A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese

Chapter 8 A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese Tue Trinh Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Vietnamese has two types of NPIs, simple and complex, and two types of polar questions, yes/no questions and agreement questions. Simple NPIs can occur in both types of polar questions while complex NPIs can occur in yes/no but not in agreement questions. I propose an account for this fact using familiar ingredients of semantic and syntactic analyses. I then discuss some ways in which Vietnamese and English differ with respect to how distinctions in meaning align with distinctions in form. 1 Observations This section describes the differences with respect to distribution and interpretation between two types of NPIs across two types of polar questions in Vietnamese. 1.1 Two types of polar questions I will use the term polar questions to describe questions which ask for the truth value of a single proposition. In other words, polar questions are those which are answered felicitously by assertion of a proposition or assertion of its negation. Vietnamese has two variants of polar questions. The first, which I will call yes/ no questions, involves bracketing the predicate of the sentence with the words có and không (Trinh 2005, Duffield 2007). I will gloss có and không as pos and neg, for reasons which will be clear shortly. Tue Trinh. 2025. A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese. In Tue Trinh, Anton Benz, Daniel Goodhue, Kazuko Yatsushiro & Manfred Krifka (eds.), Biased questions: Experimental results and theoretical modelling, 241–260. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17158190 Tue Trinh (1) a. John John đọc read Kant Kant ‘John reads Kant.’ b. John John có pos đọc read Kant Kant không? neg ‘Does John read Kant?’ I will call (1a) the prejacent of (1b). More generally, the prejacent of a yes/ no question will be (the proposition expressed by) the sentence derived from the question by removing pos and neg. Let us now briefly discuss pos and neg outside the context of a yes/no question. In declaratives, pos and neg are the positive and the negative auxiliary, respectively.1 (2) a. John John có pos đọc read Kant Kant ‘John does read Kant.’ b. John John không neg đọc read Kant Kant ‘John does not read Kant.’ These words are also used as the positive and the negative short answer to yes/no questions. The question in (1b) can be answered with either có (pos), which would mean John does read Kant, or không (neg), which would mean John does not read Kant. We can analyze these short answers as (3a) and (3b), which are eliptical sentences with everything but the auxiliary elided (Holmberg 2016, Krifka 2013). (3) a. Nam pos read Kant b. Nam neg read Kant The other type of polar questions in Vietnamese is constructed by appending the discourse particle àto the end of a declarative sentence (Trinh 2010). (4) a. John John đọc reads Kant Kant à? a ‘John reads Kant?’ 1For arguments that pos and neg are verbal see Trinh (2005). Verbal negation is attested across languages. Finnish is an example (Bobaljik 1994). Note that similarly to English emphatic do, pos appears only when the positive sentence bears verum focus. And similarly to English not, neg is stressed when the negative sentence bears verum focus. 242 8 A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese b. John John không neg đọc read Kant Kant à? a ‘John doesn’t read Kant?’ I will call this type of polar questions agreement questions, and the (proposition expressed by) the sentence preceding a the “prejacent” of the agreement question. The term “agreement questions” is due to the fact that these questions can be described, intuitively, as asking the hearer whether she agrees with the prejacent. Thus, (4a) asks whether the hearer agrees that John reads Kant, and (4b), whether she agrees that John does not read Kant. There are two strategies of answering an agreement question. I will call them the congruent strategy and the non-congruent strategy. The non-congruent strategy consists in answering the agreement question as if it were a yes/no question, which means answering it with either pos or neg. Note that pos expresses a positive and neg expresses a negative sentence independently of whether the prejacent of the agreement question is an positive or a negative sentence. Thus, no matter whether the question is (4a) or (4b), answering it with pos means asserting that John reads Kant, and answering it with neg means asserting that he does not. Recall that an agreement question asks the hearer whether she agrees with the prejacent. The “congruent” answering strategy, therefore, should express agreement or disagreement with the prejacent. To express agreement with the prejacent, the response particle vâng, which I will gloss as arg, is employed. The closest translation of arg is ‘that’s right’, or ‘that’s correct’. Answering (4a) with arg means asserting that John reads Kant, and answering (4b) with arg means asserting that he does not, for example. What if we want to express disagreement with the prejacent? In other words, what is the negative counterpart of arg? It turns out that there is no such word: Vietnamese has a lexical gap. To convey disagreement with the prejacent of an agreement question, we would have to resort to the non-congruent strategy. Suppose the question is (4a), the disagreeing answer would be không (neg), which means John does not read Kant. If the question is (4b), the disagreeing answer would be có (pos), which means John does read Kant. Thus, whereas yes/no questions have a positive and a negative short answer, agreement questions only have a positive short answer.2 2Thus, có (pos) and không (neg) express “absolute polarity” while vâng expresses “relative polarity” in the sense of Roelofsen & Farkas (2015). For descriptions of similar systems see Holmberg (2016), Maldonado & Culbertson (2023). 