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Epistemic bias in (embedded) negative polar questions

Date
Date
Wednesday 10 February 2016
Location
Michael Sadler Building, LG15

Invited talk by Hans van de Koot (UCL)

As is well-known, sentences denoting polar alternatives can be embedded under a wide range of predicates and can also appear in subject position. These environments all allow ‘inside negation’ polar questions (INPQs), which are typically associated with a bias towards the negative alternative and license NPIs. However, their ‘outside negation’ counterparts (ONPQs), which have a bias towards the positive answer and do not license NPIs (Ladd 1981), show variable acceptability:

  1. John is wondering if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/too).
  2. John is asking if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/too).
  3. John knows if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/*too).
  4. John remembers if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/*too).
  5. Whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/too) is not very clear to John.

I will argue that this embedding restriction is correlated with the presence of a subjective epistemic bias (Lyons 1977; Papafragou 2006; Tancredi 2007; Anand & Hacquard 2009). In particular, it will be shown that predicates that do not tolerate ONPQs in their complement also do not tolerate a complement with a subjective epistemic modal category. ONPQs will also be shown to pattern with subjective epistemics in giving rise to various scope freezing effects (including so-called 'epistemic containment'). I propose a tentative analysis of these facts and also briefly explore its consequences for INPQs that express a subjective epistemic bias.