Time: Friday, April 22nd, 5pm-7pm

Place: Keio University, Mita Campus, South Annex Building, 7th floor conference room

Map: https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/maps/mita.html

Attendance is free

Abstract: Declarative (polar) questions such as English rising declaratives are associated with a range of effects including positive evidential bias, which are commonly analyzed as arising from the non-interrogative clause type of these questions (Gunlogson 2001, Farkas and Roelofsen 2017). A detailed comparison between English rising declaratives and Turkish object attachment interrogatives shows that (a) evidential bias is not an exclusive feature of declaratives and (b) a number of further properties associated with rising declaratives is also shared across clause types. I sketch an alternative analysis relying on the monopolar question meaning in the sense of Krifka (2015), which may accompany all clause types and has the potential to connect the evidential bias cluster of effects. The account makes predictions regarding the relationship between this polar question meaning and clause type, offers a way of approaching variation in bias paradigm, and disentangling other biased inferences some of which may still be rooted in clause type.