#interrogatives

Our speaker will be Deniz Özyıldız from the University of Konstanz)

Abstract:

Verbs that combine with clauses differ in whether or not they can combine with interrogatives. An often cited contrast is the one between "know" and "think" in (1). (1) Leah knows/#thinks whether she should invite Raquel.

Many agree that "think" and its class-mates are unacceptable with interrogatives because they are neg-raising, which means that they license the inference in (2). (2) Leah doesn't think that she should invite Raquel. -> Leah thinks that she shouldn't invite Raquel. Some dissent, citing examples like (3): If we let "think" describe an event, e.g., by using the progressive, question embedding improves. And if the verb is acceptable with interrogatives, the question arises of what (if anything) the neg-raising-based explanation is an explanation of. (3) Leah is thinking whether she should invite Raquel. In this talk, I focus on contrasts like (1) and (3) to understand the effects of tense and aspect on clause embedding verbs' combinatorial and inferential profiles. I argue that their eventuality-related properties (stativity, eventivity, telicity, etc.) must be taken into account if we want to describe and explain their syntax and semantics. I sketch out a way of doing this that assumes that stative thought ascriptions are generic sentences built from eventive thought ascriptions. This allows us to derive intuitively accurate truth conditions for "think that" and "think wh-," derive the neg-raising inference, and better understand its relationship with question embedding.