On the interpretation of concealed questions

Abstract

Baker (1968) observed that certain nouns can be interpreted as questions when they are complements of question-embedding verbs. Nouns used in this manner are called concealed questions (CQs). The italicized DPs in (1) exemplify the phenomenon. (1) a. Kim knows the capital of Vermont.1 ( = Kim knows what the capital of Vermont is.) b. Leslie has forgotten the price of milk. ( = Leslie has forgotten what the price of milk is.) c. Sandy told me the time of the meeting. ( = Sandy told me what the time of the meeting is.) Two issues arise concerning CQ interpretation. As the contrast in (2a) demonstrates that not every question-embedding verb can embed concealed questions, we may wonder which verbs can. And as the contrast in (2b) demonstrates that not every noun can serve as a concealed question in all circumstances, we may wonder which nouns can when. (2) a. Kim {knows/*wonders} the price of milk. b. Kim knows the {capital of/#large city in/largest city in} Vermont. (cf. Kim knows what the large city in Vermont is—it’s Burlington.) Previous answers to these questions have been that predicates must be individually specified for taking or not taking CQs as complements, and that CQs are headed by “functional nouns ” (i.e. nouns such as

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 105 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.