Foris Roelofsen will present "Polarity Particles," in the department colloquium on Friday, February 22, at 3:30 in Machmer E-37. An abstract follows.
Polarity particles—words like yes and no—play a basic role in communication, and yet, their interpretation and distribution gives rise to a number of intriguing puzzles. This talk seeks to deepen our understanding of polarity particle systems cross-linguistically, revealing both their common core and the ways in which they vary from language to language. This investigation also has wider implications for linguistic theory, since polarity particles offer a valuable window onto the semantics of polar questions and assertions, which both license polarity particle responses. The common semantic core of polar questions and assertions is captured within the framework of inquisitive semantics. Subsequently, the account is extended to capture more involved patterns in the distribution of polarity particles, in particular in response to negative questions and assertions. The main predictions of the account concerning English are corroborated experimentally, and the cross-linguistic predictions are substantiated by data from German, French, Romanian, and Hungarian.
