September 30, 2019

Research Groups: Friday, October 4

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Language Variation and Change Research Group
Practice talks for NWAV 48, taking place in Oregon from October 10 through 12.

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Phonology Research Group
Presentation by Arvind Iyengar (visiting scholar).

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Semantics Research Group
Presentation by Angelika Kiss (Ph.D.) on biased questions:

Biased questions are frequently represented in dynamic frameworks that takes into account the Speaker's discourse commitments. In this talk, some arguments will be presented for the importance of the Addressee's perceived beliefs by looking at polar rhetorical questions and negative wh-constructions using Farkas and Roelofsen's (2017) model. There is reason to think that both question types have highlighted alternatives, but fitting them into Farkas and Roelofsen's model raises some questions. While Farkas and Roelofsen consider intonation as a pragmatic phenomenon, I suggest, based on recent work on the prosodic realization of biased questions that intonation is not mere pragmatic decoration.

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