Semantics of Questions

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the semantics of questions. Theories of questions aim at modeling natural-language questions (NLQ's) by providing their syntactic and/or semantic representations. Some theories provide syntax and semantics for interrogatives of artificial languages as well. Questions come as a pair with possible answers. The chapter shows how questions are conceptualized in logic and formal linguistics by concentrating on the most influential theories and their basic claims. It is sometimes claimed that the meaning of an interrogative can be adequately characterized by a paraphrase that specifies the illocutionary act typically performed in uttering the interrogative. As for an interrogative act, the illocutionary force amounts to a request from the speaker to the hearer. The basic idea of Belnap's theory of questions is that a question offers a set of “alternatives” together with some suggestions or indications as to what kind of choice or selection among them should be made.

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