Intonation, bias and Greek NPIs

A perception experiment

Stella Gryllia

This paper explores question bias in questions with negative polarity items (Ladusaw, 1979; Krifka, 1995; Giannakidou, 2011) by means of a perception experiment. For the purpose of the experiment the Greek emphatic and non-emphatic NPI kanenas ‘no-one/nobody, anyone/anybody’ are used. The experiment tests two hypotheses. The emphatic NPI in a negative polar question creates a bias for a negative answer. So listeners are expected to answer with a negative answer rather than with a positive answer when they listen to a question that contains an emphatic NPI (Hyp. 1). The non-emphatic NPI in a negative polar question creates no specific bias for an answer. Positive and negative answers are expected to be equally chosen by listeners (Hyp. 2). Both hypotheses were verified.

Published online: 10 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.189.09gry

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