Introduction

Introduction Manfred Krifka Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Tue Trinh Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 1 Biased questions: An overview According to the standard analysis of question meaning, a question denotes a set of propositions, i.e. those that answer the question. Polar questions, the subject matter of this volume, are taken by many theorists to denote a set of their positive and negative answers (Hamblin 1973, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984, Ciardelli et al. 2019).1For example, (1) denotes the set of propositions in (2). (1) Is it raining? (2) {it is raining, ¬it is raining} A common assumption among such theories of polar questions is that the alternatives proposed by the question are balanced, that is, the propositions in the set are equally ranked. This is represented visually in Figure 1. 𝜙 ¬𝜙 Figure 1: Balanced question But as we all know, sometimes questions are biased. For example, the speaker might take one answer to be more likely than another. This leads to an imbalance among the propositions, as in Figure 2. 1There are non-trivial differences in how these theories of question semantics arrive at the set of propositions in (2), but for now we abstract away from these differences. Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh. 2025. Introduction. In Tue Trinh, Anton Benz, Daniel Goodhue, Kazuko Yatsushiro & Manfred Krifka (eds.), Biased questions: Experimental results and theoretical modelling, v–xxiv. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17158174 Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh 𝜙¬𝜙 Figure 2: Biased question There are several interesting questions about this kind of imbalance, including what constitutes the evidence for such an imbalance, whether there are different kinds or different dimensions of tilts, and how can we represent these aspects of meaning. The existence of biased questions was famously pointed out by Bolinger (1978), who drew attention to the differences between simple polar questions and alternative questions. A polar question like (3a) is totally normal but an alternative question like (3b) is quite strange, perhaps because the questioner is more interested in the positive answer being true rather than the negative, and this is better expressed by (3a) than (3b). (3) a. Will you help me? b. Will you help me or not? Another difference is that polar questions can be conversation starters whereas alternative questions cannot. The sequence in (4a) sounds normal, while that in (4b) sounds odd. (4) a. Nice to meet you! Do you like to play golf? b. # Nice to meet you! Do you like to play golf or not? There is also a difference with respect to question complementizers. It seems that embedded polar questions introduced by if correlate with simple polar questions, while those introduced by whether correlate with alternative questions. Thus, the scenario in (5) is more naturally reported as (6) than (7). (5) John asked Mary: “Will you marry me?” (6) John asked Mary if she would marry him (7) ? John asked Mary whether she would marry him Bolinger suggests that the complementizer whether is used when the speaker, having already considered the alternative possibilities, is trying to dispassionately gain information about them. We add that this corresponds to our intuition vi Introduction that the use of whether in (7) indicates that John thinks a negative answer is a serious possibility, at least as likely as the positive answer. So we see that simple polar questions can highlight one option, while alternative questions highlight both options. We can then ask whether alternative questions are neutral. But as Biezma (2009) shows, alternative questions are not neutral. They come with what Biezma calls a ‘cornering effect’: The hearer is forced to give an answer. The question in (8) sounds like it is the last of a series of questions to which the speaker has not gotten a proper answer. (8) Will you marry me or not? Let us look at negated questions and the uses of antonyms. Assuming that a bridge is either closed or open, the standard view on questions would assign all of the following sentences the same meaning, namely {𝑜,¬𝑜}, where 𝑜stands for the bridge is open and ¬𝑜for the bridge is not open, i.e. closed. (9) a. Is the bridge open? b. Is the bridge open or not? c. Is the bridge open or closed? d. Is the bridge closed? e. Is the bridge closed or not? However, the choice of the expression clearly matters (Van Rooy & Šafářová 2003, Torres Bustamante 2012, Roelofsen & van Gool 2010, Trinh 2014). In a context where the speaker needs to get to the other side of the river and wants the bridge to be open, and there is no contextual indication as to whether or not it is open, the questions in (9) are ranked in the order of most to least appropriate. Similarly, in a context where the speaker needs to throw an even number, the utterance in (10) would be