Our even
We discuss a phenomenon that appears when ‘even’ occurs in questions. Specifically, an inference of what we call “extreme ignorance” is projected onto the speaker. We argue that this effect arises when the known unlikelihood ‘even’ focuses an entire question, resulting in the focused question being...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Springer Netherlands
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105903 |
| _version_ | 1826203713462599680 |
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| author | Iatridou, Sabine Tatevosov, Sergei |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Iatridou, Sabine Tatevosov, Sergei |
| author_sort | Iatridou, Sabine |
| collection | MIT |
| description | We discuss a phenomenon that appears when ‘even’ occurs in questions. Specifically, an inference of what we call “extreme ignorance” is projected onto the speaker. We argue that this effect arises when the known unlikelihood ‘even’ focuses an entire question, resulting in the focused question being the least likely to be asked. Specific implicatures then conspire to bring about the inference that the speaker does not know the answer to the question that is most expected to be known. The environments explored are Wh-questions and Y/N questions, and the languages looked at primarily English, Greek, German and Russian. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:42:11Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/105903 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:42:11Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Springer Netherlands |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1059032022-10-01T10:36:09Z Our even Iatridou, Sabine Tatevosov, Sergei Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Iatridou, Sabine We discuss a phenomenon that appears when ‘even’ occurs in questions. Specifically, an inference of what we call “extreme ignorance” is projected onto the speaker. We argue that this effect arises when the known unlikelihood ‘even’ focuses an entire question, resulting in the focused question being the least likely to be asked. Specific implicatures then conspire to bring about the inference that the speaker does not know the answer to the question that is most expected to be known. The environments explored are Wh-questions and Y/N questions, and the languages looked at primarily English, Greek, German and Russian. 2016-12-20T21:10:37Z 2017-06-19T21:40:54Z 2016-07 2016-09-07T04:07:18Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0165-0157 1573-0549 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105903 Iatridou, Sabine, and Sergei Tatevosov. “Our Even.” Linguistics and Philosophy 39.4 (2016): 295–331. en http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10988-016-9190-7 Linguistics and Philosophy Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht application/pdf Springer Netherlands Springer Netherlands |
| spellingShingle | Iatridou, Sabine Tatevosov, Sergei Our even |
| title | Our even |
| title_full | Our even |
| title_fullStr | Our even |
| title_full_unstemmed | Our even |
| title_short | Our even |
| title_sort | our even |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105903 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT iatridousabine oureven AT tatevosovsergei oureven |