Or not Alternative Questions, Focus and Discourse Structure

Authors

  • Maribel Romero University of Konstanz
  • Erlinde Meertens University of Konstanz
  • Andrea Beltrama University of Pennsylvania

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/elm.1.5026

Keywords:

alternative question, polar question, cornering, focus, polarity, negation, discourse structure

Abstract

Or not alternative questions like Are you coming or not? give rise to so-called ‘cornering effects’ (Biezma 2009), consisting of two parts: (i) they cannot appear discourse-initially, and (ii) they do not allow for follow-up questions. Building on recent experimental data (Beltrama, Meertens & Romero 2020), the present paper raises problems for current analyses (Biezma 2009, Biezma & Rawlins 2012, 2018), reframes the second part of cornering as not specific to NAQs but as a general constraint on questions in general, and develops a novel proposal for the first part of cornering. The key ingredients of the new proposal are the intrinsic focus structure of or not questions and its effects on discourse trees.

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Published

2021-07-30

Issue

Section

Articles