A compositional analysis of rising declaratives — a window into questions and assertions(joint work with Donka Farkas)

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Abstract

Languages consistently distinguish between declarative and interrogative sentences, and associate the former with assertive discourse moves, and the latter with questioning ones. In English, assertive moves are performed by uttering sentences in declarative form, pronounced with falling intonation, as illustrated in (1). Questioning moves are typically performed by uttering polar or constituent interrogatives in interrogative form, typically pronounced with rising intonation, as illustrated in (2).

(1) Basic declarative: The heating is not working. 

(2) Basic polar interrogative: Is the heating not working? 

This association between, declarative form and assertive speech acts, on the one hand, and interrogative form and questioning speech acts, on the other, is complicated by sentences like those in (3) and (4). These utterance types, so-called Rising Declaratives, are particularly relevant for understanding assertive and questioning speech acts since, as illustrated in (5) and (6), they can be used to perform both:

(3) Questioning rising declarative:

[Context: Seeing someone come in red-cheeked and shivering]

It's cold out there? 

(4) Assertive rising declarative:

[Context: Father bringing his son to swim class at a big gym for the first time]

I am here for the Petite Baleene class? My son's name is Joshua Wolf?

This talk addresses the following questions:

1. How do different subtypes of Rising Declaratives differ, and in what respects are they similar?
2. How do the interpretive properties of Rising Declaratives relate to their: (a) Declarative form, (b) Rising Intonation, (c) the context in which they're used?

We offer a compositional account that predicts the hybrid interpretive (question/assertion) profile of Rising Declaratives from their hybrid syntactic/prosodic profile (a)/(b), together with pragmatic inferences from the context in which they occur (c).