Agreeing to wonder: Non-intrusive questions in Japanese

Abstract

This paper analyzes kana-questions in Japanese as non-intrusive questions, such as oare-questions in Romanian (Farkas 2022). Kana-questions have two distinctive features: (i) Intonation interacts with this question type (Hirayama 2024), and (ii) they can respond to a question by signaling that the speaker agrees to wonder about the same issue. I derive the second feature from the combination of discourse effects from the question type and intonation; Kana-questions signal that the projected set might remain unchanged. Intonation contours, on the other hand, mark the discourse participant in charge of resolving issues.