Irrealis-marked interrogatives as rhetorical questions
I describe and compare two strategies to form rhetorical questions (RQs) in Sm’algyax (Tsimshianic). I show that one kind is isomorphic to ordinary, information-seeking questions, and is compatible with positive and negative answers, while the second is marked with irrealis morphology and only allow...
| Published in: | Open Linguistics |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2023
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0239 https://doaj.org/article/f10c6b0fd38f4811880fc28c9226f21c |
| Summary: | I describe and compare two strategies to form rhetorical questions (RQs) in Sm’algyax (Tsimshianic). I show that one kind is isomorphic to ordinary, information-seeking questions, and is compatible with positive and negative answers, while the second is marked with irrealis morphology and only allows negative answers. I provide evidence from answerability and embedding to suggest that both types of RQs in Sm’algyax behave like questions in terms of their syntax/semantics, and propose that the irrealis subordinator present in the second type signals to the addressee that a negative answer is expected. These findings have implications for the presence of irrealis and subjunctive morphology appearing in RQs crosslinguistically. |
|---|