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

在罗马尼亚语中，陈述句和是-否问题之间的区别通常只是用升调说出前者，如Maria doarme‘Mary is sleeping’和Maria doarme？“玛丽睡着了吗？”的建议。类似地，Maybrat的印尼语可以在任何语句中添加助词a，并将其转换为是-否问题（Dol 1999: 199-201）。从Miestamo (2005) (a)对称概念的角度来看——即领域f(X)的语言表达与X （not）的不同之处在于f（）标记的出现——这些语言中所谓的“陈述句”和“极性疑问句”子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，这些特征标志着一个是另一个的对应物。然而，这种关系也可能是不对称的。不对称类型可以是构式的，如在荷兰语中，极性疑问句构式通常比相应的陈述句有另一个组成顺序(例如，sleep Marie'did Mary sleep？‘和’玛丽睡')；它也可能是本质上的聚合，涉及可能的语法选择。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结构或非焦点结构，但对于是-否问题，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。

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.