A uniform semantics for embedded interrogatives

an answer, not necessarily the answer

Benjamin Spector

Paul Égré

pp. 1729-1784

in: Synthese 192 (6), 2015.

Abstract

Our paper addresses the following question: Is there a general characterization, for all predicates P that take both declarative and interrogative complements (responsive predicates in the sense of Lahiri’s 2002 typology, see Lahiri, Questions and Answers in Embedded Contexts, OUP, 2002), of the meaning of the P-interrogative clause construction in terms of the meaning of the P-declarative clause construction? On our account, if P is a responsive predicate and Q a question embedded under P, then the meaning of ‘P + Q’ is, informally, “to be in the relation expressed by P to some potential complete answer to Q”. We show that this rule allows us to derive veridical and non-veridical readings of embedded questions, depending on whether the embedding verb is veridical or not, and provide novel empirical evidence supporting the generalization. We then enrich our basic proposal to account for the presuppositions induced by the embedding verbs, as well as for the generation of intermediate exhaustive readings of embedded questions (Klinedinst and Rothschild in Semant Pragmat 4:1–23, 2011).