Description
Book SynopsisThe volume Questions in Discourse - Vol. 2 Pragmatics collects original research on the role of questions in understanding text structure and discourse pragmatics. The in-depth studies discuss the effects of focus, questions and givenness in unalternative semantics, as well as the role of scalar particles, question-answer pairs and prosody from the perspective of Questions under Discussion. Two contributions compare the discourse-structuring potential of Questions under Discussion and rhetorical relations, whereas another adds a perspective from inquisitive semantics. Some contributions also look at understudied languages. Together, the contributions allow for a better understanding of question-related pragmatic and discourse-semantic phenomena, and they offer new perspectives on the structure of texts and discourses.
Table of Contents1 Introduction Malte Zimmermann, Klaus von Heusinger and Edgar Onea 2 Focus, Questions and Givenness Daniel Büring 3 The Scalar Particle har’i in Ngamo (West Chadic) Mira Grubic 4 Question-Answer Pairs in Sign Languages Annika Herrmann, Sina Proske and Elisabeth Volk 5 Inferring Meaning from Indirect Answers to Polar Questions: the Contribution of the Rise-Fall-Rise Contour Marie-Catherine de Marneffe and Judith Tonhauser 6 Constructing QUD Trees Arndt Riester 7 Underneath Rhetorical Relations: the Case of Result Edgar Onea 8 Two Alternatives for Disjunction: an Inquisitive Reconciliation Floris Roelofsen Index
