A‐not‐A Questions

AbstractAn A‐not‐A question is a type of question with a function similar to that of a yes/no question, the surface form of which involves two copies of a predicate with one copy negated. Such questions superficially resemble alternative questions but have distinct syntactic properties. A‐not‐A questions have primarily been studied in Mandarin Chinese and related languages. Morphosyntactically, A‐not‐A questions behave as if formed by a combined negative/interrogative morpheme (called here NQ), structurally in the inflectional layer (IP) of the clause structure, undergoing syntactic movement to a scope position higher (CP) in the clause, and morphologically triggering a kind of reduplication. Diagnostics show many similarities between NQ in A‐not‐A questions and adjunctwh‐words likeweishenme‘why’, including sensitivity to movement islands, interaction with quantifiers, and interaction with focusing morphology. A‐not‐A questions differ pragmatically from yes/no questions, the former being appropriate only in strictly neutral contexts, where neither possible answer to the question is assumed to be the true one. Three other question types (VP‐not‐V questions, VP‐not‐VP questions, and negative particle questions) superficially resemble A‐not‐A questions, and share some syntactic properties but not others. A short discussion of other languages (all of which are related historically or geographically to Mandarin Chinese) reveals that the properties of A‐not‐A questions can be found in questions in languages other than Mandarin Chinese, but potentially with a morphological manifestation other than an A‐not‐A surface form, and even alongside questions that take an A‐not‐A form but are not otherwise analogous to Mandarin A‐not‐A questions. Challenges for the future include clarifying the disagreements in critical judgments, and expanding the cross‐linguistic understanding of these questions beyond Mandarin.