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The meaning of questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Richard A. Hudson
Richard A. Hudson*
Affiliation:
University College, London
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Abstract

Polar interrogative sentences (‘yes/no questions’) are different from the corresponding declarative sentences not only pragmatically—in terms of the illocutionary forces that utterances of them can have—but also semantically, i.e. in terms of the Linguistic analysis of their meaning. Keeping a clear distinction between syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analyses, we can isolate a very small number of syntactic categories and an equally small (but not isomorphic) number of semantic categories, but a virtually unlimited number of illocutionary forces, which result from the interaction of these categories with the total situation. The analysis of ordinary polar interrogatives also applies, without change, to tag questions.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by Linguistic Society of America

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