Mova0.5 pre-release⌕
☰
home / docs / papers / English / Bias in polar questions: Evidence from English and German production experiments

Bias in polar questions: Evidence from English and German production experiments

What it is about

The paper tests which polar question form English and German speakers choose when two kinds of bias are present: the speaker's original belief about p, and the contextual evidence that has just appeared. The forms are the positive question ("Is there a good restaurant?"), the prefixed "really" question, the low-negation question ("Is there no ...?") and the high-negation question ("Isn't there ...?"). In two production studies (42 speakers each, 30 items, six conditions), participants saw two pictures and captions and spoke the form they would use. The preferred form was chosen above 50% in five of six conditions. Examples: a positive question with no original belief and neutral evidence (63% in English); a low-negation question when there is no belief and evidence against p (59% English, 69% German); a high-negation question in the ambiguous condition (67% English, 58% German). Prosody was analysed for a subset: "really" questions in one condition had more accents on the non-finite verb (43%) than in the other (10%).

Ideas

For Mova

The English chapters are 26. Questions and 27-negation.md, with 31. Speech acts for the bias. The code is prag (speech acts and the frames reader) and en/src/ for the polarity lexicon. The German results are for comparison only. The measure is the agreement of the rule table with the six measured cells, with the axis-swap control.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5334/gjgl.27

@article{domaneschi2017bias,
  title = {{Bias in polar questions: Evidence from English and German production experiments}},
  author = {Domaneschi, Filippo and Romero, Maribel and Braun, Bettina},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.5334/gjgl.27},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.27}
}

