What does 'vajon' contribute?

Abstract

The Hungarian particle 'vajon' can be added to interrogatives to render the question acts they are used for "reflective" in the sense of geared to raising a question without answer request (Lyons 1977: 755), i.e., with weakened "call-on-addressee" (cf. Beyssade and Marandin 2006; Truckenbrodt 2006). This effect puts 'vajon' in close proximity with triggers of "non-intrusive" questions (NIQs), as noted by Farkas (2022: 313; 2023: 114), and "conjectural" questions (CQs) (Eckardt 2020). Studying 'vajon' against this theoretical background (i) uncovers difficulties for content-based approaches to particle/clause type (in)compatibilities, (ii) demonstrates the usefulness of distinguishing different types of rhetorical questions, (iii) identifies obstacles to analyzing 'vajon' as either an NIQ- or a CQ-trigger, and (iv) adds another example to the inventory of cross-linguistic indirect speech act discrepancies.