A The dynamics of wh-questions in Brazilian Portuguese: a scalar proposal

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze dialogues in Brazilian Portuguese (hereinafter BP) consisting of open questions or wh-questions (BORGES-NETO, 2007; FERREIRA, 2023) and their corresponding complete or partial answers (GROENENDIJK; STOKHOF, 1984). Specifically, this work sought to investigate the inferences involved in each type of response: entailment, presupposition, and conversational implicature. Additionally, the study aimed to develop a scale of possible responses to constituent questions, ranging from the most informative to the least informative. Our hypothesis is that there is a scalar relationship between the diversity of responses to constituent questions, considering Horn's proposal (2004) for scalar implicatures. The theoretical foundation is based on studies in formal semantics and pragmatics, such as the semantics and pragmatics of questions (HAMBLIN, 1973; KRIPKE, 1980; GROENENDIJK; STOKHOF, 1984; FERREIRA, 2023), the Cooperative Principle (GRICE, 1975), and scalar implicatures (HORN, 2004). The methodology employed was introspective, involving the creation of dialogues with wh-questions and various complete or partial responses, including prosodic focus marking (ROOTH, 1985, 1995), contrastive topic marking (BÜRING, 1999, 2003), universal and existential quantifiers, among others. After analyzing the dialogues, it can be concluded that depending on the type of response, diverse types of inferences are triggered, ranging from entailment and presupposition of exhaustiveness to conversational implicatures of exhaustiveness and speaker's lack of knowledge. Furthermore, the study proposes a logical scale, ranging from the most informative and logically inferred question to the least informative, with a generalized conversational implicature of the speaker's lack of knowledge.