Where Question, Conditionals and Topics Converge. Onea, E. & Steinbach, M. In Aloni, M., Kimmelman, V., Roelofsen, F., Weidmann-Sassoon, G., Schulz, K., & Westera, M., editors, Logic, Language, and Meaning. Selected papers from the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium, pages 42–51, Berlin Heidelberg, 2012. Springer. ![Where Question, Conditionals and Topics Converge [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex 1 download One puzzling fact about German is that yes-no questions that surface as verb-first structures can be interpreted as conditionals in a topic position. We provide an analysis using the basic idea of inquisitive semantics that questions and assertions can be treated on a par as denoting sets of possibilities. The key assumption is that in topic position, questions can be interpreted as conditionals if and only if they contain exactly one highlighted alternative possibility. The analysis correctly predicts the distribution of wh-questions and the distribution of so called irrelevance-conditionals containing auch (`too') as well.
@inproceedings{OneaSteinbach:12,
abstract = {One puzzling fact about German is that yes-no questions that surface as verb-first structures can be interpreted as conditionals in a topic position. We provide an analysis using the basic idea of inquisitive semantics that questions and assertions can be treated on a par as denoting sets of possibilities. The key assumption is that in topic position, questions can be interpreted as conditionals if and only if they contain exactly one highlighted alternative possibility. The analysis correctly predicts the distribution of wh-questions and the distribution of so called irrelevance-conditionals containing auch (`too') as well.},
address = {Berlin Heidelberg},
author = {Edgar Onea and Markus Steinbach},
booktitle = {Logic, Language, and Meaning. Selected papers from the 18th {Amsterdam} Colloquium},
date-added = {2021-08-17 00:00:00 +0000},
date-modified = {2021-08-17 00:00:00 +0000},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-31482-7_5},
editor = {Maria Aloni and Vadim Kimmelman and Floris Roelofsen and Galit Weidmann-Sassoon and Katrin Schulz and Matthijs Westera},
keywords = {conditionals},
pages = {42--51},
publisher = {Springer},
title = {Where Question, Conditionals and Topics Converge},
url = {https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-31482-7_5},
year = {2012},
Bdsk-Url-1 = {https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-31482-7_5},
Bdsk-Url-2 = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31482-7_5}}
Downloads: 1
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