¿Cómo va a ser posible? The situated meanings of periphrastic and synthetic future-inflected wh-interrogatives in Spanish
We analyze the use and distribution of Spanish synthetic and periphrastic future-inflected wh-interrogatives in a corpus of informal Spanish conversations, within Linell’s (2009) Dialogical Theory of Language. Our corpus analysis reveals that future-inflected interrogatives realize three types of discourse functions: information requests, interactional challenges, and requests for inference, each clearly distinguishable in terms of their distribution at the sentence and discourse level. The results highlight the importance of speaker attitude and, particularly, their expectations regarding the answerability of the request. Use of the synthetic future is common in requests to inference, in which the hearer is not expected to be able to answer the question, whereas use of the periphrastic future is prototypical in requests for information and interactional challenges, indicating a grammaticalization path towards modal meanings. Our findings underscore the value of corpus-based pragmatic analysis for understanding how grammatical choices reflect interactional meaning-making.
Publication history
Table of contents
1.Introduction
Spanish possesses two constructions that are usually described as expressing futurity and related meanings: the synthetic future (SF, see [1a]) and the periphrastic future (PF, see [1b]).
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SaraSaraven-drácome-fut.ind.3sg[SF]mañana.tomorrow
‘Sara will come tomorrow’
-
SaraSaravago.prs.ind.3sgatoven-ircome-inf[PF]mañana.tomorrow
‘Sara is going to come tomorrow’
Whereas the PF is most frequently used for future time reference, the SF is commonly described as expressing non-temporal meanings. For instance, in (2), the SF is used in an utterance marked as the speaker’s hypothesis. Notwithstanding these semantic constraints, use of the PF has also been shown to be generally more common in Latin American dialects of Spanish (Rosemeyer and Sansiñena 2022Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. ).
‘Luz didn’t come to work. She must (lit. will) be sick’
The non-temporal uses of SF have received some attention in the literature (Matte Bon and Hernández Mercedes 2007Matte Bon, Francisco, and Ma del Pilar Hernández Mercedes 2007 “Las maneras de hablar del futuro en español: Del sistema codificado a las interpretaciones contextuales.” MarcoELE: Revista de Didáctica 5: 1–24.Matte Bon, Francisco, and Ma del Pilar Hernández Mercedes 2007 “Las maneras de hablar del futuro en español: Del sistema codificado a las interpretaciones contextuales.” MarcoELE: Revista de Didáctica 5: 1–24.; Rivero 2014Rivero, María Luisa 2014 “Spanish Inferential and Mirative Futures and Conditionals: An Evidential Gradable Modal Proposal.” Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 151 (B): 197–215. Rivero, María Luisa 2014 “Spanish Inferential and Mirative Futures and Conditionals: An Evidential Gradable Modal Proposal.” Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 151 (B): 197–215. , among others). Escandell-Vidal (2010)Escandell-Vidal, Victoria 2010 “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9–34.Escandell-Vidal, Victoria 2010 “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9–34. offers a unitary account of all the (non-)temporal meanings of the SF in terms of evidentiality, arguing that it indicates conjectural evidence: the speaker presents a state-of-affairs for which the mode of knowing is intuitive inference, as opposed to direct evidence (cf. also Escandell-Vidal 2014 2014 “Evidential Futures: The Case of Spanish.” In Future Tense vs. Future Time: An Introduction, ed. by Philippe De Brabanter, Mikhail Kissine, and Saghie Sharifzadeh, 219–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014 “Evidential Futures: The Case of Spanish.” In Future Tense vs. Future Time: An Introduction, ed. by Philippe De Brabanter, Mikhail Kissine, and Saghie Sharifzadeh, 219–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ; 2018 2018 “Evidential Commitment and Feature Mismatch in Spanish estar Constructions.” Journal of Pragmatics 128: 102–115. 2018 “Evidential Commitment and Feature Mismatch in Spanish estar Constructions.” Journal of Pragmatics 128: 102–115. , 111; Rodríguez Rosique 2019Rodríguez Rosique, Susana 2019 El futuro en español. Tiempo, conocimiento, interacción. Bern: Peter Lang. Rodríguez Rosique, Susana 2019 El futuro en español. Tiempo, conocimiento, interacción. Bern: Peter Lang. ). The SF is said to encode a procedural instruction to interpret the propositional content as the result of a mental process by the speaker. For the PF, no comprehensive account exists; it has mainly been analyzed in terms of its variation with the SF and its grammaticalization from the original allative meaning to its temporal meaning (see, e.g., Primerano and Bouzouita 2024Primerano, Antoine, and Miriam Bouzouita 2024 “La gramaticalización de los futuros y condicionales en el navarroaragonés de los siglos XIII y XIV : Una comparación con el castellano medieval.” In Revue Romane 59: 143–184. Primerano, Antoine, and Miriam Bouzouita 2024 “La gramaticalización de los futuros y condicionales en el navarroaragonés de los siglos XIII y XIV : Una comparación con el castellano medieval.” In Revue Romane 59: 143–184. ).
However, many non-temporal uses of the SF and PF are still un(der)described. In particular, the SF and PF are regularly used in wh-interrogatives, where they express specialized discourse functions. Some instances of such functions are refutational uses of PF, construed as a rhetorical question with cómo ‘how’ and repetition of the interlocutor’s previous proposition presented as non-factual, as in (3), and the use of SF and PF as interactional challenges in dispreferred response-initiations, as in (4), where the semi-lexicalized formulae with saber express that the interlocutor surely does not know anything about music (cf. Enghels 2018Enghels, Renata 2018 “On the Grammaticalization of the Deverbal Epistemic Pragmatic Marker sabes: A Study in Recent Language Change.” Revue roumaine de linguistique [Romanian review of linguistics] 63: 341–360.Enghels, Renata 2018 “On the Grammaticalization of the Deverbal Epistemic Pragmatic Marker sabes: A Study in Recent Language Change.” Revue roumaine de linguistique [Romanian review of linguistics] 63: 341–360.).
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Parec-esseem-prs.ind.2sgtriste…sad
‘You look/seem sad... ’
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¡Quéwhattontería!foolishness¿Cómohowvoygo.prs.ind.1sgatoest-arbe-inf[PF]triste?sadAcab-ofinish-prs.ind.1sgdeofgan-arwin-inflatheloterialottery
‘How silly! How am I going to be sad? I just won the lottery.’
[The speaker was just told that her violin playing is bad]
‘What would you (lit. do you go to) know about music?’
In this paper, we develop a unified description of the emergence of these specific discourse functions of the SF and PF in wh-interrogatives in terms of Linell’s (2009) Dialogical Theory of language use and use this theory to explain variation in the use of the SF and PF in wh-interrogatives. We claim that discourse functions such as the ones in (3) and (4) are situated meanings of future-inflected wh-interrogatives, whose basic function is to call for an inference by the hearer. This inference can be relevant at the propositional (5) or the metadiscursive level (6).11.In principle, the utterance ¿Quién será? may express a question that the speaker asks themself loud. We argue that such self-addressed, spoken-aloud questions constitute a subtype of requests for inference: when produced in a monological situation in which the speaker is alone, they can be interpreted as a quasi-dialogical enactment in which the speaker simulates an interaction, thereby preserving the construction’s social and interactional function.
‘Who could that be?’
[“even if you do not know, make an educated guess on the basis of an inference”]
‘And what would you know about music?’
[“no inference is available that would satisfy my request”]
In order to demonstrate the relevance of this assumption, we carry out qualitative and quantitative analyses of n = 199 tokens of synthetic and periphrastic ‘future’ wh-interrogatives from a corpus of conversations in Spanish from Madrid, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile, taken from the C-ORAL ROM (Cresti and Moneglia 2005Cresti, Emanuela, and Massimo Moneglia 2005 C-ORAL-ROM. Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cresti, Emanuela, and Massimo Moneglia 2005 C-ORAL-ROM. Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ) and the COLA (Jørgensen and Eguía Padilla 2017Jørgensen, Annette Myre, and Esperanza Eguía Padilla 2017 Proyecto COLA. Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente. http://www.colam.org/Jørgensen, Annette Myre, and Esperanza Eguía Padilla 2017 Proyecto COLA. Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente. http://www.colam.org/). In a first step, we establish a comprehensive description of the situated meanings of future-inflected wh-interrogatives using concepts from Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 2018Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Margret Selting 2018 Interactional Linguistics: Studying Language in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Margret Selting 2018 Interactional Linguistics: Studying Language in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). In a second step, we analyze the variation between use of the SF and PF. Our results suggest a division of labor between these forms in wh-interrogatives. Due to the greater propensity of the SF to express modal meanings, SF-inflected wh-interrogatives are specialized in the expression of requests for speculation such as (5), in which the speaker asks the hearer to hypothesize about a state of affairs. In contrast, the PF is typically used to express futurity and interactional challenges.