243 Tue Trinh There is, I believe, a possible functional account of this asymmetry. The account will turn on another fact about agreement questions, namely that it is biased towards the positive answer (Trinh 2010). Suppose the speaker sees John with a copy of The critique of pure reason in his hand. In this context, the agreement question in (5a) is felicitous but the yes/no question in (5b) is not. (5) Context: the speaker sees John with The critique of pure reason in his hand. a. John John đọc read Kant Kant à? a b. # John John có pos đọc read Kant Kant không? neg? In the very same context, the agreement question in (6a) would be infelicitous, while the yes/no question in (6b) would be felicitous.3 (6) Context: the speaker sees John with The critique of pure reason in his hand. a. # John đọc cả Hegel à? John read also Hegel a b. John có đọc cả Hegel không? John pos read also Hegel neg? We learn two things from (5) and (6). First, if there is contextual evidence that 𝜙, a polar question with prejacent 𝜙is only felicitous when it is formulated as an agreement question. Second, if there is no contextual evidence that 𝜙, a polar question with prejacent 𝜙is only felicitous when it is formulated as an yes/no question. In other words, yes/no questions require the context to be “prejacentneutral”, while agreement questions require it to be “prejacent-biased”. I conjecture that the prejacent bias of agreement questions might contribute to the functional pressure on the grammar to have a short answer expressing agreement with the prejacent but no short answer expressing disagreement with the prejacent.4 3Note that if the context is also such that reading Kant entails reading Hegel, (6a) would be fine. This proves the point I am making. I thank a reviewer for pointing this out. 4The idea that answers which agree with the prejacent of the question are preferred by the language system can be found in Roelofsen & Farkas (2015). 244 8 A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese 1.2 Two types of NPIs Vietnamese is a language that build NPIs from wh-elements. For example, the word ai, as an interrogative pronoun, means ‘who’, but as an NPI, means ‘anyone’. Similarly, gì means either ‘what’ or ‘anything’ (Bruening & Tran 2006). A nonnegated declarative sentence would disambiguate such expressions towards the interrogative reading, while a polar question would disambiguate them towards the NPI reading.5 (7) a. John John đang prog đọc read gì what ‘What is John reading?’ b. ‘Is John reading anything?’ i. John John có pos đang prog đọc read gì anything không neg ii. John John đang prog đọc read gì anything à a This ambiguity extends to which-phrases. The Vietnamese word for which is nào, which combines with singular NPs. As Vietnamese is a classifier language of the East Asian variety, singular number is indicated by a classifier (Chierchia 1998, Trinh 2011). I will gloss the classifier as cl. (8) a. John John đang prog đọc read quyển cl sách book nào which ‘Which book is John reading?’ 5Note that a negated declarative sentence would allow these expressions to be ambiguous between the interrogative and the NPI reading, as exemplified in (i). (i) John John không not gặp met ai who ‘Who did John not meet?’ / ‘John did not meet anyone’ I use the term NPI to describe expressions denoting existential quantifiers whose occurrence is limited to environments that must be characterized semantically as involving negation in some sense. For the purpose of this particular discussion, I will take NPIs to be expressions that can be understood as existential quantifiers in polar questions and under negation, but cannot be so understood in non-negated declarative sentences. Thus, it is possible for something to qualify as an NPI even if its distribution turns out to differ from that of English anything with respect to other environments. I believe this terminological practice is common in the literature, and thank a reviewer for pointing out the need to make this clear. 245 Tue Trinh b. ‘Is John reading any book?’ i. John có đang đọc quyển sách nào không John pos prog read cl book any neg ii. John John đang prog đọc read quyển cl sách book nào any à a In what follows, we will not be concerned with the interrogative reading of wh-phrases. For this reason, I will gloss cl+NP+nao simply as “any NP”. NPIs in Vietnamese come in two morphological variants, simple and complex. Those we just discussed are the simple ones. Complex NPIs are built out of simple NPIs by prefixing the latter with the word bất kỳ (Trinh 2020), which I will gloss as bk. (9) John John có pos đang prog đọc read bất kỳ bk quyển sách nào any book không neg ‘Is John reading any book at all?’ As indicated by the translation in (9), adding bất kỳ to the NPI in Vietnamese has a similar interpretive effect as adding at all to the NPI in English: it gives rise to the inference that the speaker is biased towards the negative answer, in the sense that she has more reasons to think that the negative answer is correct than to think that the positive answer is. In the case of (9), the inference would be that the speaker strongly suspects that John is not reading any book.6Simple NPIs, on the other hand, do not induce such negative bias. The question in (8b-i), for example, does not give rise to any inference about which answer the speaker strongly suspects to be correct. Another difference between simple and complex NPIs pertains to their distribution across the two types of polar questions: whereas simple NPIs are acceptable in both yes/no and agreement questions, as shown by (10a), complex NPIs are acceptable in yes/no questions but give rise to deviance when they occur in agreement questions, as shown by (10b). (10) Intended reading: ‘Is John reading any book at all?’ a. John John có pos đang prog đọc read bất kỳ bk quyển sách nào any book không? neg b. # John John đang prog đọc read bất kỳ bk quyển sách nào any book à? a 6Note that I am describing the effect of at all in canonical, non-negated English yes/no question containing an NPI, as exemplified by the translation of (9). It was pointed out to me that at all can occur in a high negation question, e.g. Isn’t John reading any book at all?, which gives rise to a positive speaker’s bias (Dan Goodhue p.c.). I have nothing to say about this fact. 246 8 A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese 2 Analysis We have seen that Vietnamese polar questions come in two variants, yes/no questions and agreement questions. Yes/no questions are prejacent-neutral while agreement questions are prejacent-biased. We have also seen that NPIs in Vietnamese come in two variants, simple and complex. Simple NPIs are acceptable in both yes/no and agreement questions. Complex NPIs are acceptable in yes/ no questions but cause deviance in agreement questions. In yes/no questions, complex NPIs give rise to negative bias while simple NPIs do not. The present section will be devoted to an analysis of these facts. 2.1 Introducing whether For the purpose of this paper I will assume a simplified version of the analysis proposed in Hamblin (1973), Karttunen (1977). Let us define two functions. The first is yes, the identity function, and the second is no, the negation function. (11) a. yes =def 𝜆𝑝∈𝐷𝑠𝑡.𝑝 b. no =def 𝜆𝑝∈𝐷𝑠𝑡.¬𝑝 We will say that a function 𝑓of type ⟨𝑠𝑡,𝑠𝑡⟩is a “polarity”, i.e. that 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦(𝑓), if 𝑓is either yes or no. For polar questions, I assume the presence of a (overt or) covert whether (Bennett 1977, Higginbotham 1993, Krifka 2001, Guerzoni & Sharvit 2014). (12) JwhetherK =𝜆𝑄∈𝐷⟨⟨𝑠𝑡,𝑠𝑡⟩,𝑡⟩.𝜆𝑝∈𝐷𝑠𝑡.∃𝑓∈𝐷⟨𝑠𝑡,𝑠𝑡⟩.𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦(𝑓)∧𝑝=𝑄(𝑓) The base position of whether is above TP. When it moves, it leaves a trace of type ⟨𝑠𝑡,𝑠𝑡⟩. Predicate abstraction proceeds in the familiar way. (13) 𝜆𝑝.∃𝑓.𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦(𝑓)∧𝑝=𝑓(𝜙) whether 𝜆𝑔.𝑔(𝜙) 1𝑡1(𝜙) 𝑡1𝜙 247 Tue Trinh I will assume that at the relevant level of analyis, a yes/no question in Vietnamese whose prejacent is 𝜙has the logical form [whether 𝜙]. Thus, the question in (1b), reproduced below in (14a), has the logical form in (14b), which denotes the set in (14c). (14) a. John John có pos đọc read Kant Kant không? neg b. 𝛼 whether 1𝑡1𝜙 John read Kant c. J𝛼K={yes(John reads Kant), no(John reads Kant)} 2.2 Introducing evid What about agreement questions? Recall that agreement questions are prejacentbiased, in the sense that they require the context to contain evidence for the prejacent. I will adopt the analysis proposed in Trinh (2014) and assume the existence of an evidential marker evid, which is attached to TP and has the following interpretation. (15) Jevid 𝜙K={J𝜙Kif there is contextual evidence that 𝜙 #otherwise Thus, [evid 𝜙]presupposes that there is contextual evidence that 𝜙. I propose that at the relevant level of analysis, the agreement question (16a) has the LF in (16b), and the denotation in (16c). (16) a. John John đọc read Kant Kant à? a b. 𝛼 whether 1𝑡1evid 𝜙 John read Kant 248 8 A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese c. J𝛼K={yes(evid(John reads Kant)), no(evid(John reads Kant))} Both answers contain [evid(John reads Kant)]as a subconstituent. Thus, both answers presuppose that there is contextual evidence that John reads Kant, which means the question presupposes that there is contextual evidence that John reads Kant.7We thus account for the fact that agreement questions are evidentially biased toward the prejacent. How do we account for the fact that yes/no questions are prejacent-neutral, i.e. that a yes/no question with prejacent 𝜙is infelicitous in contexts where there is evidence that 𝜙? I propose that this effect comes about as an anti-presupposition. I will assume the principle of Maximize Presupposition as a primitive of grammar (Heim 1991).8 (17) Maximize Presupposition (MP) Presuppose as much as possible! Given MP, a yes/no question will be understood as indicating that there is no contextual evidence for the prejacent, since if there were such evidence, the speaker would have used an agreement question instead (Sauerland 2008). 