Our even
Name
10988_2016_9190_ReferencePDF.pdf
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452.93 KB
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Author(s)
Iatridou, Sabine
Tatevosov, Sergei
Date Issued
July 2016
Journal
Linguistics and Philosophy
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Citation
Iatridou, Sabine, and Sergei Tatevosov. “Our Even.” Linguistics and Philosophy 39.4 (2016): 295–331.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We discuss a phenomenon that appears when ‘even’ occurs in questions. Specifically, an inference of what we call “extreme ignorance” is projected onto the speaker. We argue that this effect arises when the known unlikelihood ‘even’ focuses an entire question, resulting in the focused question being the least likely to be asked. Specific implicatures then conspire to bring about the inference that the speaker does not know the answer to the question that is most expected to be known. The environments explored are Wh-questions and Y/N questions, and the languages looked at primarily English, Greek, German and Russian.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-016-9190-7
