Echo questions as anaphoric phrases in English

Abstract

Echo questions have proven to be a difficult question type to explain using syntactic generalizations. This analysis explains why both syntactic and semantic concepts should be used to interpret echo questions. It will describe the basic properties of echo questions, including how they typically match an antecedent. This is explained by applying focus semantics, where focus is interpreted on the echo question and requires an alternative. The antecedent is determined as this alternative, and results in an anaphoric relationship between the two utterances. This analysis further examines this topic by discussing in detail the types of mismatches that arise between echo questions and their antecedents. Entailment is shown to be a proposed solution as to why certain types of mismatches are acceptable.