¿A poco así dices? Biased interrogatives with ¿A poco (no)…? in Mexican Spanish

Abstract

This article offers a characterization of the biased polar interrogative with ¿a poco (no)?, frequent in Mexican Spanish. This characterization is based on the system proposed by Sudo (2013) and shows that Sudo’s two notions of epistemic bias and evidential bias are necessary and sufficient to characterize the conventional non-propositional meaning associated with the three kinds of a poco questions in Mexican Spanish: the a poco positive polarity question codes a negative epistemic bias and a [+positive] or [+negative] evidential bias; the a poco negative polarity question with inside negation codes a positive epistemic bias and a [+negative] evidential bias; and the a poco negative polarity question with outside negation codes a positive epistemic bias and a [−negative] evidential bias. Lastly, the article discusses to what extent these characterizations are also compatible with the interactional uses of the short questions ¿a poco? and ¿a poco no?