A Multitude of Answers: Embedded Questions in Typed Inquisitive Semantics

This thesis develops a semantic account of question embedding. The compositional framework in which this account is formulated is based on inquisitive semantics: it is shown how the inquisitive conception of sentence meaning can be implemented on a type-theoretical level. The resulting framework is motivated on technical and conceptual grounds. The empirical picture of question embedding is explored, and the different readings exhibited by embedded questions are organised along a set of interpretive features. This determines the desiderata for the subsequent formal implementation. A grammar fragment is devised, which can capture the semantics of interrogative and declarative clauses embedded under responsive verbs: interrogative-embedding and declarative-embedding uses of responsive verbs receive a uniform treatment. The proposed account allows to express several different readings of sentences with embedded questions, deriving the differences between those readings from the interplay between the embedding predicates and various elements in the semantics of the embedded clauses.

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