This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the modal and evidential functions of Spanish future constructions and a discussion of how sentence type influences the interpretation of Spanish future constructions. Section 3 describes the data and methodology. Section 4 presents our description of the situated meanings of future-inflected wh-interrogatives, and Section 5 analyzes the distribution of PF and SF in terms of these meanings. Finally, Section 6 presents our conclusions.
2.Modality and evidentiality in Spanish future constructions
Both the SF and the PF have evolved to express diverse types of modal and evidential meanings (see Palmer 2001Palmer, Frank Robert 2001 Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Palmer, Frank Robert 2001 Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 105; Ledgeway and Maiden 2016Ledgeway, Adam, and Martin Maiden 2016 The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ledgeway, Adam, and Martin Maiden 2016 The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ; Marín Arrese 2017Marín Arrese, Juana 2017 “Multifunctionality of Evidential Expressions in Discourse Domains and Genres: Evidence from Cross-Linguistic Case Studies.” In Evidentiality Revisited. Cognitive Grammar, Functional and Discourse-Pragmatic Perspectives, ed. by Juana Marín Arrese, Gerda Haßler, and Marta Carretero, 195–224. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Marín Arrese, Juana 2017 “Multifunctionality of Evidential Expressions in Discourse Domains and Genres: Evidence from Cross-Linguistic Case Studies.” In Evidentiality Revisited. Cognitive Grammar, Functional and Discourse-Pragmatic Perspectives, ed. by Juana Marín Arrese, Gerda Haßler, and Marta Carretero, 195–224. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Rodríguez Rosique 2019Rodríguez Rosique, Susana 2019 El futuro en español. Tiempo, conocimiento, interacción. Bern: Peter Lang. Rodríguez Rosique, Susana 2019 El futuro en español. Tiempo, conocimiento, interacción. Bern: Peter Lang. ; Rosemeyer and Sansiñena 2022Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. ), as in the constructed Example (7), where the speaker advances a hypothesis to give meaning to a certain state of affairs. These types of conjectures usually do not appear in absolute initial position or in initiations; rather, they are often reactive turns. A great number of studies claim that the SF is used more frequently for this conjectural meaning than the PF, whereas the PF is more likely to express futurity (see, e.g., Nuyts 2001Nuyts, Jan 2001 Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nuyts, Jan 2001 Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 21; Palmer 2001Palmer, Frank Robert 2001 Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Palmer, Frank Robert 2001 Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 105; Blas Arroyo 2008Blas Arroyo, José Luis 2008 “The Variable Expression of Future Tense in Peninsular Spanish: The Present (and Future) of Inflectional Forms in the Spanish Spoken in a Bilingual Region.” Language Variation and Change 20 (1): 85–126. Blas Arroyo, José Luis 2008 “The Variable Expression of Future Tense in Peninsular Spanish: The Present (and Future) of Inflectional Forms in the Spanish Spoken in a Bilingual Region.” Language Variation and Change 20 (1): 85–126. ; Aaron 2010Aaron, Jessi Elana 2010 “Pushing the Envelope: Looking beyond the Variable Context.” Language Variation and Change 22: 1–36. Aaron, Jessi Elana 2010 “Pushing the Envelope: Looking beyond the Variable Context.” Language Variation and Change 22: 1–36. ). This distribution can be attributed to the fact that the SF has progressed more on the grammaticalization path from the expression of the future towards modal meanings than the PF (Orozco 2005Orozco, Rafael 2005 “Distribution of Future Time Forms in Northern Colombian Spanish.” In Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 56–65. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Orozco, Rafael 2005 “Distribution of Future Time Forms in Northern Colombian Spanish.” In Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 56–65. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project., 62; Aaron 2014 2014 “A Certain Future: Epistemicity, Prediction, and Assertion in Iberian Spanish Future Expression.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 7 (2): 215–240. 2014 “A Certain Future: Epistemicity, Prediction, and Assertion in Iberian Spanish Future Expression.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 7 (2): 215–240. , 235), a semantic change that is common in the Romance languages (Fleischman 1982Fleischman, Suzanne 1982 The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic Evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Fleischman, Suzanne 1982 The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic Evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) and indeed, from a typological perspective (Bybee et al. 1991Bybee, Joan L., William Pagliuca, and Revere D. Perkins 1991 “Back to the Future.” In Approaches to Grammaticalization, ed. by Elizabeth Traugott, and Bernd Heine, 16–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bybee, Joan L., William Pagliuca, and Revere D. Perkins 1991 “Back to the Future.” In Approaches to Grammaticalization, ed. by Elizabeth Traugott, and Bernd Heine, 16–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 29).
| A: |
Pedro
Pedro
no
neg
vino
come.pst.pfv.ind.3sg
a
to
clase
class
hoy. today ‘Pedro didn’t come to class today’ |
| B: |
Est-ará
be-fut.ind.3sg
enfermo. sick ‘He must be sick’ |
Escandell-Vidal (2010)Escandell-Vidal, Victoria 2010 “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9–34.Escandell-Vidal, Victoria 2010 “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9–34. argues that the use of the future in a declarative such as (7) encodes a procedural instruction to interpret the propositional content as the result of an inference by the speaker (cf. also Squartini 2001Squartini, Mario 2001 “The Internal Structure of Evidentiality in Romance.” Studies in Language 25 (2): 297–334. Squartini, Mario 2001 “The Internal Structure of Evidentiality in Romance.” Studies in Language 25 (2): 297–334. ). From this perspective, the Spanish future can be described as expressing evidentiality; the speaker “proposes a possible explanation whose only source is her or his own mental process” (Escandell-Vidal 2010Escandell-Vidal, Victoria 2010 “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9–34.Escandell-Vidal, Victoria 2010 “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9–34., 26).
A similar interpretation applies to mirative uses of the future, as in Example (8), based on Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti (2021Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti 2021 “Spanish ‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti 2021 “Spanish ‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. , 167). In (8), the speaker expresses their surprise about the high degree of Pedro’s cheekiness. This is a defining criterion of exclamatives (see Mithun 2016Mithun, Marianne 2016 “How Fascinating! Insubordinate Exclamations.” In Insubordination, ed. by Nicholas Evans, and Honoré Watanabe, 367–392. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mithun, Marianne 2016 “How Fascinating! Insubordinate Exclamations.” In Insubordination, ed. by Nicholas Evans, and Honoré Watanabe, 367–392. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 373). As in (7), the high degree of Pedro’s cheekiness is in itself an inference by the speaker. This difference between (7) and (8) lies in the fact that in (7), the inference is derived from more general world knowledge (‘Being sick is a common and acceptable reason for missing class’), whereas in (8), the inference is derived from the contents of A’s utterance (‘Pedro must be very cheeky since he missed class’).
| A: | Pedro no vino a clase hoy. |
| B: |
¡Ten-drá
have-fut.ind.3sg
cara
face
el
the
tío!
guy ‘This guy has got a lot of cheek!’ |
(Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti 2021Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti 2021 “Spanish ‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti 2021 “Spanish ‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. , 167)
Interestingly, Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti (2021)Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti 2021 “Spanish ‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Escandell-Vidal, Victoria, and Manuel Leonetti 2021 “Spanish ‘Mirative Future’.” In Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, ed. by Andreas Trotzke, and Xavier Villalba, 167–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. describe cases such as (8) as a type of polar interrogative that realizes a rhetorical question. The construction appears to invite the hearer to draw the same conclusion as the speaker. Indeed, an utterance such as ¡Tendrá cara el tío! has a strong evaluative function and as such makes relevant an equally or stronger evaluative response by the other participant (Pomerantz 1984Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Pomerantz and Heritage 2012Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage 2012 “Preference.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Malden: Blackwell. Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage 2012 “Preference.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Malden: Blackwell. ).
