A syntactic-pragmatic study of the response mechanism to English and Chinese polar questions
This paper investigates the response mechanism to English and Chinese polar questions in neutral and biased contexts from the perspective of the syntax-pragmatics interface,attempting to account for their differences in terms of proposition polarity and proposition interaction,and proposing a corresponding structural analysis.The study reveals that the English and Chinese employ yes/no and verb-echo strategies,respectively,to affirm positive/negative polarity in neutral questions.In biased contexts,Chinese introduces shi"be"to acknowledge the initiator's bias.This paper argues that different response strategies are associated with distinctive targets of responses—the polarity of a proposition or coincidence of two propositions—thereby reflecting different types of interactions between propositions.Based on the above discussions,this paper differentiates"answer"and"response";different structures for answering the polarity and addressing the coincidence of propositions are accordingly proposed.The structural analysis of the responses to polar questions is extended to responses to other types of sentences in English and Chinese.
万方数据