most appropriate with the leftmost choice (even) and least appropriate with the rightmost choice (odd or not). (10) I don’t dare to look! Is the number even / ?even or not / ??even or odd / #odd / ##odd or not? However, in both preceding examples, further additions to context can change these intuitions. For example, suppose that in (9), the speaker wants the bridge to be open, but their interlocutor has just indirectly implied that the bridge is closed. In that case, (9d) is most natural. Or suppose the interlocutor ambiguoulsy implies first that it is closed, and then that it is not closed. In that case, (9e) would be most natural, despite that the speaker wants the bridge to be open. As vii Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh for (10), suppose the speaker needs an even, but steadfastly believes that their luck is cursed, and therefore an odd number is almost certain. Then asking the question with odd is most natural. What this shows is that the contextual factors affecting which question form is most natural are influenced by multiple competing factors. How can we differentiate between question meanings so that we can describe their different uses? Obviously the truth conditional content offered by the theories discussed above does not suffice. We have to look at how these truth conditions are expressed formally. One idea that has been proposed is that different kinds of questions introduce different kinds of discourse referents (DR) (see Krifka 2013 for the role of propositional discourse referents in responses). (11) a. “Is it raining?” ⇝DR: ‘it is raining’ b. “Is it not raining?” ⇝DR: ‘it is not raining’ c. “Is it raining or not?” ⇝DR: ‘it is raining’, ‘it is not raining’ As a consequence, these questions would have different discourse potentials. There are other proposals, such as Roelofsen & van Gool (2010), which makes it possible to “highlight” one of the propositions, leading to a more complex semantic representation. Theories also exist which say the meaning of questions does not have to be balanced. These allow for a monopolar interpretation of questions. Hamblin’s semantics, for example, allows for (11a) to denote the set contain only one proposition, namely the proposition that it is raining. The question in (11b) would denote the set containing only the proposition that it is not raining. The set denoted by the alternative question in (11c) would contain both of these propositions. This is different from the assertion, which is just the proposition, not a set containing the proposition (Van Rooy & Šafářová 2003). In commitment space semantics (Krifka 2015), there is also a way to differentiate between the cases in (11). We assume the common ground, or “commitment space”, represented by 𝐶, to be a set of information states, or “commitment states”, represented by 𝑐. Each commitment state is a set of possible worlds. The root of C, represented as √𝐶, is the set of “largest” commitment states, so to speak. (12) √𝐶={𝑐∈𝐶∣¬∃𝑐′∈𝐶[𝑐⊂𝑐′]} In case of an assertion, say of the proposition that it is raining, represented as 𝑟, the commitment space C is updated so that it contains only commitment states which entail 𝑟. (13) 𝐶+‘it is raining’ ={𝑐∈𝐶∣𝑐⊆𝑟} viii Introduction Questions differ from assertions in that they do not change √𝐶, the root of the commitment space. (14) a. 𝐶+‘is it raining?’ =√𝐶∪{𝑐∈𝐶∣𝑐⊆𝑟} b. 𝐶+‘is it not raining?’ =√𝐶∪{𝑐∈𝐶∣𝑐⊆¬𝑟} c. 𝐶+‘is it raining or not?’ =√𝐶∪{𝑐∈𝐶∣𝑐⊆𝑟∨𝑐⊆¬𝑟} In other words, questions do not add information. Instead, they restrict the continuation of the discourse. As shown in (14a) and (14b), the “positive” and the “negative” simple polar question restricts 𝐶to those 𝑐which entail 𝑟and ¬𝑟, respectively. This is intended to represent the fact that the speaker wants to see if the discourse can continue with the information that it is raining, in the first case, or with the information that it is not raining, in the second case. The alternative question, as shown in (14c), has a yet different meaning from the two simple polar questions. Note, however, that this approach would still not capture the distinction between (9b) and (9e), reproduced below in (15) and (16). (15) Is the bridge open or not? (16) Is the bridge closed or not? The general question, then, is how to represent polar questions properly to capture their different uses. We now turn to the topic of negation in polar questions (Bolinger 1957, Ladusaw 1979, Ladd 1981). Ladd (1981) discusses polar questions such as those in (1). (17) Is it not raining? (18) Isn’t it raining? These questions differ with respect to where syntactic negation is. In (17), it is low, below the subject, while in (18) it is high, above the subject. The low negation question seems to implicate that the speaker wants to be informed as to whether the proposition that it is not raining is true. The high negation question, on the other hand, seems to indicate that the speaker is already inclined to assume