Emotional intensities in non-canonical questions

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 9 presents a general characterization of the role of emotional intensities in non-canonical questions, and discusses how they connect to key concepts in degree semantics. The chapter pays particular attention to proposition-level intensification strategies, the hypothesis being that those are the most relevant scope environments that are at play in the domain of non-canonical questions. Specifically, the chapter introduces the notion of attitudinal scales based on prominent lexical cases, and it demonstrates to what extent the same semantics is relevant for characterizing the emotional potential of some of the readings of non-canonical questions that are discussed in this book.