Closed questions

3 . 5 . 1 Q u e s t i o n s a s k e d u s i n g n e g a t i ve s e n t e n c e - t y p e s There is a substantial difference between open questions and confirmation questions regarding the use of the negative, a fact that serves as further motivation for distinguishing them. In the case of confirmation yes-no questions, if a speaker wishes to confirm a belief, a belief that he would express by uttering the positive sentence-token P, the speaker may utter P?, and, if a speaker wishes to confirm a belief that he would express by uttering the negative sentence-token Not-P, the speaker may utter: Not-P? In both cases, the uninverted form is used. If I wish to confirm the belief that it is raining, I may say It’s raining? If I wish to confirm the belief that it is not raining, I may say It’s not raining?, the negative finding its role within the content of the belief that the speaker seeks to confirm. Since the belief the speaker seeks to confirm might be either one expressed in the negative or one not expressed in the negative, the presence of the negative is unexceptional.

In open questions, things are different. Recall that in an open yes-no question, the speaker presents himself as having no basis for determining whether P, presenting himself as holding that P and not-P are equally possible. Now, notice that if I have been in all day, and have not heard a weather report, and you telephone, I may ask the open question Is it raining? but I cannot ask Isn’t it raining? While confirmation questions may be asked using sentences in the positive or the negative, it appears that open questions may only be asked in the positive. In the case just given, that may seem to be a natural result, another bit of linguistic markedness making itself felt. However, things are considerably more complex, since negative inverted sentence-types can, it turns out, be used to ask questions in other circumstances.

Before we examine those complexities, there is a prior issue: How can a negative sentence-type, at least for our purposes, be recognized? For guidance, consider the distinction between asking Isn’t Max reliable? and asking Is Max not reliable? This last is ambiguous. On one understanding, the ‘not’ constituent-negates ‘reliable’, and, in that circumstance, we do not, as I wish to use the term, have a negative sentence-type used to ask a question. We have, rather, a positive sentence-type used to ask a question, one very close in meaning to Is Max unreliable? There is a simple test for this: one may only append ‘or not’ to the end of a question when a positive sentence-type is used to ask it. And, when ‘not’ constituent-negates ‘reliable’, it is possible to append ‘or not’ to yield the possible, though clumsy, Is Max not reliable, or not? On the other understanding of Is Max not reliable?, and on the only understanding of Isn’t Max reliable?, however, this is not allowed. The ‘not’ of a negative sentence-type used to ask a question must be sentential in its scope: like positive statements, positive questions may contain constituents that are negated, but they are not themselves negated. Consideration of sentence-types

Closed Questions 65 in which ‘not’ has sentential scope reveals that these negative sentence-types are used in pursuit of what I will call the ‘eliminative tactic’.

3 . 5 . 2 T h e e l i m i n a t i ve t a c t i c

What is the status of the negative in inverted negative sentence-types used to ask questions? What work does it do? Let’s take a case. Suppose it is ninety-five degrees and someone sees you with a sweater on. She might say Aren’t you hot? In the given circumstance, this question seems natural. But what sort of question is it, and what does its speaker ask in uttering it? The speaker has a basis for the belief that you are hot: people are generally hot at ninety-five degrees. And the speaker has a basis for the belief that you are not hot: despite the circumstances, you are wearing a sweater. So, there are conflicting bases for belief.

We have seen that not all questions are asked so as to close a point in question. Rhetorical questions are not. But for those that are, we have so far only considered cases in which a speaker either has some basis for closing a point in question, or does not. Now we confront a circumstance, which is common enough, in which a speaker finds herself with conflicting bases for belief. There are two subcases to consider. In one subcase, the speaker considers the conflicting bases to be, for current purposes, of equal weight. In the other subcase, the speaker considers one of the bases to outweigh the other. We will see that a speaker in the first circumstance asks a positive open question; the equally weighing bases ‘cancel each other out’, and the case is no different from one in which she considers herself to have no bases at all. Adjusting terminology on this point, an open question can now be more appropriately defined as one asked by a speaker who considers herself to have no outweighing basis for deciding it. The second subcase, in which a speaker considers herself to have conflicting bases, one outweighing the other, is more interesting. It is in that circumstance that the speaker may use an inverted negative sentence-type, asking what I have termed a ‘closed’ question. In asking a closed question, speakers adopt the eliminative tactic, a brief outline of which follows. Suppose there is a point in question. That point may be pursued (eliminatively) by bringing a further point into question, which is whether the outweighed basis for deciding the original point in question is sufficiently strong to prevent the speaker’s closing the original point. The reason the negative sentence-type is useful here is that the polarity of the further question will be the reverse of the polarity of the original question, since the further question takes as its point in question not whether the bases supporting a particular answer to the original point in question are to be accepted, but rather whether the bases contravening support of a particular answer to the original point in question are to be accepted. That is, where the original point in question is whether P, and the outweighing bases support P, the further point brought into question becomes whether not-P. In pursuing the original point in question by raising a further point, the speaker attempts to eliminate the counterexamples, so as to pave the

