HEИндивидуална стипендия2022–2025

EPOQ · Explorations in polar question meaning and its variation

„Хоризонт Европа“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2022-09-01 → 2025-08-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 187 624 €
Участници: 1
Схема: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Въпросите, на които се отговаря с „да“ или „не“, се изследват чрез сравнение на различни езици и техните нюанси. Това помага да се разбере как една проста логическа операция се превръща в сложни форми на комуникация.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Explorations in polar question meaning and its variation

Asking questions is a deeply human experience. All human languages have a way of posing questions, including those that can be answered with yes or no, known as polar questions. The meaning of these utterances feels as undebatable as their conceptual primacy. One interlocutor describes a possible scenario in a form that requests a response, and the second interlocutor, by answering yes or no, tells them to the best of their knowledge if that is the case or not. As such, the formal meaning of polar questions, the “code” that returns "did you vote" if you enter "you voted", seems nothing other than a primitive logical operation that is conceivably identical across languages. Intuitive as it seems, a singular core meaning is at odds with the observed empirical complexity. Polar questions may encode nuanced meaning components such as bias and usage restrictions, and have diverse expressions in the morphosyntax and intonation. Languages do not behave in a uniform manner in these respects, either. While the sporadic research on languages beyond the few most widely studied languages have confirmed some components of our understanding of polar question meaning, they have also introduced a staggering range of novel nuances, clusterings between them, and unexpected structural correlates. How can languages create such rich and varying paradigms of nuances and form-meaning correspondences out of a simple shared logical operation? I offer what I call the Duality of Primary Polar Question Meanings as a way forward. There are two universally available meanings, but their differences may be empirically obscured to lead to the impression of a singular meaning. To use a color analogy: Polar question meaning may appear to be singular and indivisible red, but it is in fact composed of two optical components- magenta and yellow- each with intrinsic differences driving different effects. Like the two colors reflecting red in overlap, if observable evidence for the multiplicity of underlying components is lacking, the meaning will misleadingly appear to be singular. In this metaphor, languages with rich paradigms of polar question forms flaunt their magenta and yellow separately, whereas in a language like English, one color always hides behind the other, appearing red. This approach makes it possible to evaluate the unexpected empirical complexity in reflections of polar question meaning in a whole new light: Puzzling effects of what looks like red are effects of magenta or/and yellow. This way, the large range of nuanced meanings and form-meaning interactions can be predicted, and for the first time, limits of variation can be explored. The overarching objective of this project is to develop a crosslinguistically realistic model of polar question meaning and a framework of its variation from this novel perspective of Duality.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

This project addresses polar question meaning and its variation by documenting and analyzing nuanced polar question meanings and their expressions across languages. Under current models of polar question meaning, meaning nuances across languages are heavily undergenerated and certain effects such as negative polarity licensing and forms of bias remain elusive. We use the idea of the Duality of primary polar question meanings introduced in the applicant’s recent work as a departure point, which defends a separation between polar and other propositional alternatives. This view makes correct predictions in the treatment of existing problems and generates hypotheses as to the limits and structural correlates of variation. The project will generate a crosslinguistically viable semantic model of polar question meaning and a framework of its variation based on a sizeable empirical contribution detailing polar question usage profiles from a diverse set of languages, elicited with a state-of-the-art twin questionnaire. The project combines advanced insights and techniques from the semantics and pragmatics of questions, semantic variation, and linguistic documentation, and is particularly timely in the context of the applicant’s recent work. The applicant and the host possess crucial, complementary skills in addressing these issues. The applicant is an expert in syntax, intonation and linguistic variation. The entire host institute and in particular the supervisors are world-renowned for their work on semantics and pragmatics, with a strong focus on questions. Their collaboration will thus create a unique opportunity to thoroughly reanalyze a central topic from multiple theoretical and empirical angles while furnishing the applicant with skills in semantics, pragmatics and advanced empirical methods with which she intends to launch further crossmodular linguistic variation projects and position herself as a leader in this domain of research.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM · AmsterdamКоординаторНидерландия