The interaction of question particles and negation in embedded contexts: the case of alles

Abstract

The German question particle alles (Reis 1992; Zimmermann 2007) is characterised in the semantic literature as imposing plurality and exhaustivity requirements on the answer space. We report on novel experimental probing the interaction of alles and negation in embedded questions. We investigated alles with three embedding predicates: vergessen 'forget', wissen 'know', and überraschen 'surprise'. The data show that alles may be focussed and contributes to at-issue propositional content, on the basis of its interaction with negation.