On the semantics of the response item 'that’s right'

Abstract

This work discusses the semantic features of the English positive response item that’s right and its kin. It will be argued that, unlike a garden-variety positive response item (e.g., yes), that’s right presupposes (i) that the polar question it responds to, Q, is a congruent subquestion of some contextually prominent non-polar question Q’, and (ii) that the nucleus proposition of Q is such that if it is true, it is the complete answer (most informative answer) to Q’. In consequence of this, a polar question responded to by that’s right must be a “nuclear” (as opposed to “total”) polar question, which contains a (non-polarity) focus.