Dalmi Gréte (Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce)

Hungarian disjunctive questions at the syntax/semantics interface

Abstract

YES/NO questions with the conjunction OR are ambiguous between the neutral, polar question reading and the emphatic, alternative question readings. Disjunctive questions, which are built on the conjunction of a positive and a negative polar question, represent a third type. On the basis of Hungarian data, the paper argues that disjunctive questions should be derived via conjunction reduction+extraction, instead of coordination+ellipsis, traditionally assumed for alternative questions.