It is this mechanism that is at the heart of our proposal about the discourse functions of Spanish future-inflected wh-interrogatives. Apart from a recent study by Rosemeyer and Sansiñena (2022)Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. , these constructions have received little attention in the literature to date. Consider Example (9), in which B’s utterance from Example (7) is formatted as an interrogative. B’s utterance invites A to speculate about the reasons for Pedro’s absence. In other words, B invites an inference process by A, which may or may not confirm B’s own inference process leading to the conjecture that Pedro may be sick.
| A: |
Pedro no vino a clase hoy. ‘Pedro didn’t come to class today’ |
| B: |
¿Est-ará
be-fut.ind.3sg
enfermo?
sick ‘Maybe he is sick?’ |
The relevance of the description of the interrogative in (9) can be illustrated easily by contrasting it with an interrogative inflected for the present tense. In (10), B’s interrogative does not request conjecture, but a definitive answer by A. The usage contexts of the interrogatives in (9) and (10) systematically differ in terms of the epistemic gradient (Heritage 2009 2009 “Questioning in Medicine.” In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New York: Oxford University Press. 2009 “Questioning in Medicine.” In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New York: Oxford University Press. ; Heritage and Clayman 2010Heritage, John, and Steven Clayman 2010 Talk in Action. Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Malden: Wiley Blackwell. Heritage, John, and Steven Clayman 2010 Talk in Action. Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Malden: Wiley Blackwell. , 140–142; Drew 2012Drew, Paul 2012 “What Drives Sequences?” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 61–68. Drew, Paul 2012 “What Drives Sequences?” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 61–68. ; Enfield et al. 2012Enfield, Nicholas J., Penelope Brown, and Jan De Ruiter 2012 “Epistemic Dimensions of Polar Questions: Sentence-Final Particles in Comparative Perspective.” In Questions, ed. by Jan De Ruiter, 193–221. West Nyack: Cambridge University Press. Enfield, Nicholas J., Penelope Brown, and Jan De Ruiter 2012 “Epistemic Dimensions of Polar Questions: Sentence-Final Particles in Comparative Perspective.” In Questions, ed. by Jan De Ruiter, 193–221. West Nyack: Cambridge University Press. , 193–194; Hayano 2013Hayano, Kaoru 2013 “Question Design in Conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 395–414. Malden: Blackwell. Hayano, Kaoru 2013 “Question Design in Conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 395–414. Malden: Blackwell. , 399–400; Bongelli et al. 2018Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni, Laura Vincze, and Andrzej Zuczkowski 2018 “Questions and Epistemic Stance: Some Examples from Italian Conversations.” Ampersand 5: 29–44. Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni, Laura Vincze, and Andrzej Zuczkowski 2018 “Questions and Epistemic Stance: Some Examples from Italian Conversations.” Ampersand 5: 29–44. ) between the speakers. The term epistemic gradient refers to the relative distribution of knowledge between interlocutors, that is, the extent to which one speaker is treated as more or less knowledgeable about the matter under discussion than the other. Whereas in (10) A is assumed to be more knowledgeable than B regarding the state of affairs at issue, in (9) A and B are equally (not) knowledgeable. In particular, both A and B are assumed to know little about the state of affairs. The interpretation of the synthetic future in (9) as a request for conjecture is consistent with its well-documented epistemic use in Spanish, where the form signals probability or inference rather than factual knowledge (Olbertz 1998Olbertz, Hella 1998 Verbal Periphrases in a Functional Grammar of Spanish. Berlin: De Gruyter. Olbertz, Hella 1998 Verbal Periphrases in a Functional Grammar of Spanish. Berlin: De Gruyter. ; Squartini 2004 2004 “Disentangling Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality in Romance.” Lingua 114 (7): 873–895. 2004 “Disentangling Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality in Romance.” Lingua 114 (7): 873–895. ; RAE/ASALE 2009RAE/ASALE 2009 Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa.RAE/ASALE 2009 Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa., § 23.4o). In this sense, B’s interrogative does not solicit privileged information from A but rather invites joint speculation in a context of shared ignorance (cf. Heritage 2009 2009 “Questioning in Medicine.” In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New York: Oxford University Press. 2009 “Questioning in Medicine.” In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New York: Oxford University Press. ).22.At the same time, the epistemic future often carries mirative overtones: by proposing illness as the explanation for Pedro’s absence, B may be treating this possibility as somewhat unexpected or marked relative to more mundane alternatives (e.g., oversleeping, skipping class). Thus, the interrogative in (9) can be understood not only as a request for speculation but also as implicitly framing the hypothesis as surprising or less likely, a nuance absent from the present-tense interrogative in (10). An interpretation along the lines of ‘Could it (really) be that he’s sick?’ (i.e., treating illness as an unexpected explanation) would be plausible in a context where Pedro is known to be very healthy and rarely falls ill. In such a context, the interrogative would typically be accompanied by marked phonetic features (e.g., a particular pitch, intonational contour, or high tone).
| A: |
Pedro no vino a clase hoy. ‘Pedro didn’t come to class today’ |
| B: |
¿Est-á
be-prs.ind.3sg
enfermo?
sick ‘Is he sick?’ |
The same mechanism derives future-inflected rhetorical questions and interactional challenges. The interrogative in (11) is only interpreted as a challenge in a context in which both speakers are assumed to know that A does not attend class regularly (see Koshik 2003Koshik, Irene 2003 “ Wh-Questions Used as Challenges.” Discourse Studies 5: 51–77. Koshik, Irene 2003 “Wh-Questions Used as Challenges.” Discourse Studies 5: 51–77. ; Rosemeyer 2018Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. ). As in (9), the epistemic gradient is balanced, but in contrast to (9), both A and B are assumed to be knowledgeable about the state of affairs in question. B’s interrogative in (11) ostensibly requests an inference by A about her knowledge regarding attending class regularly. However, due to the specific epistemic gradient in this situation, this request is incompatible with what A knows that B knows about A, i.e., their Common Ground (Stalnaker 1973Stalnaker, Robert 1973 “Presuppositions.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2: 447–457. Stalnaker, Robert 1973 “Presuppositions.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2: 447–457. ; Clark 1996Clark, Herbert H. 1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, Herbert H. 1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 92–121; Stalnaker 2002 2002 “Common Ground.” Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 701–721. 2002 “Common Ground.” Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 701–721. ). The utterance thus expresses that there is no way for B to infer that he knows anything about attending class regularly. In the specific sequential context in (11), this leads to a reinterpretation of the request as an interactional challenge. On the basis of the knowledge that A does not attend class regularly, B believes A to not be in a position to criticize Pedro for not having attended class.
| A: | Pedro no vino a clase hoy. |
| B: |
¿Qué
what
vas
go.prs.ind.2sg
a
to
sab-er
go-inf
tú
you
de
of
ir
go.inf
a
to
clase
class
regularmente?
regularly ‘What would you know about attending class regularly?’ |
Table 1 summarizes our description of the epistemic gradient we propose for the examples in (9)–(11). It shows that the interactional functions of future-inflected wh-interrogatives are derived systematically and predictably from the semantics of the interrogative construction and the context, understood in terms of the epistemic gradient between the speakers.
| Example | Speaker knowledge | Hearer knowledge |
|---|---|---|
| (9) | − | − |
| (10) | − | + |
| (11) | + | + |
Our hypothesis of a relationship between the semantics of the interrogative, the epistemic gradient between the speakers, and the interactional function of the interrogative leads us to formulate two research questions:
-
Which interactional functions do future-inflected wh-interrogatives express and to which degree are they distinguishable by features of the context?
-
To which degree do PF and SF display a specialization for the expression of these functions?
3.Data and methodology
In order to investigate the interactional functions of the future-inflected wh-interrogatives in Spanish, we used two corpora of spoken Spanish with data from Madrid (Spain), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Santiago de Chile (Chile): the C-ORAL ROM (Cresti and Moneglia 2005Cresti, Emanuela, and Massimo Moneglia 2005 C-ORAL-ROM. Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cresti, Emanuela, and Massimo Moneglia 2005 C-ORAL-ROM. Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ) and the COLA (Jørgensen and Eguía Padilla 2017Jørgensen, Annette Myre, and Esperanza Eguía Padilla 2017 Proyecto COLA. Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente. http://www.colam.org/Jørgensen, Annette Myre, and Esperanza Eguía Padilla 2017 Proyecto COLA. Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente. http://www.colam.org/). While the C-ORAL ROM only represents spoken Madrid Spanish from the time around 2005, the COLA represents contemporary spoken Spanish in all three Spanish dialects. The two corpora also differ in terms of the representation of diaphasic differences (whereas the C-ORAL ROM contains texts from various situations, including formal settings such as TV debates, the COLA is restricted to highly informal conversations), the age of the participants (the C-ORAL ROM contains speech from all age groups, whereas the COLA is restricted to the language of 13–19 year old adolescents) and size (whereas the C-ORAL ROM contains about 300,000 words, the COLA contains about 700,000 words). In order to maintain comparability between the two corpora, we eliminated those texts from the C-ORAL ROM that we consider dissimilar to the COLA data. Consequently, we reduced the C-ORAL ROM data to familiar and public conversations, dialogues, and monologues (C-ORAL tags efamcv, efamdl, efammn, epubcv, epubdl and epubmn). The characteristics of the two corpora are described in Table 2 below.