that it is raining and wants to confirm this belief. Ladd (1981) assumes that high negation questions are actually ambiguous, with both “outer” and “inner” interpretations. He claims the ambiguity can be resolved by the presence of polarity items like too and either, which disambiguate the question toward the outer and inner readings respectively. ix Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh (19) Isn’t Jane coming too? →outer interpretation (20) Isn’t Jane coming either? →inner interpretation A prominent analysis of these facts is proposed by Romero & Han (2004). This analysis assumes a verum operator, whose meaning is a conversational version of the adverbial for sure, and whose occurrence is associated with a syntactically preposed high negation. We have the following form-meaning pairs, where 𝑝 stands for the proposition that Jane is coming. Notice that negation can scope either below or above the verum operator. (21) Is Jane not coming? = whether(¬𝑝) = {¬𝑝,¬¬𝑝}={𝑝,¬𝑝} (22) Isn’t Jane coming (either)? = whether(verum(¬𝑝)) = {for-sure(¬𝑝), ¬for-sure(¬𝑝)} (23) Isn’t Jane coming (too)? = whether(¬verum(𝑝)) = {¬for-sure(𝑝), for-sure(𝑝)} Romero and Han propose that verum is also present when the question contains the adverb really. Thus, (24) ends up having the same meaning as (23). (24) Is Jane really coming? = whether(verum(𝑝)) = {for-sure(𝑝), ¬for-sure(𝑝)} A similar approach is adopted by Krifka (2015), which assumes a commitment operator ⊢that is present in both assertions and questions, and negation can scope either below or above that operator. (25) 𝐶+‘is Jane not coming?’ = √𝐶∪𝐶+[Addressee ⊢¬𝑝] ⇝the speaker is checking whether the addressee is committed to ¬𝑝 (26) 𝐶+‘isn’t Jane coming?’ = √𝐶∪𝐶+¬[Addressee ⊢𝑝] ⇝the speaker is checking whether the addressee is not committed to 𝑝 So, there is a wide array of syntactic profiles available for polar question formation: high and low negation, the presence or absence of adverbials like really, and also, the presence or absence of bias inducing expressions such as negative polarity items (NPIs). Table 1 presents a fine-grained list (probably non-exhaustive) of relevant phenomena (see also the bias profiles discussed in Gärtner & Gyuris 2017). Coming back to the topic of negation in questions, one promising approach is to look at contextual features. This goes back to Büring & Gunlogson (2000), x Introduction Table 1: Polar question varieties Example Abbreviation Label Is it raining? PQ positive question Is it not raining? NQ negative question Isn’t it raining? HPQ high negated positive question Isn’t it not raining? HNQ high negated negated question Is it really raining? RPQ really positive question It is really not raining? RNQ really negated question IS it raining? FPQ focused positive question IS it not raining? FNQ focused negated question Is it REALLY raining? FRPQ focused really positive question Is it REALLY not raining? FRNQ focused really negated question It is raining? DPQ declarative positive question Is it raining?? IPQ incredulity positive question Is it raining or not? APNQ alternative question with negation Is the bridge open or closed? AAntQ alternative question with antonyms Do you have any potatoes? npiPQ positive question with polarity item which assumes three levels of contextual evidence with respect to the prejacent of a polar question: positive, neutral, and negative. The generalization in Table 2 is established. Table 2: Büring & Gunlogson’s (2000) generalization contextual evidence PPQ HPQ high reading low reading positive 3 7 7 neutral 3 3 7 negative 7 3 3 The contextual evidence is “positive” if it supports the prejacent, “neutral” if it neither supports nor speaks against the prejacent, and “negative” when it speaks against the prejacent. Thus, even PPQs are not neutral, in the sense that there are contexts where they cannot be used, namely those with negative evidence. Note that Büring & Gunlogson (2000) take HPQ with a low negation to mean the same as NQ. Thus, (27a) and (27b) would be equivalent in this approach. (27) a. Isn’t Jane coming either? b. Is Jane not coming either? xi Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh The first experimental work on this topic is done by Roelofsen et al. (2013). This is a rating experiment, which contrasts prior speaker’s belief (SB) with positive, neutral, and negative contextual evidence (CE). The experiment yields interesting results about the different uses of positive, high negation, and low negation questions as presented in Figure 3. Figure 2: Averaged naturalness ratings for experiment 1. 