Questions, Polarity and Alternative Semantics

Abstract

In this paper, I take a fresh look at questions in 'in-situ' languages, and specificall y at their semantics.The rethinking of the issue is prompted f1r st of all by a basic empirical problem: Bengali uses the same group of words to express wh-items as it does for negative polarity items and for free -choice 'Any'.Moreover, this is not an isolated or idiosyncratic morphological accident, but is a pattern which is found with great regularity in in-situ languages, many of which are genetically unrelated (Hindi, Japanese, Malayalam).While analyses which attempt to relate the negative polarity use to the other declarative use (free choice any) do exist (Lahiri (1995) for Hindi, Lee and Hom (1992) for English), the relationship to questions has remained unexplored.From the point of view of explanatory adequacy, as well as issues of acquisition and economy of description, a unification of the differing functions of these wh-items seems desirable.The challenge posed by these data consists in arriving a semantic interpretation for the k-word in Bengali which will make sense of all three of these contexts of use.The intuition is that while the interpretation of the k-word itself is a consistent and unified one, it gives rise to different semantics in the context of (i) the sentence type (declarative, negative or interrogative), (ii) the emphatic particle and (iii ) the demonstrative particle.'when' 'where' 'which' -x (inanimate nouns) 'what' (inanimate nouns) 'who' sglpl (nominative) 'who' sg/pl (accusative) 'whose' sg/pl e 1997 by Gillian c.

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