1. Questions and epistemic stance: Some examples from Italian conversations
- Author
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Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni, Laura Vincze, and Andrzej Zuczkowski
- Subjects
Philology. Linguistics ,P1-1091 - Abstract
Through the analysis of presuppositions, question design, social action and preference organisation in short fragments of Italian question-answer sequences, this paper aims to show that (1) wh-questions, on the one hand, and alternative and polar questions (i.e., polar interrogatives, tag and declarative questions), on the other, come from two different epistemic positions: unknowing and uncertain, respectively; (2) alternative and polar questions convey different degrees of uncertainty, thus placing themselves in different points along the epistemic continuum of the uncertain position. Keywords: Questions, Epistemic stance, Uncertainty, Unknowledge, Information-seeking, Confirmation-seeking
- Published
- 2018
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