Semantics and Pragmatics of Cantonese Polar Questions: an inquisitive approach

This paper analyzes four kinds of Cantonese polar questions, HO2, ME1, AA4 and A-NOTA questions in the framework of radical inquisitive semantics (Groenendijk & Roelofsen, 2010; Aher, 2012; Sano, 2014). HO2, ME1 and A-NOT-A questions have multidimensional semantics. In addition to their primary speech act of questioning, HO2 and ME1 interrogatives encode secondary assertive acts of positive and negative expectations, respectively, while A-NOT-A interrogatives conventionally encode lack of expectation, hence the neutral requirement. In contrast, AA4 interrogatives are semantically simplex question acts, thus they can be used in both biased and neutral contexts.