. 125 ff.
Silk, Alex
2020. Expectation Biases and Context Management with Negative Polar Questions. Journal of Philosophical Logic 49:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Sperlich, Darcy & Chungmin Lee
2022. The interactions between factivity and politeness in Korean discourse: An experimental approach. Lingua 267 ► pp. 103184 ff.
Tyler, Joseph C.
2015. Expanding and Mapping the Indexical Field. Journal of English Linguistics 43:4 ► pp. 284 ff.
van Bergen, Geertje & Lotte Hogeweg
2021. Managing interpersonal discourse expectations: a comparative analysis of contrastive discourse particles in Dutch. Linguistics 59:2 ► pp. 333 ff.
Westera, Matthijs
2018. Rising declaratives of the Quality-suspending kind. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1
Wijnbergen‐Huitink, Janneke van
2020. Modal Concord. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Wiltschko, Martina & Johannes Heim
2016. The syntax of confirmationals. In Outside the Clause [Studies in Language Companion Series, 178], ► pp. 305 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.