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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 19:1 (2022) ► pp.1–24

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¿A poco así dices? Biased interrogatives with ¿A poco (no)…? in Mexican Spanish

 | Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos
Published online: 25 February 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.19032.ala
Abstract
This article offers a characterization of the biased polar interrogative with ¿a poco (no)?, frequent in Mexican Spanish. This characterization is based on the system proposed by Sudo, Yasutada. 2013. “Biased Polar Questions in English and Japanese.” In Beyond Expressives. Explorations in Conventional Non-truth -conditional Meaning, ed. by Daniel Gutzmann and Hans Martin Gärtner, 277–297. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and shows that Sudo’s two notions of epistemic bias and evidential bias are necessary and sufficient to characterize the conventional non-propositional meaning associated with the three kinds of a poco questions in Mexican Spanish: the a poco positive polarity question codes a negative epistemic bias and a [+positive] or [+negative] evidential bias; the a poco negative polarity question with inside negation codes a positive epistemic bias and a [+negative] evidential bias; and the a poco negative polarity question with outside negation codes a positive epistemic bias and a [−negative] evidential bias. Lastly, the article discusses to what extent these characterizations are also compatible with the interactional uses of the short questions ¿a poco? and ¿a poco no?
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The phenomenon: ¿A poco (no)…? interrogatives
  • 3.Biased interrogatives
  • 4.The meaning of ¿a poco (no)? polar questions
    • 4.1A poco positive polar questions (PPQ)
      • 4.1.1Negative epistemic bias
      • 4.1.2The evidential bias and two values of a poco PPQ
    • 4.2A poco negative polar questions with inside negation (IN-NPQ)
    • 4.3A poco negative polar question with outside negation (ON-NPQ)
    • 4.4Interactional uses: The short questions ¿a poco? and ¿a poco no?
      • 4.4.1¿A poco?
      • 4.4.2¿A poco no?
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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