Lab members are currently involved in many different projects. Some project blurbs are featured below:
Disjunction and alternative questions in Wá∙šiw (Ryan Bochnak)
This project explores the composition of alternative questions in Wá∙šiw (isolate; USA). Two key features of the language raise challenges for the analysis. First, the connective used to separate the alternatives is underspecified between a disjunction and a conjunction reading. In particular, the conjunction reading is obligatorily contrastive (i.e., is translated as “but” in English, rather than with plain conjunction “and”). Second, an additive focus particle occurs cliticized to the connective in alternative questions.
Conjectural questions in Ktunaxa (Ana Laura Arrieta Zamudio and Ryan Bochnak)
This project investigates conjectural questions (CQs; e.g., “Who could be at the door?”) in Ktunaxa (isolate; eastern BC, northern Montana and Idaho). Cross-linguistically, CQs are often formed with inferential evidentials or other epistemic modals, and have a pragmatic profile that does not assume that the addressee will answer. CQs in Ktunaxa are formed using the weak necessity modal xma, which can have both epistemic and circumstantial readings. We argue that conjectural questions can be derived as a special case of epistemic xma in questions, based on the pragmatics of epistemic xma more generally.