Seeliger & Repp (2018): Biased Declarative Questions #

Biased declarative questions in Swedish and German: negation meets modal particles (väl and doch wohl).

Key Contributions #

Distinguishes declarative questions (DQs) from rejecting questions (RQs) — both have declarative syntax but differ in bias profile.
Applies [Sud13]'s two-dimensional bias scheme (evidential × epistemic) to classify four question types: PDQ, NDQ, PRQ, NRQ.
Shows that the negation in negative RQs is non-propositional — it denotes the illocutionary modifier FALSUM, not propositional negation.
Proposes REJECTQ as the illocutionary operator for RQs.

Bias Profiles ([Sud13]) #

Every declarative question type carries a bias profile: a pair of evidential and epistemic bias values. Evidential bias concerns contextual evidence; epistemic bias concerns the speaker's prior assumptions.

[Sud13] proposes three "plus" values for bias: [+positive], [+negative], [neutral]. Evidential bias can also take "minus" values ([-positive], [-negative]). [SR18] extend this by allowing minus values for epistemic bias as well, capturing that DQ speakers merely didn't assume the proposition (rather than assuming the opposite).

Four Question Types ([SR18], Table 1) #

Type	Denotes	Evidential	Epistemic	Example
PDQ	p	+positive	-positive	Peter is coming?
NDQ	not-p	+negative	-negative	Peter isn't coming?
PRQ	p	+negative	+positive	Surely Peter is coming?
NRQ	not-p	+positive	+negative	Surely Peter isn't coming?

DQs and RQs differ in that RQs are "more biased": the speaker had a specific prior assumption (epistemic bias is [+positive] or [+negative]), and the contextual evidence conflicts with that assumption.

REJECTQ Operator ([SR18] §6.2, eq. 40) #

REJECTQ takes a proposition q and an illocutionary modifier IM (FALSUM or VERUM):

⟦REJECTQ⟧ = λqλIM: [IM(¬q)]^evid & [IM(q)]^epist. {IM(q), ¬IM(q)}

The two presuppositions:

Evidential: [IM(¬q)]^evid — IM-determined commitment to ¬q on evidential basis
Epistemic: [IM(q)]^epist — IM-determined commitment to q on epistemic basis

The at-issue content is the question {IM(q), ¬IM(q)}. FALSUM = zero commitment (used in NRQs); VERUM = full commitment (used in PRQs).

Cross-Linguistic Findings #

German: RQs obligatorily contain doch wohl — the combination is non-compositional. doch wohl enters syntactic Agree with REJECTQ at ForceP. Without doch wohl, a German declarative cannot be a RQ.

Swedish: RQs are marked by fronted negation, the modal particle väl, or both. Unlike German, Swedish has multiple formal strategies for marking RQs. väl in positive declaratives creates PDQs; combined with negation, creates NRQs.

Experimental Evidence #

[SR18] §5.4: acceptability judgment study (24 native Swedish speakers) testing negative declaratives with fronted vs. low negation, with and without väl, in NRQ contexts. Main effect of MODAL PARTICLE (väl raises acceptability); interaction (effect only reliable with low negation). Supports fronted-negation + väl marking NRQs.

Semantics/Questions/Bias/Basic.lean — Romero's PQ bias framework (VERUM, FALSUM, OriginalBias, ContextualEvidence). The bridge maps Sudo's bias values to Romero's coarser three-valued scheme.
Studies/RomeroHan2004.lean::Verum — detailed VERUM semantics with modal frames.
Features/AnsweringSystem.lean — polar answer typology (Holmberg 2016).