Deriving ignorance in questions: evidence from Sinhala

Abstract

The epistemic component of a question has always been a crucial aspect in the analysis of the meaning of a question. However, while the meaning of questions has mostly been analyzed in terms of indirect questions embedded under the factive know, the ignorance component associated with a direct question has received very little attention in the literature. This paper highlights the significance of the ignorance component of a matrix question in the analysis of its meaning and proposes to account for it in terms of a presupposition in association with the indefinite component within a question. It develops and tests the hypothesis with some crucial data from Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Sri Lanka.