Aren’t polar questions sort of easy? Following Hamblin (1973), Karttunen (1977), and Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984), they just represent the set of possible answers {p, ¬p}, i.e., yes and no. But if they simply denote a choice between true and false, why does natural language bother with such a diverse array of syntactic and prosodic forms to ask them? If the semantic contribution is identical, the distinction between these four below is a complete mystery:

(1) Do you like cats?

(2) You like cats?

(3) Don’t you like cats?

(4) Do you not like cats?

In this course, we look at why this simple symmetry between p and ¬p is only the beginning of the story. We will focus on how these forms above (and many others cross-linguistically) encode question bias as a core feature that dictates which form a speaker actually picks (Büring and Gunlogson 2000; Sudo 2013). We’ll explore how negation, particles, and intonation signal what a speaker expects to hear as an answer and how they react to the context. The goal is to figure out what these different “flavors” of polar questions actually are and how we can best capture them within formal semantics.

Core Topics:

  • The Negation Puzzle: How negation interacts with speaker expectations and context (Gartner and Gyuris 2022; Krifka 2017; Repp 2013; Romero and Han 2004).
  • Monopolar vs. Bipolar Semantics: How different formal architectures explain why some questions “point” to an answer while others remain neutral (Biezma and Rawlins 2015; Goodhue 2024; Matthewson 2025; Romero 2024).
  • Inquisitive Semantics: A brief discussion how it handles issue-raising compared to classical partition models (AnderBois 2019; Ciardelli at al. 2018; Farkas and Roelofsen 2017).
  • Experimental explorations: Bridging the gap between formal theory and experimental approaches, or how to measure real-time processing of question bias (Tian et al. 2021; Razguliaeva et al. to appear).

References:

  • AnderBois, S. (2019). Negation, alternatives, and negative polar questions in American English. In Questions in Discourse.
  • Biezma, M., & K. Rawlins (2015). Alternative Questions. Language and Linguistics Compass.
  • Büring, D., & C. Gunlogson (2000). Aren’t positive and negative polar questions the same? MS.
  • Ciardelli, I., J. Groenendijk, & F. Roelofsen (2018). Inquisitive Semantics. Oxford University Press.
  • Farkas, D. F., & F. Roelofsen (2017). Division of Labor in the Interpretation of Declaratives and Interrogatives. Journal of Semantics.
  • Gärtner, H.-M., & B. Gyuris (2022). On the Absence of Propositional Negation from Hungarian Polar e-Interrogatives. Studia Linguistica.
  • Goodhue, D. (2024). Simplifying the evidential condition on asking polar questions. SALT.
  • Groenendijk, J., & M. Stokhof (1984). Studies on the Semantics of Questions and the Pragmatics of Answers. PhD thesis.
  • Hamblin, C. L. (1973). Questions in Montague English. Foundations of Language.
  • Karttunen, L. (1977). Syntax and Semantics of Questions. Linguistics and Philosophy.
  • Krifka, M. (2017). Negated Polarity Questions as Denegations of Assertions. In Contrastiveness in Information Structure.
  • Matthewson, L. (2025). Polar questions in nɬeʔkepmxcín: monopolar, bipolar, and exhaustive. Natural Language Semantics.
  • Razguliaeva, M., M. Onoeva, R. Šimík, R. Meyer & K. Hrdinková (to appear). Processing of Russian and Czech polar questions: evidence for the effect of question bias. Glossa Psycholinguistics.
  • Repp, S. (2013). Common ground management: Modal particles, illocutionary negation and verum. In Beyond Expressives.
  • Romero, M. (2024). Biased Polar Questions. Annual Review of Linguistics.
  • Romero, M., & C.-H. Han (2004). On Negative Yes/No Questions. Linguistics and Philosophy.
  • Sudo, Y. (2013). Biased polar questions in English and Japanese. In Beyond Expressives.
  • Tian, Y., B. van Tiel, É. Clin, & R. Breheny (2021). Representing polar questions. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.

Level: introductory/intermediate