Polarity particles in English and Romanian

Donka F. Farkas | University of California, Santa Cruz

This paper contrasts the distribution and interpretation of ‘polarity particles’ in English and Romanian. Polarity particles (yes, no in English, da, nu, ba in Romanian) occur at the left edge of utterances that react to assertions, polar questions and imperatives but cannot be used in ‘out of the blue’ contexts. The paper makes sense of this distribution as well as of the contrasts between the two languages against the background of a context structure proposed in earlier work, which allows us to understand in what sense assertions, polar questions and imperatives form a natural class. Of particular interest here are cases where both yes and no can be used in otherwise identical responses in English as well as the distribution of these particles in reactions to imperatives.

Published online: 30 November 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.318.19far

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Bhadra, Diti

2020. The Semantics of Evidentials in Questions. Journal of Semantics 37:3 ► pp. 367 ff.

Farkas, Donka F. & Floris Roelofsen

2017. Division of Labor in the Interpretation of Declaratives and Interrogatives. Journal of Semantics ► pp. ffw012 ff.

Yuan, Mengxi & Yurie Hara

2019. Guiding assertions and questions in discourse. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 37:4 ► pp. 1545 ff.

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