| C-ORAL ROM (selection) | COLA | |
|---|---|---|
| Dialect(s) | Madrid Spanish | Madrid Spanish Buenos Aires Spanish Santiago Spanish |
| Size | ~300,000 words | ~500,000 words (Madrid) ~70,000 words (Buenos Aires) ~150,000 words (Santiago) |
| Speech settings | Familiar and public conversations, dialogues, and monologues | |
| Participants | All age groups | Adolescents aged between 13 and 19 years old |
| Dating of recordings | around 2005 | 2002–2012 |
As a first step, we extracted all occurrences of the PF and SF from the C-ORAL ROM and the COLA. This was done by first extracting all occurrences of futurizing morphology using regular expressions and manually coding for sentence type. While time-consuming, this procedure is more likely to find all possible occurrences of the construction of interest. Our extraction procedures yielded a total of n = 199 occurrences of future-inflected wh-interrogatives. Table 3 describes the distribution of these data in our corpora.
| Corpus | Dialect | Total n |
|---|---|---|
| C-ORAL ROM | Peninsular Spanish | 76 |
| COLA | Madrid Spanish | 17 |
| Buenos Aires Spanish | 34 | |
| Santiago Spanish | 72 |
4.The situated meanings of Spanish future-inflected wh-interrogatives
Using the framework of Interactional Linguistics (Selting and Couper-Kuhlen 2001Selting, Margret, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen eds. 2001 Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Selting, Margret, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen eds. 2001 Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ) and Dialogical Theory (Linell 2009aLinell, Per 2009a “Constructions in Dialogue.” In Contexts and Constructions, ed. by Alexander Bergs, and Gabriele Diewald, 97–110. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Linell, Per 2009a “Constructions in Dialogue.” In Contexts and Constructions, ed. by Alexander Bergs, and Gabriele Diewald, 97–110. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , b 2009b Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. 2009b Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. ), we developed a typology of situated meanings (Linell 2009b 2009b Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. 2009b Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. ) based on both linguistic markers on the sentential level (e.g., person/number marking, type of wh-element, etc.) and features of the immediate discourse structure and context. For a total of n = 11 occurrences, we were unable to identify a situated meaning due to issues such as transcription errors or poor audio quality. These occurrences were therefore excluded from the subsequent analysis, leaving a total of n = 188 cases. Table 4 summarizes the resulting typology, which forms the basis for the analysis of variation between PF and SF in Section 5. In this section, we first describe these situated meanings in detail and then demonstrate the relevance of our typology by showing that the situated meanings differ significantly in their quantitative distribution across the linguistic and contextual markers outlined above.
| Function type | Situated meanings | Description | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| Request for information | Request for elaboration | Request information about a current topic (future event) | 39 |
| New Topic | Request information about a new topic (future event) | 39 | |
| Challenge | Agenda challenge | Challenge the speaker agenda (=the relevance of a previous intervention by the interlocutor) (=rhetorical question) | 50 |
| Content challenge | Challenge the veracity of the content of a previous intervention | 39 | |
| Request for inference | Request for speculation | Request information in a context about a past or present event where the interlocutor might be unable to provide this information | 18 |
| Request for confirmation of a hypothesis | Request confirmation of a hypothesis regarding a past or present event formulated by the speaker | 1 | |
| Exclamation | Request assessment of the unexpected high degree of a scalar property (beyond expectations) | 2 | |
| (Unclear) | 11 | ||
| Total | 199 | ||
4.1Types of situated meanings
With n = 78 cases, requests for information constitute the largest category on our data, in which the future morphology serves a purely temporal function. As a minimal example, see (12).
Students are talking about a school event that they will be attending. (COLA, Santiago de Chile, scawm4–02)
| A: |
tú
you
con
with
quién
who
vas
go.fut.ind.2sg
a
to
ven-ir
? come-inf
‘With whom will you come?’ |
| B: |
con
with
el
the
papito
handsome
Brad
Brad ‘With handsome Brad’ |
In (12), A requests information from B about a future event. B clearly recognizes this as a request for information and provides the relevant answer. In future-inflected requests for information, the future tense simply signals that the event at question lies in the future. In Table 4, we distinguished between new topic questions, which introduce a new topic into the discourse, and requests for elaboration, which seek addittional information about an already established topic. Example (12) illustrates a new topic question: the speakers have not yet discussed about who will accompany them to the event. Rosemeyer (2018Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. , 2019 2019 “Brazilian Portuguese in-situ Wh-Interrogatives between Rhetoric and Change.” Glossa 4(1): 1–29. 2019 “Brazilian Portuguese in-situ Wh-Interrogatives between Rhetoric and Change.” Glossa 4(1): 1–29. ) and Garassino (2022)Garassino, Davide 2022 “A Contrastive Perspective on French and Italian Wh-in situ Questions. A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach.” Functions of Language 29: 25–57. Garassino, Davide 2022 “A Contrastive Perspective on French and Italian Wh-in situ Questions. A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach.” Functions of Language 29: 25–57. have shown that the distinction between new topic questions and requests for elaboration is relevant for interpretating other interrogative constructions, such as Romance in-situ wh-questions. However, since this distinction did not affect the distribution of SF and PF in our data, we proceeded to collapse these situated meanings under the general category of request for information in the remainder of our analysis.
When used as interactional challenges, future-inflected wh-interrogatives question either the relevance of a previous intervention or the veracity of its content. In both cases, these refutational uses arise by inference: the speaker ostensibly requests information in a context where the epistemic cline between participants is balanced, and both participants are strongly expected to know the answer to the superficial request for information (Koshik 2003Koshik, Irene 2003 “ Wh-Questions Used as Challenges.” Discourse Studies 5: 51–77. Koshik, Irene 2003 “Wh-Questions Used as Challenges.” Discourse Studies 5: 51–77. ; Rosemeyer 2018Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. ). Consequently, the addressee is in a position to infer that the interrogative is not intended to elicit information but to challenge some aspect of a previous intervention.
Let us first describe future-inflected wh-interrogatives that challenge the relevance of a previous intervention, which we term agenda challenges. While this type of situated meaning is often labelled a “rhetorical question” in the literature (Caponigro and Sprouse 2007Caponigro, Ivano, and Jon Sprouse 2007 “Rhetorical Questions as Questions.” In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11 , ed. by Louise McNally, and Estela Puig-Waldmüller, 121–133. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.Caponigro, Ivano, and Jon Sprouse 2007 “Rhetorical Questions as Questions.” In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11, ed. by Louise McNally, and Estela Puig-Waldmüller, 121–133. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.), studies in Interactional Linguistics have identified it more specifically as a type of interactional challenge (Cerović 2016Cerović, Marijana 2016 “When Suspects Ask Questions: Rhetorical Questions as a Challenging Device.” Journal of Pragmatics 105: 18–38. Cerović, Marijana 2016 “When Suspects Ask Questions: Rhetorical Questions as a Challenging Device.” Journal of Pragmatics 105: 18–38. ). In Example (13), three students are discussing whether A should dress up for an event. A argues that dressing up is necessary given that the event’s formal nature. B responds that it does not matter because nobody will notice A. Finally, C supports B by using a future-inflected wh-interrogative that challenges the relevance of A’s initial argument. This strategy relies on the Common Ground between participants. By ostensibly asking ‘Who is going to look at you?’ in a context where B has just asserted that nobody will notice A, C invites A to infer that their interrogative conveys the same point. In other words, quién te va a ver should be interpreted as ‘nobody will look at/pay attention to you’.
