Canonical and non-canonical questions. Farkas, D. F. 2020. Manuscript, UCSC/Princeton, February 2020
Canonical and non-canonical questions [pdf]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
The general aim of this paper is to make progress in understanding what is common and what is not across canonical and non-canonical questions. After laying out the theoretical assumptions, I argue that the commonly assumed felicity conditions on canonical questions follow from the semantics and the basic conventional discourse effects of unmarked interrogatives. I further argue that special interrogative forms can be used to signal special conventional discourse effects that bring about the weakening or overriding of these default assumptions. As a case study, the properties of interrogatives in Romanian marked by the morpheme oare are investigated and accounted for in detail. I argue that oare-marked interrogatives exemplify a novel kind of non-canonical question that I dub non-intrusive.

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