2.3. Results The results of experiment 1 are presented numerically in Table 1 and are visualized in Figure 2. The ratings for the wh-fillers are listed in Table 2. The results show that PPQs are most natural in neutral CE contexts with neutral or positive SB. They are less natural in negative CE contexts, and even worse in positive CE contexts. Positive SB increases the naturalness of PPQs in neutral and negative CE contexts, while it decreases it in positive CE contexts. Negative SB does exactly the opposite: it decreases the naturalness of PPQs in neutral and negative CE contexts, while it increases it in positive CE contexts. Finally, if CE and SB are not neutral, felicity of the PPQ increases when CE and SB are contrasting. There is a significant interaction between SB and CE. A detailed statistical analysis of the results can be found in Appendix A. PPQs Neg CE Pos CE Neut CE Total Neg SB 5.09 (0.76) 5.16 (0.2) 3.37 (0.29) 4.54 (.97) Pos SB 3.24 (1.08) 5.95 (0.29) 1.41 (0.2) 3.54 (2.02) Neut SB 4.72 (1.1) 5.51 (0.36) 1.87 (0.46) 4.04 (1.74) Total 4.35 (1.24) 5.54 (.43) 2.22 (.91) 4.04 (1.66) Table 1: Averaged naturalness ratings plus standard deviations for experiment 1. wh-fillers Good Bad Positive 1.91 (1.59) 6.49 (1.24) Negative 3.06 (2.19) 6.75 (0.91) Total 2.48 (2.00) 6.62 (1.09) Table 2: Averaged naturalness ratings plus standard deviations for the wh-fillers. Positive and negative questions in discourse 459 (a) PPQs Figure 3: Averaged naturalness ratings for experiment 2. We conducted an experiment testing the hypotheses in (13) and (14). 3.2. Method Participants were recruited using AMT, as explained in section 2.2. The target items were cartoons with dialogues identical to those of experiment 1, but this time with an HNPQ in the third picture of the cartoon (e.g., Didn’t she get a cat?). The fillers consisted of the target items of experiment 1 and 3, as well as 164 additional fillers with wh-questions, which are described in section 2.2 together with additional details about the procedure. 3.3. Results The results of experiment 2 are presented numerically in Table 3 and are visualized in Figure 3.We see that HNPQs are completely natural in negative and neutral CE contexts with positive SB. They are less natural with neutral SB, and even less so with negative SB. Finally, they are completely unnatural in positive CE contexts, no matter what the SB level is. We found a significant interaction between SB and CE. A detailed statistical analysis of the results is provided in Appendix B. HNPQs Neg CE Pos CE Neut CE Total Neg SB 4.66 (0.28) 6.19 (0.16) 4.03 (0.58) 4.96 (1) Pos SB 1.87 (0.29) 6.1 (0.19) 1.76 (0.29) 3.24 (2.09) Neut SB 3.79 (0.39) 6.17 (0.17) 2.86 (0.16) 4.27 (1.54) Total 3.44 (1.24) 6.15 (.17) 2.88 (1.02) 4.16 (1.7) Table 3: Averaged naturalness ratings plus standard deviations for experiment 2. 462 F. ROELOFSEN,N.VENHUIZEN AND G. WEIDMAN SASSOON (b) HNPQ Figure 4: Averaged naturalness ratings for experiment 3. LNPQs Neg CE Pos CE Neut CE Total Neg SB 4.85 (0.63) 6.19 (0.16) 4.78 (0.2) 5.27 (.76) Pos SB 2.33 (0.23) 6.36 (0.18) 3.18 (0.3) 3.96 (1.8) Neut SB 4.19 (0.47) 6.26 (0.21) 3.93 (0.3) 4.79 (1.12) Total 3.79 (1.18) 6.27 (.19) 3.96 (.72) 4.67 (1.39) Table 4: Averaged naturalness ratings plus standard deviations for experiment 3. We found a significant interaction between SB and CE. A detailed statistical analysis of the results is provided in Appendix C. 4.4. Discussion Contextual evidence. The results do not support hypothesis (17): LNPQs are more natural in negative CE contexts than in positive CE contexts; however, they are not significantly more natural in negative CE contexts than in neutral CE contexts. Only if we restrict ourselves to contexts with positive SB, hypothesis (17) is supported. The pattern that we found for LNPQs is strikingly similar to the pattern we found for HNPQs. There is a difference in neutral CE contexts, where HNPQs are more natural than LNPQs, but the overall pictures do not differ as much as expected. Speaker belief. The results clearly reject hypothesis (18), which says that LNPQs are only natural in contexts with negative SB. In fact, we see that LNPQs are least natural in negative SB contexts. Again, the pattern that we find is similar to that of HNPQs: positive SB >> neutral SB >> negative SB where only positive SB results in complete acceptability. Under the assumption that LNPQs require Positive and negative questions in discourse 465 (c) LNPQ Figure 3: Roelofsen et al.’s (2013) experimental results These uses were described in terms of various preference rules. An example of such a rule is “ask only if needed”. According to this rule, there is no need to ask any question if speaker’s belief and contextual evidence coincide. Another rule is “avoid reversing processes”, which says that it would be strange to ask whether ¬𝑝is true when the speaker’s belief or the contextual evidence supports 𝑝. Yet another rule is “use the least marked form”, which would prefer a positive question to a negative or an alternative question, for example. We note that these rules resemble constraints in bidirectional optimality theory (OT) in pragmatics, hence raise the question whether bidirectional OT should be employed in analyzing biased questions. We believe this perspective is promising. It has