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Or what?

Paper · 2017 · María Biezma and Kyle Rawlins

Summary

The paper explains the meaning of English 'or what' questions (owqs), such as asking whether something is semantics, pragmatics, or what. These questions vary with context. They can seek information, act as rhetorical assertions, or press the addressee for an immediate reply. The authors place owqs on the polar–alternative spectrum, closest to alternative questions. Their analysis has two parts. First, the "or" is the ordinary proposition-level disjunction of alternative questions. Second, the final "what" is a pronoun anaphoric to the immediate Question Under Discussion (IQUD). An owq therefore re-asks the current QUD while naming some of its alternatives. Using attested COCA examples, they argue that owqs are not sluicing, although they resemble antecedent-less pseudo-sluicing. The three uses follow from how the IQUD, the discourse tree (D-Tree) and the context set constrain one another. The broader claim is that compositional semantics of questions cannot be complete without a rich model of discourse structure.

Key points

  • owqs contain inversion (or "whether"/"if" when embedded), one or more propositional disjuncts, and a final bare "what". Attested data come from COCA (Davies 2008–).
  • A preceding question changes what an owq is about. After "where is the reception?", "Is it at John's house or what?" asks about places. After "why is Mary skipping it?", the same question asks about reasons, and each context licenses different "no" answers.
  • Rhetorical owqs are analysed like a doubled alternative question ("is it adorable or is it adorable?"). Their presuppositions make the QUD trivially singleton, so the answer is entailed by the context. Plain polar questions and 'or not' questions resist this reading.
  • Cornering-like insistence also arises, as with 'or not' questions (Biezma 2009). The difference is that owqs do not semantically bundle the extra alternatives. A follow-up polar question about an unnamed option is fine after 'or what' but odd after 'or not'.
  • The analysis is built on Roberts 1996, Büring 2003 and Biezma & Rawlins 2012. It is contrasted with sluicing identity accounts by AnderBois (2014) and Barros (2014). Embedded owqs with possibly embedded QUDs are left as an open problem.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Treat a function word ("what") as a pronoun whose antecedent is a discourse object, the current question, rather than an entity in the text. This captures context-dependent meaning without positing hidden ellipsis.
  • I2. Use question–question sequences as a diagnostic: put a prior question before the target and check which "no" answers remain acceptable.
  • I3. Derive several speech-act uses (information-seeking, rhetorical, insisting) from one semantic entry plus context, rather than listing separate senses.
  • I4. Contrast two near-synonymous forms by whether they collapse ("bundle") unnamed alternatives or merely leave them open. Check this with predicted acceptable continuations.
  • I5. Read rhetorical questions as questions whose only possible answer is already settled by context.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): prag could resolve the final "what" in 'or what' questions to the active QUD it tracks, filling in the open alternatives (places vs. reasons) instead of leaving a bare wh-word.
  • I2 (learn): this suggests minimal-pair test items where only the preceding question changes, serving as a negative control that the reader really uses discourse context.
  • I3 (frames): the speech-act classifier could compute the use from the state of the QUD and the common ground (for example, an answer already entailed means rhetorical), keeping the decision explainable.
  • I4 (world): when a question mentions some options plus "or what", the world model should keep an open slot for further alternatives, whereas "or not" should close the space to yes/no.
  • I5 (answer): when a test or story contains "Is he an idiot or what?", the reader can record the implied assertion (he is an idiot) as a speaker stance instead of searching for an answer.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Johns Hopkins UniversityBaltimore · United States187 works · 92,194 citations🎓University of KonstanzKonstanz · Germany9 works · 163 citations

📚 Shelves 3The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPhilosophy · 211 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 1,373 works

Cite

Cite as María Biezma and Kyle Rawlins. 2017. Or what?. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.10.16

@article{biezma2017or,
  title = {{Or what?}},
  author = {María Biezma and Kyle Rawlins},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.10.16},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.10.16}
}

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