A Semantic Analysis of Negative Islands with Manner Questions

Abstract

Dayal (1996) has proposed that a question presupposes that it has a most informative true answer. In this paper I argue that the reason for the unacceptability of negative manner questions is that this requirement can never be met in the case of these questions. This is because the domain of manners contains atoms that are not independent from each other: contraries. Therefore the truth of an (atomic) proposition in the Hamblin denotation of such questions has consequences for the truth of other atomic propositions. This state of affairs in the case of negative questions results in a situation in which it is not possible to select a maximal answer.