A cross-linguistic study of (a)symmetries in polar interrogatives

(a)极性疑问句对称性的跨语言研究

• 批准号: 2696320
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2696320
• 关键词: cross; linguistic; study; symmetries; polar

In Romanian, the difference between statements and yes-no questions is often simply a matter of uttering the former with rising intonation, as Maria doarme 'Mary is sleeping' and Maria doarme? 'is Mary sleeping?' suggest. Similarly, the Indonesian language of Maybrat can just add the particle a to any statement and turn it into a yes-no question (Dol 1999: 199-201). From the perspective of Miestamo's (2005) (a)symmetry concept -i.e. the linguistic expression of domain f(X) differs from that of X (not) only in the occurrence of the f() marker-the relation between the so-called "declarative" and "polar interrogative" clause types in such languages can be characterised as symmetric: they only vary in the prosodic or grammatical feature marking one as the question counterpart of the other. However, the relation can be asymmetric, too. The asymmetry type can be constructional, as in Dutch, where the polar interrogative construction typically has another constituent order than the corresponding declarative one (e.g. sliep Marie'did Mary sleep?' vs Marie sliep'Mary slept'); it could also be paradigmatic in nature, concerning possible grammatical choices. For example, in Lavukaleve, spoken in the Solomon Islands, speakers can opt for a focus or a non-focus construction in declaratives but, for yes-no questions, they can only use the focus construction (Terrill 2003: 452-453). Charting and explaining these types of (a)symmetry in the languages of the world is the overall objective of my study.

在罗马尼亚语中，陈述句和是非问句之间的区别通常只是用升调说出前者的问题，比如Maria doarme“玛丽在睡觉”和Maria doarme？“玛丽睡了吗？”建议。同样，印度尼西亚语的Maybrat可以在任何陈述句中添加助词a，并将其转换为是非问句（Dol 1999：199-201）。从Miestamo（2005）（a）对称概念的角度来看-即域f（X）的语言表达与X（not）的语言表达的不同之处仅在于f（）标记的出现-这些语言中所谓的“陈述”和“极性疑问”分句类型之间的关系可以被描述为对称的：它们只是在韵律或语法特征上有所不同，标志着一个是另一个的问题对应物。然而，这种关系也可以是不对称的。不对称类型可以是构式的，如在荷兰语中，极性疑问构式通常有另一个组成顺序，而不是相应的陈述顺序（例如，sliep玛丽“玛丽睡了吗？“vs玛丽sleep”玛丽slept“）;它也可能是关于可能的语法选择的聚合性质。例如，在所罗门群岛的Lavukaleve语中，说话者可以在陈述句中选择焦点或非焦点结构，但对于是非问题，他们只能使用焦点结构（Terrill 2003：452-453）。绘制和解释世界语言中的这些对称类型是我研究的总体目标。