This topic has been discussed earlier through the notion of alternative questions (Han & Romero, 2001). Consider examples 1) and 2)

1)      Did John drink coffee or tea?               

2)      Did John drink COFfee or TEA?                     

Compliant answers to question 1 would be:

3)   Yes, he did / No, he didn’t.                  

Compliant answers to question 2 would be:

4)      He drank coffee. / He drank tea.                      

Question 1) is a yes/no-question and can be answered by validation of the existence of the disjunction as such. Question 2) has a so called alternative question-reading that can be answered by a solution to the disjunction itself, p or q.

Questions 1) and 2) can be disambiguated by means of intonation. A native speaker of English produced such questions with clearly different pitch contours.

In questions similar to example 1), the first part of the disjunction (e.g. coffee) stays at the same pitch level. The disjunction word ‘or’ is attached to it. The second part of the disjunction starts at the same level and rises a little at the end, along with regular question prosody.

The intonation pattern we see for alternative questions like the one in example 2) is clearly different. It is called a contrastive intonation. The first element of the disjunction rises strongly. Then there is a pause before ‘or’. The second part of the disjunction may start a little higher and then quickly falls.

The same kind of ambiguity as we see in questions is present in the indicative sentences 5) and 6).

5)      Bea or Alf will go to the party.

6)      BEa or ALF will go to the party.

Again, compliant responses to 6) can involve a solution to the proposed disjunction. The same compliant response is possible, as is shown in 7).

7)      Bea will go. / Alf will go 

This indicates that these indicative sentences can have the same inquisitive semantics as the interrogative sentences mentioned above. The sentence ‘Bea or Alf will go to the party’ can either have a purely informative meaning or a hybrid meaning, consisting of informative meaning and inquisitive meaning.

Again, we can disambiguate these readings by means of the intonation patterns described above. These contours were both produced without any instructions, indicating that the difference is not a theoretical construct but also a reality in speakers’ grammars. Sentences similar to example 5), show the same pattern as question 1).

Sentences like 6) show the contrastive intonation contour.

Apart from the extreme cases in the examples, some ‘intermediate forms’ were also produced. The speaker can apparently opt for an intonation contour that leaves in the middle which reading is meant.

An intermediate form shows a rising first part of the disjunction, as we find in the contrastive intonation. There is a very small pause before ‘or’ – it is not attached but there is also no extreme contrastive pause. The second part of the disjunction starts a little higher, again holding the middle between a contrastive high start and a flat contour.

The existence of intermediate forms could indicate that the inquisitive meaning element in hybrid disjunctions is not grammaticaly coded but merely a pragmatic addition. The speaker then does not choose between two distinct semantics, but can stress either the informative or the inquisitive part of the meaning by using the separate intonation patterns. If she does not want to stress one particular reading, the intermediate form is used. The theory of inquisitive semantics does not account for this since it assumes that the two patterns are due to a different semantics instead of different pragmatics.

However, the intermediate intonation pattern as a response to a hybrid disjunction could have a different function than giving a solution to the disjunction. Maybe it just maintains the informativity of the issue – it does not take a side in the disjunction but keeps the ‘question’ alive as a topic in the discourse.

 

References

Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David (2009). Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.03) [Computer program]. Retrieved March 19, 2009, from http://www.praat.org/

Groenendijk, Jeroen & Floris Roelofsen (2009). Inquisitive Semantics and Pragmatics. To appear in the Proceedings of SPR 09, International Workshop on Semantics, Pragmatics and Rhetorics, Donostia, Spain, 6-8 May, 2009.

Han, C.-H. & M. Romero (2001). Negation, Focus and Alternative Questions. In K. Megerdoomian and L.A. Bar-el, Proceedings of the West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics XX. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Pp. 262-275