Students are talking about how to dress for an event. (COLA, Buenos Aires, BABS2–03)
| A: |
te
you.acc
digo
say.prs.ind.1sg
que
that
van
go.prs.ind.3pl
a
to
est-ar
be-inf
re
very
formal
formal
la
the
gente
people
eh
eh
o
or
sea
be.prs.sbj.3sg
es
be.prs.ind.3sg
al
to.the
mediodía
noon
pero... but ‘I’m telling you that people will be [dressed] very formally! I mean, it will be at noon but...’ |
| B: |
ay
ay
pero
but
re
very
que
that
nadie
nobody
se
refl
da
give.prs.ind.3sg
cuenta
notice
de
of
lo que
what
ten-és
have-prs.ind.2sg
puesto
put.on.ptcp
‘Oh, but I’m sure no one notices what you’re wearing.’ |
| C: |
sí
yes
quién
who
te
you.acc
va
go.prs.ind.3sg
a
to
ver
see.inf
tipo
like
vos
you
no
neg
sos
be.prs.ind.2sg
importante
important ‘Yes. Who is going to look at you? I mean, you are not important.’ |
From an interactional perspective, the wh-interrogative functions as an argumentative move. Specifically, it realizes an agreeing second-pair part evaluation, which is typically stronger than the first evaluation by B (Pomerantz 1984Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 65–70; Pomerantz and Heritage 2012Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage 2012 “Preference.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Malden: Blackwell. Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage 2012 “Preference.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Malden: Blackwell. , 214–215). In other words, the sequence between B and C in (13) resembles sequences such as (14), where the second evaluation (gorgeous) is stronger than the first one (beautiful). This effect explains why rhetorical questions have been described as “emphatic assertions” (Egg 2007Egg, Markus 2007 “Meaning and Use of Rhetorical Questions.” In Proceedings of the 16th Amsterdam Colloquium, vol. 1, 73–78. Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam.Egg, Markus 2007 “Meaning and Use of Rhetorical Questions.” In Proceedings of the 16th Amsterdam Colloquium, vol. 1, 73–78. Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam.). Note that in (13), speaker C actually makes the agreement explicit in their turn by prefacing the polar particle sí ‘yes’.
Pomerantz (1984Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 65)
These considerations help explain why future-inflected wh-interrogatives are used as agenda challenges. The indirect strategy of inviting A to infer why their argument is irrelevant has greater persuasive potential than a direct dismissal, as A must reconstruct the inference themselves. In (13), C guides this inference process by adding a post-expansion that makes explicit the reason why A’s argument is irrelevant: vos no sos importante ‘you are not important’. In other words, C provides the premise on which the inference process is based. This enhances the rhetorical effect of the wh-interrogative and clearly marks C’s turn as playful banter (Culpeper 1996Culpeper, Jonathan 1996 “Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness.” Journal of Pragmatics 25 (3): 349–367. Culpeper, Jonathan 1996 “Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness.” Journal of Pragmatics 25 (3): 349–367. ; Haugh 2010Haugh, Michael 2010 “Jocular Mockery, (Dis)affiliation, and Face.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (8): 2106–2119. Haugh, Michael 2010 “Jocular Mockery, (Dis)affiliation, and Face.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (8): 2106–2119. ).
In many other cases, these expansions take the form of conditionals, underscoring their role in reconstructing the inferential process. In (15), the interrogative cómo va a quedar todo eso is used to challenge the adequacy and relevance of B’s prior intervention. Here, the pre-expansion si lo estás grabando, formatted as a conditional, serves to identify the premise of the inference.
B has just finished explaining how she is the best in a lot of her classes (tai chi, singing, piano). (C-ORAL ROM, Madrid, efamdl01)
| A: |
si
if
lo
it
est-ás
be-prs.ind.2sg
grab-ando
record-ger
cómo
how
va
go.prs.ind.3sg
a
to
qued-ar
stay-inf
todo
all
eso
this ‘If you are recording this [right now], how will this sound [to the listeners]?’ |
| B: |
claro
sure
de
of
pedante
prig
total
total ‘Sure, like (I’m a) a total prig.’ |
When used as content challenges, future-inflected wh-interrogatives do not question the relevance of a prior intervention but rather its content. Consequently, the interrogative functions as a means to negotiate stance. A typical example is given in (16) below. A and B are talking about a friend who went to work despite being sick. A reports that the friend claims the company will not pay her if she does not go (le descuentan). B expresses surprisal at this assertion through the echo interrogative le descuentan. In response, A rephrases the claim as no le pagan ‘they don’t pay her’, suggesting that she interpreted B’s utterance as a request for repair, a common response strategy to challenges (Rosemeyer 2018Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. ). B now uses the future-inflected wh-interrogative cómo no le van a pagar to issue a content challenge. Note that the interrogative is partially echoic, repeating the negation, dative pronoun, and predicate from the previous turn, while the future tense is not repeated, signaling its specific contribution to the challenge interpretation. As in Example (13), this strategy relies on the Common Ground between participants. B’s interrogative ostensibly asks how it is possible that the company will not pay their friend, implying that A should know that it is impossible and illegal, since the friend is entitled to sick leave. A’s response acknowledges this shared knowledge: by attributing the statement to their friend (eso dice), she indirectly confirms that the claim cannot be true and that her friend must have been misinformed.
A couple is talking about a friend who is at work at the supermarket Alcampo today despite having the flu (C-ORAL ROM, Madrid, efamdl34)
| A: |
dice
say.prs.ind.3sg
que
that
si
if
no
neg
va
go.prs.ind.3sg
Alcampo
Alcampo
y
and
si
if
no
neg
se
refl
present-a
present-prs.ind.3sg
le
dat.3sg
descuent-an
reduce-prs.ind.3pl
‘She says that if she doesn’t go to Alcampo and if she doesn’t show up, they reduce (part of her salary)’ |
| B: |
[le
dat.3sg
descuentan] reduce-prs.ind.3pl
‘They reduce (part of her salary)?’ |
| A: |
[no
neg
le ]
dat.3sg
no
neg
le
her.dat
pag-an... pay-prs.ind.3pl
y
and
así
so
yendo
go.ger
‘They don’t, they don’t pay her, and so on…’ |
| B: |
cómo
how
no
neg
le
dat.3sg
van
go.prs.ind.3pl
a
to
pag-ar
pay-inf
‘How could they not pay her?’ |
| A: |
eso
that
dice
say.prs.ind.3sg
‘That’s what she says’ |
When used as requests for inference, future-inflected wh-interrogatives signal that the speaker does not expect the addressee to be able to provide a fully adequate answer. We distinguish three subtypes of requests for inference: requests for speculation, requests for confirmation of a hypothesis, and exclamations.
In our data, requests for speculation (n = 18) are much more frequent than requests for confirmation of a hypothesis (n = 1) and exclamations (n = 2). As an example of a request for speculation, consider (17) below. A and B have been discussing movie dubbing. A has taken a strong stance against dubbing, arguing that he wants to hear the actors’ original voices. In the first three lines of (17), this discussion is wrapped up: B agrees to A’s evaluation me parece una pena and A repeats una pena. At this point, a clear consensus has been reached, and the topic seems to have been exhausted. However, A introduces a related, new topic by using the future-inflected wh-interrogative quién habrá impuesto la costumbre del doblaje to elicit speculation from B. A explicitly signals that this request is difficult to answer by offering the candidate answer yo lo relaciono con la censura, prefaced with yo ‘I’. In this candidate answer, yo functions as a a contrastive topic, presupposing that other answers are possible. In other words, yo highlights the subjectivity of the candidate answer while inviting B to propose an alternative. In addition, A further signals an ironic stance toward his own candidate answer through the framed evaluation (Clift 1999Clift, Rebecca 1999 “Irony in Conversation.” Language in Society 28 (4): 523–553. Clift, Rebecca 1999 “Irony in Conversation.” Language in Society 28 (4): 523–553. ) es un poco oscuro eso and by laughing. B’s response is clearly type-adequate: he not only provides a possible explanation but also frames it as an inference by prefacing it with the epistemic marker creo que sí ‘I think that you are right’, indicating a relatively low degree of epistemic commitment. In addition, he employs the evidential construction incluso me dijeron in the second part of his explanation, which also mitigates his commitment towards the truth of the proposition. A’s response ah suggests that he accepts this interpretation.
