A typology of non-canonical questions

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 proposes a typology of non-canonical questions based on three central notions that are very often used to analyze and classify non-canonical questions: the speaker’s bias, epistemic states (of both speaker and addressee), and the speaker’s emotion. The chapter first introduces the three notions and then discusses relevant types of non-canonical questions, grouped into separate sections that are based on this threefold distinction. In particular, the chapter discusses questions where the speaker is biased towards or against the truth of one of the alternatives (e.g., negative polar questions; Isn’t he running fast?); questions where the speaker expresses that their ignorance is either extremely strong (e.g., can’t-find-the-value questions) or extremely weak (e.g., rhetorical questions), and questions where the speaker expresses a presupposition of emotion.