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Part of
Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek
Edited by Camille Denizot and Olga Spevak
[Studies in Language Companion Series 190] 2017
► pp. 235–256

Chapter 11
Polar questions in Latin with and without the enclitic particle -ne

 | Thesaurus linguae Latinae | Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Munich
The Latin enclitic particle -ne, which may be of an affirmative origin, is an optional focusing particle of polar questions, which in Latin can also occur without any particle. To analyse polar questions I have distinguished four groups of questions in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, according to pragmatic criteria. Both kinds of questions can occur in all groups, but questions without a particle have a stronger tendency to appear among those related to the speech situation, questions with a particle among those with a directive force. Moreover, as has often been observed, the particle -ne seems to be preferred in combination with certain host words. I have checked whether these are also frequent in the first position of interrogative sentences without -ne.
Keywords: polar questions, interrogative particle, -ne , enclitic, focusing particle
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data: Corpus A
    • 2.1Distribution of -ne
    • 2.2Diachrony
  • 3.Corpus B: Direct simple polar questions in Plautus and Terence
  • 4.Function of questions with -ne and without any particle
    • 4.1Four groups of questions
      • 4.1.1External questions, asking for new information
      • 4.1.2Questions related to the situation of the speech
      • 4.1.3Questions with directive force
      • 4.1.4Questions with expressive/assertive force
    • 4.2 -ne in exclamatory sentences
    • 4.3Comparison
  • 5.Frequent combinations of host word and -ne
  • 6.Etymology
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 November 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.190.11sch
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