A and B are discussing the topic of movie dubbing (C-ORAL ROM, Madrid, epubdl12)
| A: |
[me
dat.1sg
parec-e] see-prs.ind.3sg
una
a
pena
shame ‘I think it’s a shame’ |
| B: |
sí
yes ‘Yes’ |
| A: |
una
a
pena
shame ‘A shame’
quién
who
habr-á
have.fut.ind-3sg
impuesto
impose.ptcp
la
the
costumbre
habit
del
of.the
doblaje
dubbing ‘Who imposed the habit of dubbing’
yo
I
lo
it
relacion-o
associate-prs.ind.1sg
con
with
la
the
censura
censorship ‘Personally, I believe it has to do with the censorship’ [es
be.prs.ind.3sg
un
a
poco] bit
oscuro
dark
eso
this [((laughs)) ] ‘It’s a bit of a dark topic’ |
| B: |
[bueno
well ‘Well here’
acá ] here [creo
believe.prs.ind.1sg
‘I think so’
que
that
sí ] yes
que
that
a
to
part-ir
start-inf
de
of
la
the
época
period
franquista
francoist
se
refl
empezó
begin-pst.pfv.ind.3sg
‘that people started with this after the beginning of the Francoist period’
incluso
even
me
dat.1sg
dij-eron
say.pst.pfv.ind-3pl
que
that
se
refl
hasta
even
se
refl
dobl-aba-n
dub-pst.ipfv.ind.3-pl
por
for
ejemplo
example
producciones
productions
mejicanas
mexican ‘They even told me that people even dubbed Mexican productions, for example’ |
| A: |
ah ‘Ah’ |
Requests for confirmation of a hypothesis have been discussed in recent research under various labels, including hypothetical interrogatives and inferential interrogatives (Reig Alamilio 2019Reig Alamilio, Asela 2019 “Las interrogativas hipotéticas con qué invariable en español: Un tipo de interrogativas parciales marcadas.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12 (1): 155–178. Reig Alamilio, Asela 2019 “Las interrogativas hipotéticas con qué invariable en español: Un tipo de interrogativas parciales marcadas.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12 (1): 155–178. ; Jiménez-Fernández and Tubino-Blanco 2023Jiménez-Fernández, Ángel L., and Mercedes Tubino-Blanco 2023 “Inferential Interrogatives with qué in Spanish.” Languages 8 (4): 282. Jiménez-Fernández, Ángel L., and Mercedes Tubino-Blanco 2023 “Inferential Interrogatives with qué in Spanish.” Languages 8 (4): 282. ). The request for confirmation of a hypothesis meaning arises when a transitive future-inflected interrogative with the interrogative pronoun qué ‘what’ is used, and a candidate answer is provided as a direct object. In our data, we identified only one example of this situated meaning. In (18), three students collaboratively develop a humorous fiction (Kotthoff 2009Kotthoff, Helga 2009 “Joint Construction of Humorous Fictions in Conversation. An Unnamed Narrative Activity in a Playful Keying.” Journal of Literary Theory 3 (3): 195–217. Kotthoff, Helga 2009 “Joint Construction of Humorous Fictions in Conversation. An Unnamed Narrative Activity in a Playful Keying.” Journal of Literary Theory 3 (3): 195–217. ) in which they are attacked by the ‘crazy old woman’ from across the street. Using the future-inflected wh-interrogative qué tendrá mierda en la boca, C formulates a hypothesis. Possibly due to the humorous framing, this hypothesis is neither confirmed nor disconfirmed in the data. Reig Alamilio (2019Reig Alamilio, Asela 2019 “Las interrogativas hipotéticas con qué invariable en español: Un tipo de interrogativas parciales marcadas.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12 (1): 155–178. Reig Alamilio, Asela 2019 “Las interrogativas hipotéticas con qué invariable en español: Un tipo de interrogativas parciales marcadas.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12 (1): 155–178. , 175) notes that requests for confirmation of a hypothesis are “frequent in colloquial Spanish in Spain” (our translation). Our example is from Buenos Aires, suggesting that this use may be more widespread than previously assumed.
Students are joking around. (COLA, Buenos Aires, BABS2–04)
| A: |
una
a
vieja
old
loca
crazy.woman
en frente
opposite
auxilio
help
auxilio
help ‘A crazy old woman across the street… Help! Help!’ |
| B: |
[FBI
‘FBI...
SWAT ] SWAT’ |
| C: |
[
qué
what
tendrá
have.fut.ind.3sg
mierda
shit
en
in
la
the
boca
] mouth ‘She has got shit in her mouth, doesn’t she?’ (lit. ‘What will she have shit in her mouth?’) |
| A: |
vengan
come.prs.sbj.3pl
a
to
ayud-ar=nos
help-inf=acc.1pl
‘Come, help us!’ |
In our data, we identified two examples in which the future-inflected wh-interrogative functions as an exclamation. However, due to the sexist nature of these examples, we instead discuss (19), drawn from the CORLEC corpus (Marcos Marín 2017Marcos Marín, Francisco 2017 Corpus oral de referencia de la lengua española contemporánea. Available online at http://www.lllf.uam.es/ESP/Info%20Corlec.html. Last access 20/01/2017.Marcos Marín, Francisco 2017 Corpus oral de referencia de la lengua española contemporánea. Available online at http://www.lllf.uam.es/ESP/Info%20Corlec.html. Last access 20/01/2017.). Here, the speakers are discussing a type of chocolate candy consisting of a chocolate egg containing a miniature toy that must be assembled. A describes how she came across one of these toys. When she first received it, A debated whether to give the toy for her little niece or nephew, because the toy’s instructions warned that small children may swallow or inhale its parts, and the children’s mother, A’s sister, is very particular about such matters. In the extract, the speaker employs an inner monologue to convey her own response to the instructions. She initially considers the warning foolish, because children are not so careless, but then she recalls that when her sister, when she was younger, used to do similar things.
Conversation between friends (CORLEC, Segovia, ccon011a)
| A: |
No
neg
y
and
que
that
además
also
que
that
se
refl
puede-n
can.prs.ind.3-pl
inhal-ar, inhale-inf
¿sabe-s?
know.prs.ind-2sg
‘No, and also that they can inhale them, you know?’
Y
and
dije
say.pst.pfv.ind.1sg
yo... I
“¡Qué
what
tontería!”
silliness
digo, say.prs.ind.1sg
‘And I said, “this is silly!”, I said’
¡Cómo
how
va
go.prs.ind.3sg
a
to
ser
be.inf
tan
so
tonto
silly
un
a
niño...
kid
de... !”
of ‘How can a kid be so silly to...!’
Pero
but
me
dat.1sg
acord-é
remember-pst.pfv.ind.1sg
de
of
cuando
when
esta
this
era
be.pst.ipfv.ind.3sg
pequeña
little ‘But then I remembered when this one [her sister] was small’
y
and
dije
say.pst.pfv.ind.1sg
“Ah, ah
pues
so
es
be.prs.ind.3sg
verdad
truth
que
that
los
the
niños
children
pequeños
small
hace-n
do.prs.ind.3-pl
esas
these
cosas.”
things ‘And I said “Ah okay, it’s true that little children do these things”’ |
The exclamative wh-interrogative is embedded in a sequence beginning with the more common qué + NP interrogative qué tontería, which clearly indexes the speaker’s negative stance towards the instructions. The wh-interrogative then functions to explain this stance. In line with previous descriptions of interrogative exclamations, it expresses “an unexpected high degree of a scalar property” (Auer 2016Auer, Peter 2016 “ ‘Wie geil ist das denn?’ Eine neue Konstruktion im Netzwerk ihrer Nachbarn.” Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 44 (1): 69–92. Auer, Peter 2016 “ ‘Wie geil ist das denn?’ Eine neue Konstruktion im Netzwerk ihrer Nachbarn.” Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 44 (1): 69–92. , 82). Specifically, it conveys that children must be sillier than the speaker would have expected for the instructions to make sense. We include such exclamations in the category of requests for inference because they carry an evaluative meaning (Auer 2016Auer, Peter 2016 “ ‘Wie geil ist das denn?’ Eine neue Konstruktion im Netzwerk ihrer Nachbarn.” Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 44 (1): 69–92. Auer, Peter 2016 “ ‘Wie geil ist das denn?’ Eine neue Konstruktion im Netzwerk ihrer Nachbarn.” Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 44 (1): 69–92. , 82) and invite an agreeing evaluative response from the addressee. Notably, although the example represents reported thought, it reproduces a dyadic structure: the speaker superficially responds to herself with ah pues es verdad que los niños pequeños hacen esas cosas, even though this response represents a disagreement with her own prior thought.
4.2Distribution across linguistic and contextual variables
In this section, we assess the empirical validity of the typology of situated meanings introduced in Section 4.1 by showing that these meaning types differ significantly in their quantitative distribution across linguistic and contextual variables. In line with the Dialogical Theory of Language, differences in discourse function are expected to surface as systematic contrasts in distribution across linguistic and contextual dimensions.
Let us first analyze preferred discourse structure. Figure 1 visualizes the distribution of the situated meanings in terms of answer type (left plot) and the position of the interrogative within the turn (right plot). For the variable ‘Answer’, we distinguished three levels: ‘None’, ‘Polar’ (polar responses such as ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or emphatic polar markers like claro ‘sure’) and ‘Wh’ (response providing the requested information, as in Example [12]). Future-inflected requests for information are clearly more likely to elicit a response than other function types, receiving answers in 62% of the cases (n = 48/78), compared to 29–34% for the other types. This difference reached statistical significance according to a chi-square test of independence (χ 2(3, n = 188) = 15.5, p < .001), indicating that requests for information are more central to a turn and more likely to provoke s response.