way for acceptance of the outweighing bases as sufficient for closing the original point in question. This is why I call this the ‘eliminative tactic’. For illustration, let’s return to the example where you are asked Aren’t you hot? In this case, the original point in question would be whether it is the case that you are hot; the outweighing basis being the ninety-five degree temperature. The further point in question would be whether you are not hot, the outweighed basis being the wearing of the sweater.

Like open questions, closed questions are asked using deformed sentence-types. To accommodate closed questions, our generalizations of sentence choice may be adjusted as follows:

(1) To ask a confirmation question, use an undeformed sentence-type. (2) To ask an open or closed question, use a deformed sentence-type.

(a) To ask an open question, use a positive sentence-type. (b) To ask a closed question, use a negative sentence-type.

Let’s examine these last in turn. (2a) states that, when a speaker considers there to be no outweighing bases, and seeks to ask an open question, the positive form must be chosen. That is the case, already mentioned, of asking Is it raining?, but not Isn’t it raining?, when a speaker has no idea of what the weather is. When a speaker does have an opinion as to the weather, to ask a closed question, a negative form must be used. To ask Isn’t it raining? is to pursue the eliminative tactic, seeking finally to close on the conclusion that it is raining. But by asking the positive Is it raining? a speaker cannot be pursuing the eliminative tactic; he cannot be seeking to close on the conclusion that it is not raining. He may only be asking a positive open question. Thus (2b) complements (2a).

The eliminative tactic just outlined is a little bit of natural-language scientific practice. By implementing it, we pursue the truth in a way that is so natural that it might be mistakenly thought to be grammaticized. Let’s further explore the factual terrain. It is clear that the question whether the outweighed bases are sufficient to block acceptance of the theory supported by the outweighing evidence certainly could itself be debatable. In many circumstances, even a small bit of counterevidence can block at least full acceptance of a highly supported theory. It depends what kind of theory is in question, and what kinds of criteria for acceptance are in force. And it depends very crucially on the individuals involved: some leap to conclusions where others are more cautious. As we saw when considering the decision whether to ask an open question or a confirmation question, there is no interesting answer to the question under what epistemic circumstances the eliminative tactic should be pursued. The eliminative tactic is available, different speakers pursue it in different circumstances, and that is the (descriptive) end of the matter.

As already mentioned, in pursuing the eliminative tactic, only inverted sentence-types may be used. A speaker cannot pursue the eliminative tactic by asking an undeformed confirmation question, even when the sentence-type

Closed Questions 67 used is negative. To see this, consider what the upshot of asking a confirmation question in pursuit of the eliminative tactic would be. Suppose a speaker considers that the outweighing bases support that it is raining, and that the outweighed bases support that it is not raining. In particular, suppose that it was not raining when I came in, but I now see you walk in with a wet umbrella. By asking you a confirmation question, would I be able to pursue the eliminative tactic? I cannot say It’s not raining?, since by saying that I would be taken as trying to confirm my belief that it is not raining, a belief I did have, but am now leaning against. And I cannot be seeking to confirm the evidence of your wet umbrella, since that is evidence that it is raining. Nor, in pursuit of the eliminative tactic, can I say It’s raining? since that only goes to confirm the evidence of your wet umbrella. To be sure, if you answer Yes, it is, I have more evidence against my former belief that it is not raining, but not through pursuit of the eliminative tactic, a point I will return to.¹³