2.3 Introducing even Let us now address the fact that NPIs, both simple and complex, are acceptable in yes/no questions. A well-known fact about whether is that it licenses NPIs. Various attempts have been made to derive this observation (cf. Ladusaw 1979, Krifka 1991, 1995, Van Rooy & Šafářová 2003, Guerzoni & Sharvit 2007, 2014, Nicolae 2015, Roelofsen 2018, Jeong & Roelofsen 2023). For this paper, I will assume it as a primitive. (18) whether licenses NPIs in its scope 7I assume that if all answers to a question have a presupposition then the question itself inherits that presupposition. This follows from the fact that questions are quantificational structures (Heim 1983, 1992, Schlenker 2008). 8A reviewer raises the question whether MP should be considered a principle of rational communication of a Gricean sort which is external to the language faculty rather than one of grammar. I will not attempt to address this question adequately, as that would take us beyond the scope of this paper. What matters is that I use MP without deriving it, not how it is derived. Nevertheless, I would note that Heim (1991) did point out how it would be difficult to derive MP from principles of information exchange. Thus, given contextual, i.e. pragmatic, knowledge, #a sun is shining conveys the exact same amount of information as the sun is shining. It is not clear how to explain the contrast between these sentences in terms of their communicative function. 249 Tue Trinh (31) a. Did John do anything to help? b. Did John lift a finger to help? Guerzoni accounts for the difference between NPIs and minimizers with respect to negative bias by postulating that minimizers, but not NPIs, come with a c-commanding even in the structure which has to scope above the base position of whether. My account of the same difference between simple and complex NPIs in Vietnamese is just an adoption of her analysis. Can we, then, say that simple NPIs in Vietnamese correspond to NPIs in English while complex NPIs in Vietnamese correspond to minimizers in English? Again, it turns out that we cannot. Recall that simple NPIs in Vietnamese are acceptable in prejacent-biased polar questions. NPIs in English, however, are not. Suppose I am talking to John on the phone and hear chewing sounds, which I take to be evidence that he is eating while talking. In this context, it seems that I cannot ask him the questions in (32). (32) Contextual evidence: The hearer is eating. a. # Are you eating anything? b. # You’re eating anything? Thus, NPIs in English are blocked by prejacent bias. Note that it has been observed that NPIs are deviant in declarative questions (Hirst 1983, Huddleston 1994, Gunlogson 2002). This is expected, given that declarative questions are necessarily prejacent-biased. Simple NPIs in Vietnamese, however, are not blocked by prejacent bias. Recall that only agreement questions can be prejacent-biased. In the same context, i.e., one where there is evidence that the hearer is eating while talking on the phone, the question in (33) is completely fine, where gì is the word whose interrogative reading is ‘what’ and whose NPI reading is ‘anything’. (33) Anh you đang prog ăn eat gì anything à? a How do complex NPIs in Vietnamese and minimizers in English compare with respect to prejacent-biased questions? It turns out they behave similarly in this case: both are unacceptable. The deviance of (10b) evidences this for Vietnamese. For English, we can observe that a question such as (31b) would be utterly inappropriate in contexts where there is evidence that John did do something to help. 256 8 A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese Another way in which Vietnamese and English NPIs differ pertains to the so-called “free choice reading”, or FC reading for short. It has been observed that in English, NPIs embedded under existential modals such as be allowed to are, by default, read as wide-scope universal quantifiers (Carlson 1981, Dayal 1998, Menéndez-Benito 2010, Crnič 2019, Bar-Lev & Fox 2020). The FC reading, however, is impossible for minimizers. (34) a. John is allowed to do anything to help. ‘∀𝑥.John is allowed to do 𝑥to help’ b. # John is allowed to lift a finger to help. Intended reading: John is allowed to do anything to help In Vietnamese, the situation is, in a sense, the reverse. It is the complex NPIs which can occur, and have the FC reading, under existential modals. Simple NPIs are excluded. (35) Intended reading: ‘John is allowed to read any book’ a. # John John được phép is allowed to đọc read quyển sách nào any book b. John John được phép is allowed to đọc read bất kỳ bk quyển sách nào any book ‘John is allowed to read any book’ Table 2: Biased questions vs. FC reading simple NPIs complex NPIs NPIs minimizers biased questions 3 7 7 7 FC reading 7 3 3 7 Vietnamese English I hope to account for the facts we just discussed in future research. Acknowledgements This work is supported by the ERC Advanced Grant Speech Acts in Grammar and Discourse (SPAGAD), ERC-2007-ADG 787929. 257 Tue Trinh References Bar-Lev, Moshe & Danny Fox. 2020. Free choice, simplification, and innocent inclusion. Natural Language Semantics 28. 175–223. 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