Verum Focus in Negative Yes / No Questions and Ladd's p / ¬p Ambiguity

This paper is concerned with two generalizations involving negation in yes/no (yn-)questions. The first generalization captures an interpretational difference cor­ related with preposed and non-preposed negation in yn-questions (Romero and Han, 2001) . Preposed negation in yn-questions contributes the implicature that the speaker believed or at least expected that the positive answer is correct, as in ( 1 ) (Ladd, 198 1 ; Han, 1998 ; Btiring and Gunlogson, 2000). 1 Non-preposed negation, instead, does not necessarily give rise to this implicature (Han, 1999) : (2) can be a way of seeking information on whether John is a teetotaler.