The corpus data also reveals distributional differences between agenda and content challenges. Agenda challenges elicit a polar response in 24% of cases (n = 12/50), compared to 15% for content challenges (n = 6/39). Although this difference did not reach statistical significance (χ 2(2, n = 89) = 1.8, p = .4), it may reflect the evaluative nature of agenda challenges (see Example [13]), which often invite agreement or stance confirmation rather than new information. By contrast, content challenges, which confront a prior claim, typically make a justification relevant in the next turn.
Agenda challenges occur in turn-initial position in 28% of cases (n = 36/50), compared to 52% for content challenges (n = 10/39), confirming that the former are more often embedded within expanded turns. This difference reached statistical significance according to a chi-square test of independence (χ 2(2, n = 89) = 17.1, p < .001). It corresponds to the higher frequency of pre- and post-expansions containing the premise for the inference in agenda challenges (34%, n = 17/33) than with content challenges (15%, n = 6/33), as visualized in Figure 2. This difference reached marginal statistical significance (χ 2(1, n = 89) = 3.1, p < .1). The results indicate that the inferential processes leading to the interpretion of a future-inflected wh-interrogative as an agenda challenge require more contextual scaffolding. Conversely, requests for inference always occur without expansions (100%, n = 21), and requests for information do so only infrequently (6.4%, n = 78).
Quantitative differences between agenda and content challenges also emerge in their preferred wh-elements and polarity patterns (see Figure 3). Agenda challenges employ para qué ‘what for’ in 16% (n = 8/50) of cases, whereas content challenges strongly favor cómo ‘how’ and por qué ‘why’ (79.5%, n = 31/39). A chi-square test of independence examining the distribution of agenda and content challenges regarding these three wh-types reached statistical significance (χ 2(2, n = 10.9) = 17.1, p < .01). Although both types of challenges serve a metalinguistic function, i.e. they comment on the current discourse, their preferred wh-patterns point to a functional distinction: agenda challenges tend to question the relevance or purpose of a prior utterance (para qué), whereas content challenges target the content of that utterance (cómo, por qué). In contrast, requests for information predominantly employ qué ‘what’, cuándo ‘when’, dónde ‘where’ and quién ‘who’ (88.5%, n = 69/78), and requests for inference largely follow this distribution (66.7%, n = 14/21).
Regarding polarity, content challenges are negated in 30.8% (n = 12/39) of cases, and agenda challenges in 6% (n = 3/50), whereas requests for information and requests for inference never occur with negation. This pattern suggests that negation functions not merely as a grammatical feature but as a pragmatic resource: in challenges, it emphasizes the speaker’s contesting stance and signals dissent, while in information-seeking moves, affirmation facilitates cooperative knowledge exchange. Challenges are negated because they express disagreement with a prior utterance, whereas requests for inference or speculation, which open up an epistemic space rather than contradicting content, are typically non-negative. Thus, polarity provides another crucial cue for identifying and distinguishing the interactional functions of future-inflected wh-interrogatives.
In our discussion of Example (18), we highlighted that requests for speculation are used to introduce a a new aspect of a topic. The topic-setting role of requests for inference is quantitatively confirmed by their association with discourse-new propositions, as visualized in Figure 4: 95.2% of these tokens (n = 20/21) involve a discourse-new proposition, compared to only 69.2% of requests for information (n = 54/78). This difference reached statistical significance according to a chi-square test of independence (χ 2(1, n = 99) = 4.1, p < .05). At the other extreme of the spectrum, content challenges rarely involve discourse-new propositions (15.4%, n = 6/39). The difference between requests for information and content challenges reached marginal statistical significance (χ 2(1, n = 123) = 3.8, p < .1).
Finally, interjections such as ay, uy, or ah typically indicate a change in the speaker stance, reflecting either the speaker’s desire to shift the topic (Heritage 1984Heritage, John 1984 “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Heritage, John 1984 “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) or to draw the interlocutor’s attention to the topic change (Montes 1999Montes, Rosa Graciela 1999 “The Development of Discourse Markers in Spanish: Interjections.” Journal of Pragmatics 31 (10): 1289–1319. Montes, Rosa Graciela 1999 “The Development of Discourse Markers in Spanish: Interjections.” Journal of Pragmatics 31 (10): 1289–1319. ). In line with this interpretation, our results show that interjections occur more frequently in requests for information (40%, n = 6/15) than with the other discourse functions (see Figure 4). This difference reached statistical significance in a chi-square test of independence (χ 2(1, n = 188) = 23.8, p < .001), with the other three discourse functions pooled.
Requests for speculation are questions about the state of things in the present or past. Figure 5 visualizes the distribution of the situated meanings according to predicate type and tense, two parameters that have been shown to distinguish temporal and modal readings in interrogatives (Rosemeyer and Sansiñena 2022Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. ). Quantitatively, requests for inference (42.9%, n = 9/21), and, to a lesser extent, content challenges (23.1%, n = 9/39), are associated with stative predicates, whereas requests for information favor eventive predicates (12.8%, n = 10/78). The difference between requests for inference and requests for information reached statistical significance (χ 2(1, n = 118) = 7.8, p < .01), while the difference between content challenges and requests for information did not (χ 2(1, n = 117) = 1.3, p = .3). Moreover, only requests for inference occur in future-in-past contexts (28.6%, n = 6/21), supporting the view that these forms express an epistemic modal reading of the future tense.
Quantitative contrasts also arise with respect to subject type and person morphology. As shown in Figure 6, requests for information frequently feature personal pronouns (10.3%, n = 8/78) and overwhelmingly exhibit second-person morphology (60.3%, n = 47/78). This aligns with their interactional function of mobilizing a response from the addressee (Stivers and Rossano 2010Stivers, Tanya, and Federico Rossano 2010 “Mobilizing Response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (1): 3–31. Stivers, Tanya, and Federico Rossano 2010 “Mobilizing Response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (1): 3–31. ). Example (12) illustrates this pattern: the prefaced pronoun tú ‘you’ serves not only to capture the interlocutor’s attention but also to create a contrastive or topicalizing interpretation (Matos Amaral and Schwenter 2003Matos Amaral, Patrícia, and Scott A. Schwenter 2003 “Contrast and the (Non-)Occurrence of Subject Pronouns.” In Selected Proceedings of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 116–127. Somerville: Cascadilla.Matos Amaral, Patrícia, and Scott A. Schwenter 2003 “Contrast and the (Non-)Occurrence of Subject Pronouns.” In Selected Proceedings of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 116–127. Somerville: Cascadilla.; Gutiérrez-Bravo 2008Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo 2008 “Topicalization and Preverbal Subjects in Spanish Wh-Interrogatives.” In Selected Proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, and Elena Valenzuela, 225–236. Somerville: Cascadilla.Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo 2008 “Topicalization and Preverbal Subjects in Spanish Wh-Interrogatives.” In Selected Proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, and Elena Valenzuela, 225–236. Somerville: Cascadilla.).
By contrast, requests for inferences frequently involve a NP subject (28.6%, n = 6/21), and almost always third-person morphology (90.5%, n = 19/21), whereas third-person morphology is much less frequent for the other functions. This finding points to the fact that requests for inference are used to change topics and introduce discourse- new participants. This aligns with the finding that requests for inference typically involve discourse-new propositions (see Figure 4).
Figure 6 likewise reveals important distributional patterns for interactional challenges and requests for inference. Agenda challenges frequently contain first-person morphology (48%, n = 24/50), whereas first-person forms is much less common in requests for information (15.4%, n = 12/78). This difference is statistically significant according to a chi-square test of independence (χ 2(1, n = 128) = 14.5, p < .001). The high relative frequency of first-person morphology in agenda challenges is largely driven by the presence of the quasi-formulaic expression qué (le) voy/vamos a hacer ‘What can you do about it’, illustrated in (20). In such cases, the interrogative challenges the relevance of the speaker’s own prior feelings (what Ehmer and Rosemeyer 2018Ehmer, Oliver, and Malte Rosemeyer 2018 “When ‘Questions’ Are Not Questions. Inferences and Conventionalization in Spanish But-Prefaced Partial Interrogatives.” Open Linguistics 4: 70–100. Ehmer, Oliver, and Malte Rosemeyer 2018 “When ‘Questions’ Are Not Questions. Inferences and Conventionalization in Spanish But-Prefaced Partial Interrogatives.” Open Linguistics 4: 70–100. describe as the “reflexive” nature of first-person challenges). We interpret the formulaic status of this expression as evidence that (a) agenda challenges constitute a recurrent and necessary interactional move and (b) future-inflected wh-interrogatives are a particularly suitable construction for performing this function. First-person future-inflected wh-interrogatives with hacer account for 18% (n = 9/50) of all agenda challenges in our corpus, but only 6% (n = 5/78) of requests for information. Notably, the verb hacer never appears in content challenges.
