Picky predicates: Why believe doesn't like interrogative complements, and other puzzles

Picky predicates: Why believe doesn't like interrogative complements, and other puzzles. Theiler, N., Roelofsen, F., & Aloni, M. Natural Language Semantics, 2019.

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It is a long-standing puzzle why predicates like believe embed declarative but not interrogative complements (e.g., Bill believes that/*whether Mary left) and why predicates like wonder embed interrogative but not declarative complements (e.g., Bill wonders whether/*that Mary left). This paper shows how the selectional restrictions of a range of predicates (neg-raising predicates like believe, truth-evaluating predicates like be true, inquisitive predicates like wonder, and predicates of dependency like depend on) can be derived from semantic assumptions that can be independently motivated.

@article{Theiler:19nals,
	abstract = {It is a long-standing puzzle why predicates like believe embed declarative but not interrogative complements (e.g., Bill believes that/*whether Mary left) and why predicates like wonder embed interrogative but not declarative complements (e.g., Bill wonders whether/*that Mary left). This paper shows how the selectional restrictions of a range of predicates (neg-raising predicates like believe, truth-evaluating predicates like be true, inquisitive predicates like wonder, and predicates of dependency like depend on) can be derived from semantic assumptions that can be independently motivated.},
	author = {Theiler, Nadine and Roelofsen, Floris and Aloni, Maria},
	date-modified = {2021-08-17 00:00:00 +0000},
	doi = {10.1007/s11050-019-09152-9},
	journal = {Natural Language Semantics},
	keywords = {attitude predicates,inquisitive semantics,modality,questions,theoretical linguistics},
	mendeley-tags = {attitude predicates,inquisitive semantics,modality,questions,theoretical linguistics},
	title = {{Picky predicates: Why believe doesn't like interrogative complements, and other puzzles}},
	url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11050-019-09152-9},
	year = {2019},
	Bdsk-Url-1 = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11050-019-09152-9},
	Bdsk-Url-2 = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-019-09152-9}}

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