Epistemic bias in (embedded) negative polar questions
- 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:
- John is wondering if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/too).
- John is asking if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/too).
- John knows if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/*too).
- John remembers if/whether Mary doesn't like spinach (either/*too).
- 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.