CRISSP Seminar: Anders Holmberg

CRISSP is happy to announce another installment in the CRISSP Seminar series:

Lecturer: Anders Holmberg (Newcastle University/University of Cambridge)

Title: The syntax of negative questions

Date & time: Monday December 16, 2013, 17.00-18.30

Location: CRISSP/KULeuven HUBrussel, Stormstraat 2 (Hermes building), room 3112

Handout: Download the presentation (pdf)

Participation: free

Abstract

A theory of the syntax of questions, particularly yes-no questions,  is presented, based on Hamblin’s theory of the meaning of questions, but articulated to account for the syntax of answers, particularly to yes-no questions. There are two types of negative yes-no questions (in many languages, though possibly not all): those with negative bias and those with positive bias. They have quite different syntactic structure, which will be discussed, again using constraints on answers as one criterion.