References

42 references, 2 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. AnderBois, Scott. 2011. Issues and alternatives. San Diego, CA: UC San Diego dissertation. find
  2. Asher, Nicholas & Brian Reese. 2005. Negative bias in polar questions. In Emar Maier, Corien Bary & Jianneke Huitink (eds.), Proceedings of SuB9, 30–43. www.ru.nl/ncs/sub9. find
  3. Asher, Nicholas & Brian Reese. 2007. Intonation and discourse: Biased questions. Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 8. 1–38. find
  4. Baayen, R. Harald 2008. Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801686 ↗
  5. Baron, Jonathan. 1994. Thinking and deciding. 2nd edition; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  6. Borràs-Comes, Joan & Pilar Prieto. 2015. Intonation and the pragmatics of yes-no questions in central Catalan. In Proceedings of ICPhS 2015. Glasgow. find
  7. Büring, Daniel & Christine Gunlogson. 2000. Aren’t positive and negative polar questions the same?. Ms., University of California. http://homepage.univie.ac.at/daniel.buring/ phpsite/content/allpapers.html#gunlogsonburing Caponigro, Ivano & Jon Sprouse. 2007. Rhetorical questions as questions. In Estela Puig-Waldmüller (ed.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11, 121–133, Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. ↗
  8. Ciardelli, Ivano, Jeroen Groenendijk & Floris Roelofsen. 2013. Inquisitive semantics: a new notion of meaning. Language and Linguistics Compass 7(9). 459–476. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12037 Cunnings, Ian. 2012. An overview of mixed-effects statistical models for second language researchers. Second Language Research 28(3). 369–382. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658312443651 Escandell Vidal, Victoria. 1998. Intonation and procedural encoding: the case of Spanish interrogatives. In Villy Rouchota & Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Current issues in Relevance Theory, 169–203. Amsterdam, John Benjamins. ↗
  9. Farkas, Donka & Floris Roelofsen. 2014. Assertions, polar questions, and the land in between: division of labor between semantics and discourse pragmatics. Talk at the Non-Canonical Questions Workshop in Konstanz, 17–19 February 2014. Farkas, Donka & Floris Roelofsen. To appear. Division of labor in the interpretation of declaratives and interrogatives. find
  10. Farkas, Donka & Kim Bruce. 2010. On reacting to assertions and polar questions. Journal of Semantics 27. 81–118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffp010 ↗
  11. Fodor, Janet Dean. 2002. Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In Masako Hirotani (ed.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 32(1), 113–132. Amherst, MA: GSLA, University of Massachusetts. find
  12. Groenendijk, Jeroen & Martin Stockhof. 1984. Studies on the semantics of questions and the pragmatics of answers. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Dissertation. find
  13. Gunlogson, Christine. 2003. True to form: rising and falling declaratives as questions in English. New York: Routledge. find
  14. Hartung, Simone. 2006. Forms of negation in polar questions. Tübingen: University of Tübingen MA thesis. find
  15. Haselton, Martie G., Daniel Nettle & Paul W. Andrews. 2005. The evolution of cognitive bias. In David M. Buss (ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology, 724–746. Hoboken: Wiley. find
  16. Höhle, Tilmann. 1992. Über Verum Fockus im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte Sonderhefte 4. 112–141. find
  17. Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find our card
  18. Jaeger, T. Florian. 2008. Categorical data analysis: away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4). 434– 446. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.11.007 ↗
  19. Karttunen, Lauri. 1977. Syntax and semantics of questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 1(1). 3–44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00351935 ↗
  20. Krifka, Manfred. 2013. Response particles as propositional anaphors. In Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 23, 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v23i0.2676 Krifka, Manfred. to appear. Negated polarity questions as denegations of assertions. In Ferenc Kiefer & Chungmin Lee (eds.), Contrastiveness and scalar implicatures. Berlin: Springer. http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h2816i3x/Publications/NegatedPolarity-Questions.pdf. ↗
  21. Kügler, Frank. 2003. Do we know the answer? – Variation in yes-no-question intonation. In Susann Fischer, Ruben Vogel & Ralf van de Vijver (eds.), Experimental studies in linguistics, 9–29. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag. find
  22. Ladd, D. Robert. 1981. A first look at the semantics and pragmatics of negative questions and tag questions. In Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society 17, 164–171. find
  23. Lassiter, Daniel. 2011. Measurement and modality: The scalar basis of modal semantics. New York University dissertation. find
  24. Lauer, Sven. 2014. Mandatory implicatures in Gricean pragmatics. In Noah Goodman, Michael Franke & Judith Degen (eds.), Proceedings of the formal and experimental pragmatics workshop, 21–28. find
  25. Malamud, Sophia & Tamina Stephenson. 2015. Three ways to avoid commitments: Declarative force modifiers in the conversational scoreboard. Journal of Semantics 32(2). 275–311. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffu002 ↗
  26. Penka, Doris. 2011. Negative indefinites. Oxford: Oxford University Press. find
  27. Reese, Brian. 2006. The meaning and use of negative polar interrogatives. In Oliver Bonami & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 6, 331–354. find
