Polarity particles in English and Romanian
This paper contrasts the distribution and interpretation of ‘polarity particles’ in English and Romanian. Polarity particles (yes, no in English, da, nu, ba in Romanian) occur at the left edge of utterances that react to assertions, polar questions and imperatives but cannot be used in ‘out of the blue’ contexts. The paper makes sense of this distribution as well as of the contrasts between the two languages against the background of a context structure proposed in earlier work, which allows us to understand in what sense assertions, polar questions and imperatives form a natural class. Of particular interest here are cases where both yes and no can be used in otherwise identical responses in English as well as the distribution of these particles in reactions to imperatives.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Bhadra, Diti
2020.
The Semantics of Evidentials in Questions.
Journal of Semantics 37:3
► pp. 367 ff.
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Yuan, Mengxi & Yurie Hara
2019.
Guiding assertions and questions in discourse.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 37:4
► pp. 1545 ff.
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Farkas, Donka F. & Floris Roelofsen
2017.
Division of Labor in the Interpretation of Declaratives and Interrogatives.
Journal of Semantics ► pp. ffw012 ff.
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