become consensus to assume three levels – positive, neutral, negative – for both contextual evidence and prior speaker’s belief, or “evidential bias” and xii Introduction “epistemic bias”, which are terms proposed by Sudo (2013) which have gained some currency. We could let SB stand for prior speaker’s belief and CE for contextual evidence, and use +,0and −to represent the three levels positive, neutral, and negative. Bias profiles of questions could then be represented more succinctly. For example, [SB−, CE+] is a question with negative prior speaker’s belief and positive contextual evidence, and [SB0+, CE−] would be a question with neutral or positive prior speaker’s belief and negative contextual evidence. If we adopt the convention of placing the value for SB to the left of that for CE, the profiles can be represented even more economically. Thus, [SB−, CE+] can be shortened to [−/+] and [SB0+, CE−] to [0+/−]. Domaneschi et al. (2017) present further experimental results. Tests were conducted on high negation questions (HiNQ), low negation questions (LowNQ), positive question (PosQ), and positive question with really (ReallyPosQ). The object languages were English and German. Participants were given a selecting task, where they had to pronounce their option. The main results are presented in Figure 4. A recurring question is whether syntactically high negation questions (HPQs) are semantically ambiguous. Ladd (1981) claims that they are; Sailor (2012), AnderBois (2019), Goodhue (2022) all argue that they are not. It should be pointed out, however, that Sailor’s data can be accounted for by assuming that for English, HPQs are ambiguous while NQs are not, and for German, the opposite is the case. (28) English a. Isn’t there a train in the early morning? ¬𝑄𝑝/𝑄¬𝑝 b. Is there no train in the early morning? 𝑄¬𝑝 (29) German a. Gibt es hier nicht einen Zug am Morgen? ¬𝑄𝑝 b. Gibt es hier keinen Zug am Morgen? 𝑄¬𝑝/¬𝑄𝑝 How can we explain this difference between English and German? Suppose we say that in the [SB+, CE−] scenario, the wide-scope negation reading is the best. If we then assume that in German this wide-scope interpretation can also be expressed by a syntactically low negation, we can explain why there is more uses of this option in German. The interesting issue here, therefore, is whether there are different readings of high negation questions and low negation questions. Sudo (2013) looks at the Japanese counterparts of positive questions (PQs), high negation questions (HQs), and low negation questions (NQs). xiii Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh Geist show that polar questions with razve and neuželi do not differ in their bias profile but in their ability to check the truth of the proposition which is favoured by the question’s epistemic bias. Repp and Geist support their analysis by a corpus study and two experimental investigations. They further provide a semantic explanation for the difference between razve and neuželi in terms of their consistency with inner and outer negation. In their chapter, Bias in Tag Questions, Corey Bill and Todor Koev study constructions consisting of a VP-eliptical yes/no question which is “tagged” onto an “anchor” declarative sentence of the opposite polarity, as exemplified by it’s raining, isn’t it? and it’s not raining, is it?. It has been observed that tag questions give rise to the inference that the speaker is “biased” toward the anchor, i.e. that she believes the proposition it expresses to be true. Bill and Koev propose to describe such biases in terms of two parameters: (i) whether they are weak or strong, and (ii) whether they are optional or obligatory. They devise diagnostics to test these distinctions, and advance an analysis to derive the observations from syntactic and phonological properties of tag questions. In their chapter, Contextual Bias and the Landscape of Mandarin Polar Questions, Yurie Hara and Mengxi Yuan discuss ma-questions and A-not-A questions in Mandarin Chinese. They present the following observations: (i) positive maquestions can be used in either neutral or positively biased contexts; (ii) negative ma-questions can only be used in negatively biased contexts; (iii) A-not-A questions can only be used in neutral contexts. They then argue that it is contextual bias, not speaker’s bias, which is instrumental for an analysis of this distribution. The concept of “contextual bias” is defined in terms of subjective probability and Farkas & Bruce’s (2010) Table model. In their chapter, What can Cantonese sentence-final particles tell us about rhetorical questions?, Angelika Kiss, Roger Yu-Hsiang Lo, and Justin R. Leung discuss three kinds of questions: (i) information seeking questions (ISQ), (ii) rhetorical question with empty set answers (RQ–), and (iii) rhetorical questions with nonempty set answers (RQ+). It uses the framework of inquisitive semantics to argue that these are in fact natural classes in terms