Negative Interrogatives and Whatnot

The present article examines the attenuation and conversion of outer and inner negations under interrogative scope (interrogative negation). Interrogative scope over outer and inner negations triggers network processes at the interface of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, which may in the long run result in the bleaching of their negating function. This explains the crosslinguistically frequent homophony of negations with non-negating particles, conjunctions and complementizers. I discuss four mechanisms, the Asking > Calling-into-Question Implicature (§§ 2, 3), the Asking-for-Confirmation Implicature (§§ 2, 3), the Affirmative-Negative Equivalence under Disjunction (§ 4), and the Litotes Effect (§ 5).