  28. Repp, Sophie. 2013. Common ground management: modal particles, illocutionary negation and VERUM. In Daniel Gutzmann & Hans-Martin Gaertner (eds.), Beyond Expressives: Explorations in use-conditional meaning (Current research in the semantics/pragmatics interface (CRiSPI) 28), 231–274. Leiden: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004183988_008 Roelofsen, Floris & Donka Farkas. 2015. Polarity particle responses as a window onto the interpretation of questions and assertions. Language 91(2). 359–414. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1353/lan.2015.0017 Roelofsen, Floris, Noortje Venhuizen & Galit Weidman Sassoon. 2012. Positive and negative questions in discourse. In Emmanuel Chemla, Vincent Homer and Grégoire Winterstein (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17, 455–472. ↗
  29. Romero, Maribel. 2015. High negation in subjunctive conditionals and polar questions. In Eva Csipak & Hedde Zeijlstra (eds.), In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 19, 519–536. University of Göttingen. find
  30. Romero, Maribel & Chung-hye Han. 2002. Verum focus in negative yes/no questions and Ladd’s p/¬p ambiguity. In Brendan Jackson (ed.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XII, 204–224. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications. find
  31. Romero, Maribel & Chung-hye Han. 2004. On negative yes/no questions. L inguistics and Philosophy 27(5). 609–658. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LING.0000033850. 15705.94 Rooth, Mats. 1992. A theory of focus interpreation. Natural Language Semantics 1. 75–116. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02342617 ↗
  32. Savino, Michelina. 2012. The intonation of polar questions in Italian: Where is the rise? Journal of the International Phonetic Association 42(1). 23–48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S002510031100048X Savino, Michelina & Martine Grice. 2011. The perception of negative bias in Bari Italian questions. In Sónia Frota, Gorka Elordieta and Pilar Prieto (eds.), Prosodic categories: Production perception and comprehension (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 82), 187–206. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0137-3_8 ↗
  33. Schwarz, Bernhardt & Rajesh Bhatt. 2006. Light negation and polarity. In Raffaella Zanuttini et al. (eds.), Negation, tense, and clausal architecture, 175–198. Washington: Georgetown University Press. find
  34. Schwarzschild, Roger. 1999. GIVENness, AvoidF and other constraints on placement of focus. Natural Language Semantics 7(2). 141–177. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/ A:1008370902407 Stalnaker, Robert. 2002. Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy 25. 701–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020867916902 ↗
  35. Sudo, Yasutada. 2013. Biased polar questions in English and Japanese. In Daniel Gutzmann & Hand-Martin Gaertner (eds.), Beyond expressives: Explorations in use-conditional meaning (Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface (CRiSPI) 28), 275–296. Leiden: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004183988_009 ↗
  36. Trinh, Tue. 2014. How to ask the obvious. A presuppositional account of evidentail bias in Eng; sich yes/no questions. In Luka Crnic & Uli Sauerland (eds.), The art and craft of semantics: A festschrift for Irene Heim 2, 227–249. find
  37. Turco, Giuseppina, Christine Dimroth & Bettina Braun. 2013. Intonational means to mark verum focus in German and French. Language and Speech 56. 461–491. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1177/0023830912460506 Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Francesc Ballone, Carlo Schirru & Pilar Prieto. 2014. Intonation and its interfaces in Sardinian polar questions. Loquens 1(2). e014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2014.014 Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Ignasi Mascaró, Francesc Torres-Tamarit & Pilar Prieto. 2013. Intonation as an encoder of speaker’s certainty: Information and confirmation yes-no questions in Catalan. Language and speech 56(2). 163–190. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1177/0023830912443942 Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Meghan Armstrong & Pilar Prieto. 2014. The role of prosody in the encoding of evidentiality in Catalan. In Proceedings of the 7 th international conference on speech prosody 7, 1022–1026. van Rooij, Robert & Marie Šafárová. 2003. On polar questions. In Robert B. Young & Yuping Zhou (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 13, 292–309. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v13i0.2887 ↗
  38. Walkow, Msrtin. 2009. When to ask an inner negation polar question. In Maria Biezma & Jesse Harris (eds.), UMass occasional papers in linguistics 39, 125–146. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts. find
  39. Ward, Gregory & Julia Hirschberg. 1985. Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of the fall-rise intonation. Language 61. 747–776. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/414489 ↗
  40. Yalcin, Seth. 2012. Context probabilism. In Maria Aloni, Vladim Kimmelman, Floris Roelofsen, Galit W. Sasson, Katrin Schulz & Matthijs Westera (eds.), Logic, language and meaning. Revised selected papers from the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium, 12–21. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31482-7_2 ↗
  41. How to cite this article: Domaneschi, Filippo, Maribel Romero and Bettina Braun. 2017. Bias in polar questions: Evidence from English and German production experiments. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 26. 1–28, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.27 ↗ our card
  42. Copyright: © 2017 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS ↗

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/domaneschi-2017-bias-polar-questions-evidence-english/