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The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast: Theoretical, empirical, and typological approaches
Edited by Christine Dimroth and Stefan Sudhoff
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 249] 2018
► pp. 109–128

Veridicality and sets of alternative worlds

On embedded interrogatives and the complementizers that and if

| University of Wuppertal
This paper explores three related phenomena. First, not all embedded formal interrogatives (i.e. clauses introduced by if or whether) have the function of an indirect question. Second, the complementizers if and that may occur in identical syntactic contexts. Third, if-clauses may be licensed by certain (discourse) semantic factors, like negation, modality, and also verum focus, where otherwise that-clauses are preferred. The approach taken is based on epistemic logic, especially on the notion of relativized veridicality, the notion of possible worlds and the formal semantics of the complementizers that and if.
Keywords: interrogative semantics, complementizers, epistemic logic, veridicality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Embedding clause types
    • 2.1The use of that and if
    • 2.2Interrogative clauses as syntactic objects
    • 2.3Polarity and relativized veridicality
    • 2.4Scope of the nonveridical operation
  • 3. That vs. if: What do the complementizers denote?
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.249.04ohl
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