Colin Brown

Abstract I describe and compare two strategies to form rhetorical questions (RQs) in Sm’algyax (Tsimshianic). I show that one kind is isomorphic to ordinary, information-seeking questions, and is compatible with positive and negative answers, while the second is marked with irrealis morphology and only allows negative answers. I provide evidence from answerability and embedding to suggest that both types of RQs in Sm’algyax behave like questions in terms of their syntax/semantics, and propose that the irrealis subordinator present in the second type signals to the addressee that a negative answer is expected. These findings have implications for the presence of irrealis and subjunctive morphology appearing in RQs crosslinguistically.

Abstract This paper discusses evidentials and their behaviour in interrogative sentences, based on novel data from Sm’algyax (Tsimshianic, British Columbia/Alaska). Typically, evidentials in declarative sentences receive a Speaker-anchored orientation (“According to my evidence, p ”), and in interrogative sentences they receive an Addressee-anchored orientation (“According to your evidence, Q ?”). This shift from Speaker to Addressee in questions is referred to as Interrogative Flip, which has been argued to be an obligatory process in canonical questions (Korotkova, Natasha. 2016. Heterogeneity and universality in the evidential domain . UCLA Doctoral dissertation). I discuss a particular evidential sn “Conjectural”, which exhibits variable interrogative flip in questions. The anchor of sn may shift to the Addressee, or it may result in a “Conjectural Question” reading, which I suggest involves a particular orientation of sn to neither the Speaker nor the Addressee. Adopting a simple modal analysis for evidentials, and a pragmatic approach to interrogative flip (Garrett, Edward John. 2001. Evidentiality and assertion in Tibetan . UCLA Doctoral dissertation; Korotkova, Natasha. 2016. Heterogeneity and universality in the evidential domain . UCLA Doctoral dissertation), I suggest that the variable interrogative flip behaviour falls out from the pragmatics of (non-)canonical questions (Farkas, Donka F. 2022. Non-intrusive questions as a special type of non-canonical questions. Journal of Semantics 39(2). 295–337).

This paper investigates the syntax of Predicate Focus Doubling (PFD) in Dschang, a Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon. PFD is similar to the well-known predicate cleft construction found in a number of other West African languages, because it encodes verbal focus and involves two instances of the verb. However, unlike the predicate cleft construction, PFD involves the right clausal edge, not the left. Through analyzing PFD, we propose that Dschang provides strong crosslinguistic support for the existence of a low focus position near the vP edge. We further argue that the surface word order in the PFD construction is derived by head movement of the verb (understood as copying) to the low focus position. Finally, we provide evidence that there is movement of a constituent, containing minimally the verb and direct object, to a position higher than that of the copy of the verb in low focus.