of informativity and speaker’s commitment. Moreoever, ISQ and RQ– make up a subclass in this three membered group. An perception experiment is then presented whose result shows that the semantic distinctions are also reflected prosodically in Cantonese, specifically in distinctions with respect pitch contour and length of the final sentence particle. In his chapter, A note on bias and polarity in Vietnamese, Tue Trinh discusses the distribution of two types of NPIs across two types of polar questions. NPIs in Vietnamese come in two morphological variants, one simple and one complex. Among polar questions in this language, Trinh distinguishes between yes/no xx Introduction questions and agreement questions. The observation is that complex NPIs are acceptable in yes/no questions but deviant in agreement questions, and in yes/ no questions, complex NPIs give rise to negative bias while simple NPIs do not. The analysis Trinh proposes for this fact assumes that complex NPIs require a covert EVEN in the structure, and that agreement questions contain a covert evidential marker. Much of the study on biased questions has been based on the introspective intuition from different languages. In this chapter, Psycholinguistic processing tasks and the study of question bias, E Jamieson and Vinicius Macuch Silva provide another dimension: how can we investigate the issues related to biased questions from an experimental perspective? The chapter discusses different theoretical approaches to biased questions, an overview of psycholinguistic investigations on this topic, as well as the contribution of experimental data to the ongoing discussion and understanding of polar questions. In addition, Jamieson and Silva provide concrete suggestions and guidance regarding the aspects of experimental set-up, providing important resources for future researches. Hungarian interrogatives are marked with a special suffix. In her chapter, Marking the type of speaker bias: Hungarian nem-e interrogatives, Gyuris examines a particle nem-e, which consists of a negation and an interrogative marker. This particle has not been investigated before, and naturally, Gyuris is the first to describe the different characteristics that the particle exhibits, and to a semantic account. Gyuris first discusses the meaning contribution and the distribution of the canonical question particle -e, showing the interaction between its meaning and biases. She then discusses the data on nem-e, and reveals that their meaning and distributional pattern reveal cross-dialectal variation: nem-e gives rise to the outside negation reading but not inside negation reading, and is incompatible with different types of biases. After identifying different uses of nem-e, Gyuris provides analyses of the particle, which predicts and accounts for their distribution. The chapter is a welcome addition to our understanding of biased questions. In their chapter, Children’s acquisition of English “high” negation: A window into the logic and composition of bias in questions, Rebecca Woods and Thomas Roeper investigate the production of English nuclear negative tag structures and negative questions, produced by children and adults. They argue that the structures of negative tags and negative questions are distinct, the former being simple speech acts that are complex at the clausal level. The negative questions, on the other hand, involve an interrogative clause, scoped over by metalinguistic negation and a question operator. Woods and Roeper provide a new type of evidence xxi Manfred Krifka & Tue Trinh for their analysis, providing making valuable (and novel) empirical contribution to the volume (suggetion)s. In his chapter, Everything that rises must converge: Toward a unified account of inquisitive and assertive rising declaratives, Daniel Goodhue investigates the relationship between rising declarative clauses that are used to ask questions, and those that are used to make assertions. English matrix declaratives with a final rising intonation typical of polar questions are frequently used as a biased question: they convey that there is contextual evidence in favor of the proposition denoted by the declarative. However, some rising declaratives assert the content of the declarative, while raising a second issue. Goodhue offers a unified account of rising declaratives that seeks to explain both of these kinds of uses while positing unitary meanings for clause types and intonations. Achieving this goal depends the view that illocutionary force is not determined by clause type and intonation. Instead, clause type and intonation are proposed to merely constrain what a speaker could intend to do with them; pragmatic inference then plays a key role in enabling an audience to uncover the speaker’s illocutionary intention. The proposed account enables a derivation of assertive force. References AnderBois, Scott. 2019. 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