Speaker: Yimei Xiang (Harvard)
Title: Mention-Some Readings of Indirect Questions: from Experiments to Formalizations
Time: Thursday, October 23, 5:30-7pm
Location: 32-D461
In this talk, I look for experimental clues and propose a schematized analysis for the following
three problems about mention-some (MS) readings of indirect questions. First, which type(s) of
indirect questions admit MS readings? Second, is there any MS reading sensitive to false answers
(FAs)? Third, are FAs equally bad? Based on the results of five TVJTs on ATurk and the reanalysis
of Klinedinst & Rothschilds (2011) raw data, I find that (i) MS readings are also supported by
indirect MA-questions under predicates like tell; (ii) there is an MS reading sensitive to FAs, in
parallel to the intermediately exhaustive reading; and (iii) FAs are not equally bad, in particular,
over affirmation is relatively more acceptable than over deny in MA-questions, while over deny is
relatively more acceptable than over affirmation in MS-questions.