Faculty member Michela Ippolito has recently published a new paper in the Journal of Semantics entitled "The Hell with Questions." The paper examines current approaches to wh-the-hell questions, and proposes a new theory based on the idea of doxastic dissonance.
Here is the abstract:
We discuss previous proposals for the semantics of wh-the-hell questions (domain widening theories and domain restriction theories), highlighting the challenges these accounts face in trying to explain the different properties of wh-the-hell questions and capture the contribution this expression makes to the semantics of the question. We review the semantic properties of wh-the-hell questions discussed in the literature and propose a new analysis according to which the hell signals doxastic dissonance. We argue that this proposal accounts for the semantic properties of this type of expletive question, and has the potential to extend to the class of wh-the-hell questions we see across languages.
Congratulations Michela!
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