All declarative questions are attributive

Abstract

Gunlogson (2007) claims that (i) declaratives used as questions express a propositional commitment just as normal assertions do, but that (ii) this commitment is not attributed to the speaker’s but to the addressee’s commitment-set. Thus, Gunlogson (2007) interprets all declarative questions as “attributive” utterance types involving a commitment-shift from speaker to addressee. By contrast, I will argue that not all declarative questions involve the suggested commitment-shift. I will distinguish two types of declarative questions, (i) echo questions (with declarative sentence type) and (ii) confirmative questions. Whereas echo questions leave the speaker’s commitment-set untouched, confirmative questions involve speaker-commitment. Moreover, echo questions and confirmative questions behave very differently with respect to intonation patterns (rising versus falling), the type of sentence they instantiate and certain meta-linguistic operations.