Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.
Answers to Polarity Questions: A Typological Study (Moser)
This week's paper was submitted by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and talks about how different languages form replies to polar questions such as "Did John arrive?". There are several strategies to answer such questions, such as by means of echoing the utterance, using a discourse particle such as "yes" or by repeating a constituent of the question. Thus, you will be able to talk about how your conlang handles these things. Now onto the prompts!
- How are questions to polarity questions formed?
- Try to depict your conlang's answer system in a schema as the one on p.10!
- Are there any interesting pragmatic implications with some of these mechanisms?
Remember to try to comment on other people's languages
Submit your papers here!
So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!