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Article published In: International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 7:1 (2020) ► pp.45–70

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An analysis of focus and its role in the answering systems of polar questions in Chinese and English

 | National Tsing Hua University
 | National Chiao Tung University
Published online: 30 June 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.19018.lio
Abstract
Instead of classifying natural languages in terms of their answering systems for polar questions, this study investigates how languages construct the answering system for the polar questions with a special concentration on the answering system of the Chinese ma particle question and English polar questions. We argue that the primarily mechanism that natural languages adopt to construct an answering system is the focus mechanism which is based on the relationship between a focus sensitive marker and its association of focus. The different answering patterns to polar questions result from different scopes of focus. In a polar question, what is being focused by the focus sensitive marker or focus operator falls into question scope (focus association). The respondent answers the polar question based on the proposition in the question scope. Answering with a positive particle expresses agreement with that question proposition while answering with a negative particle conveys that the question proposition is not true.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The syntactic and semantic properties of the Chinese ma particle question
  • 3.The literature review: Roelofsen and Farkas (2015)
  • 4.The preliminary: Focus semantics (Rooth 1985, 1992)
  • 5.Proposal: The focus mechanism in constructing answering patterns to polar questions
  • 6.Answering patterns in Mandarin ma particle questions
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations used in this paper include
  • References
References (31)
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