A is narrating a story set in his youth (C-ORAL ROM, Madrid, efammn04)
‘And there was a girl called Cristina Pozas around, who I was crazy about. What can you do about it.’
In sum, the quantitative distributions confirm that requests for information, agenda challenges, content challenges, and requests for inference differ systematically across linguistic and contextual variables. These patterns support the functional distinctions proposed in Section 4.1 and demonstrate that each meaning type occupies a distinct functional niche in interaction.
5.The distribution of SF and PF
Having established the situated meanings of future-inflected wh-interrogatives, we now proceed to analyze the distribution of SF and PF in relation to these meanings. As described in Section 2, previous studies of the variation between the two linguistic formats have found SF to be more likely than PF to express modal meanings, particularly epistemic modality. In a sentence such as (7), repeated here as (21), the SF signals that the speaker has less-than-perfect evidence for the truth of the assertion.
| A: |
Pedro
Pedro
no
neg
vino
come.pst.pfv.ind.3sg
a
to
clase
class
hoy. today ‘Pedro didn’t come to class today’ |
| B: |
Est-ará
be-fut.ind.3sg
enfermo. sick ‘He must be sick’ |
If the SF is also specialized in the expression of epistemic modality in wh-interrogatives, the same mechanism should apply: SF-inflected wh-interrogatives should signal that the addressee of the interrogative has less-than-perfect evidence for the truth for their response. In our description of situated meanings, we observed that only one function type meets this condition: requests for inference, which occur in contexts where the interlocutor is not expected to provide the requested information. These considerations lead to the hypothesis that the SF is relatively more frequent in requests for inference, whereas the PF is more frequent in requests for information and interactional challenges.
Figure 7 visualizes the distribution of SF- and PF-inflected wh-interrogatives according to the three discourse function types identified in Section 4 across the three dialects. As predicted, SF-inflected interrogatives are almost entirely restricted to cases classified as requesting an inference. Not a single SF-inflected interrogative occurs in requests for information/elaboration or interactional challenges. Conversely, we observed n = 3 cases in which a PF-inflected interrogative is used to request an inference. A chi-square test of independence confirmed this highly significant association between future construction and type of discourse function (χ 2(3, n = 188) = 158.3, p < .001). No substantial differences emerged among the three dialects with respect to this distribution.
Consequently, our results suggest that in Spanish wh-interrogatives, the PF-SF alternation signals the speaker’s expectations regarding the hearer’s ability to produce the desired inference. This explains why (22a) is acceptable to native speakers, while (22b) is perceived as less natural. The phrasing in (22b) is strange because if the speaker expected the hearer to have any difficulty producing the intended inference (‘you are wrong to believe me sad’), the interactional challenge would fail, creating a conflict with the post-expansion (‘I just won the lottery’).
-
¿Cómohowvoygo.prs.ind.1sgatoest-arbe-inftriste?sadSiifacab-ofinish-prs.ind.1sgdeofgan-arwin-inflatheloteríalottery
-
¿Cómohowest-arébe.fut.ind.1sgtriste?sadSiifacab-ofinish-prs.ind.1sgdeofgan-arwin-inflatheloteríalottery
‘How could I (lit. do I go to) be sad? I just won the lottery.’
Conversely, our account explains why the PF seems unidiomatic in examples such as (23). The PF-inflected wh-interrogative in (23b) signals that the addressee is expected to be able to respond to the request for information. Since a request for information about a future event is ruled out, given that the interrogative is used in a compound tense, the only plausible interpretation is that of an agenda challenge.
-
¿Quiénwhohabr-áhave.fut.ind-3sgimpuestoimpose.ptcplathecostumbrehabitdelof.thedoblaje?dubbing
-
¿Quiénwhovago.prs.ind.3sgatohaberhave.infimpuestoimpose.ptcplathecostumbrehabitdelof.thedoblaje?dubbing
‘Who imposed the habit of dubbing?’
6.Conclusions
In this paper, we set out to explore the functions of the SF and the PF in Spanish wh-interrogatives from the perspective of Linell’s (2009) Dialogical Theory of language use. Based on corpus data analysis presented in the previous sections, we identified a range of situated meanings, which we grouped in three functional types: requests for information, interactional challenges, and requests for inference. The relevance of these distinctions emerged from the differences in the distribution of these function types in relation to contextual indicators, both at the level of the individual utterances and their positions within the discourse.
Our analysis of the previously overlooked interactional functions of future-inflected wh-interrogatives highlighted the crucial role of the speaker’s stance or attitude (often signaled additionally by modal adverbs, discourse particles, adjectives, and verbs of mentation) and of intersubjective alignment, understood as the “grammaticalised means for encoding the relative mental directedness of speaker and addressee towards an entity or state of affairs” (Evans et al. 2018Evans, Nicholas, Henrik Bergqvist, and Lila San Roque 2018 “The Grammar of Engagement I: Framework and Initial Exemplification.” Language and Cognition 10: 110–140. Evans, Nicholas, Henrik Bergqvist, and Lila San Roque 2018 “The Grammar of Engagement I: Framework and Initial Exemplification.” Language and Cognition 10: 110–140. , 110). In this framework, pragmatics is regarded as an integral part of linguistic meaning (see Fillmore 1996Fillmore, Charles J. 1996 “The Pragmatics of Constructions.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language, ed. by Dan Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, and Guo Jiansheng. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Fillmore, Charles J. 1996 “The Pragmatics of Constructions.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language, ed. by Dan Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, and Guo Jiansheng. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.). In the examples we examined, invited inferences constitute a pragmatic constant within the semantics-pragmatics interface of these expressions.
We also observed that the fact that the use of SF is only common to requests for inference is related to the epistemic gradient between the participants. Given that the speaker assumes the hearer not to have an appropriate answer to the question posed, the interlocutor can only be expected to speculate in relation to the relevant event or state of affairs. In contrast, requests for information and interactional challenges, where the hearer is expected to have some evidence for the truth of the proposition, prototypically select the PF. This finding aligns with the view that the SF has advanced further along the grammaticalization path toward expressing modal meanings than the PF. Our results also support prior approaches emphasizing the importance of answerability for describing interrogatives in Romance languages (Myers 2007Myers, Lindsy Lee 2007 “WH-Interrogatives in Spoken French: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Their Form and Function.” PhD thesis. University of Texas at Austin.Myers, Lindsy Lee 2007 “WH-Interrogatives in Spoken French: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Their Form and Function.” PhD thesis. University of Texas at Austin.; Rosemeyer 2018Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. Rosemeyer, Malte 2018 “The Pragmatics of Spanish Postposed-Wh-Interrogatives.” Folia Linguistica 52 (2): 283–317. ; Waltereit 2018Waltereit, Richard 2018 “Inferencing, Reanalysis, and the History of the French est-ce que Question.” Open Linguistics 4: 56–69. Waltereit, Richard 2018 “Inferencing, Reanalysis, and the History of the French est-ce que Question.” Open Linguistics 4: 56–69. ; Reinhardt 2019Reinhardt, Janina 2019 “Regularity and Variation in French Direct Interrogatives: The Morphosyntax and Intonation of Question Forms in Reality TV Shows, Audio Books and Teaching Materials.” PhD thesis. University of Konstanz. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-y00meiao8m342Reinhardt, Janina 2019 “Regularity and Variation in French Direct Interrogatives: The Morphosyntax and Intonation of Question Forms in Reality TV Shows, Audio Books and Teaching Materials.” PhD thesis. University of Konstanz. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-y00meiao8m342). We found no evidence, however, for differences between European and Latin American Spanish dialects regarding the typical situated meanings of PF and SF.
Finally, Rosemeyer and Sansiñena (2022)Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. Rosemeyer, Malte, and María Sol Sansiñena 2022 “How Sentence Type Influences the Interpretation of Spanish Future Constructions.” Functions of Language 29 (1): 116–141. suggest that distinguishing modal and temporal meanings is considerably more difficult in declaratives than in interrogatives. We interpret this finding as reflecting a stronger conventionalization of SF for modal meanings in interrogatives, which can be attributed to the greater importance of explicitly marking the epistemic gradient in interrogatives. Our study provides empirical support for this conclusion.
Funding
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Freie Universität Berlin.