Rhetorical question marking: German 'schliesslich'

Abstract

The German adverb 'schliesslich' can be used in two senses: in a sentence-internal sense ‘eventually’ and in an intersentential sense similar to justificational ‘after all’ in English. I argue that these two uses are syntactically and semantically distinct, asking for an ambiguity analysis. Next, we address the observation that questions with justificational 'schliesslich' must be interpreted as rhetorical questions (RhQ). The present analysis can predict this and offers the basis for studying general justificational RhQ in both German and English.