By asking a closed question, a speaker reveals what she believes concerning the original point in question. It will help to reconsider the matter of the heat versus the sweater. Recall that the conflicting bases are the fact that the addressee is wearing a sweater and the fact that it is ninety-five degrees. Suppose the speaker takes the basis provided by the outside temperature as outweighing the basis provided by the wearing of the sweater. For such a speaker, the puzzling part is the wearing of the sweater. Such a speaker, taking the evidence of the sweater as the outweighed basis, may ask the closed negative question Aren’t you hot? —this is the question already considered that I said seemed natural in the circumstance. The question asks whether the addressee is not hot. On the other hand, another speaker might decide that the evidence provided by the wearing of the sweater outweighs the evidence provided by the outside temperature. Perhaps there is reason to doubt the accuracy of the thermometer, and so for this speaker, the ninety-five degree reading is the puzzling part. If such a speaker, taking the evidence of the temperature reading as the outweighed basis, asks a question to decide the point, he must ask the open positive question Are you hot?, since the temperature is what provides the evidence that the addressee is hot. The question asks whether the addressee is hot. (And, of course, the speaker might consider the temperature and the sweater as equally strong but conflicting bases for deciding the point in question, and here, if the speaker asks a question, the speaker must ask a positive open question.) But the point I wish to focus on now is this. Consider what the speaker reveals herself to believe in the first case. By asking Aren’t you hot? the speaker reveals that she considers the outweighing evidence to be that you are hot, since her question is posed so as to address the outweighed basis for believing that you are not hot. So this question, which,

¹³ If I believe that it is raining, and you say I’m going out to play baseball, I may respond It’s not

raining?! The belief being confirmed is my newly acquired belief that it is not raining, a belief based

in virtue of its structure, can only be asked in pursuit of the eliminative tactic, reveals how the speaker is leaning concerning the original point in question, and therefore also may serve to imply other opinions the questioner holds: that your attire is inappropriate, perhaps. In the second case, however, this is not so. The question asked is open, and, merely by asking an open question, a speaker does not present himself as leaning one way or the other, as having any opinion.

Finally, consider the negative confirmation question You’re not hot? This question takes the fact that you are wearing a sweater as the basis for holding the belief that you are not hot. So a speaker asking You’re not hot? would be presenting himself as seeking to confirm the belief that you are not hot. As in the case of the spoiled milk, that belief might be the belief of the speaker, but it also might be the belief of the addressee, in which case it might not be the case that the speaker believes that the addressee is not hot.

Can one ask a closed question without having conflicting bases for belief? Not straightforwardly, I believe. Suppose you know that it is raining and know that the addressee knows that it is raining, and it develops that the addressee wants nevertheless to go out so as to avoid some responsibility. Then you might ask Isn’t it raining? You have asked the closed question even though you are certain that it is raining. The closed question succeeds in this case, through misrepresentation. Although you have no conflicting bases, you make as if to believe, and as if to believe that the addressee might believe, that it is not raining but also while presenting yourself as leaning toward the belief that it is raining. The effect is to point out that the addressee is going out even though it is raining. Such pointed closed question cases can thus be used as an indirect way of expressing disapproval or criticism of another’s behavior.

3 . 5 . 3 Ta g q u e s t i o n s

There is an important, and quite lovely, restriction on the applications of generalizations (2a) and (2b) in the previous section. Tag questions are also closed questions and are also used to pursue the eliminative tactic. They, however, unlike the full questions under consideration above, may appear in both the positive and negative forms, that choice being a function of the polarity of the sentences expressing the original points in question. Full open questions are positive, and full closed questions are negative, but tag questions, all of which are closed, may be positive or negative. The switch in polarity found in tag questions is a reflex of the fact that what the eliminative tactic aims to eliminate is the opposite of the proposition that enjoys the outweighing support; as a result we see both negative tags like It’s hot, isn’t it? along with positive tags like It isn’t hot, is it? This syntactic reflex of the tactic is so regular that it has traditionally led students of the topic to the view that tag questions derive their structure by linguistic rule. The tag question transformation was an early instantiation of this approach. Now I believe that it is a mistake to encode polarity switch into the

Closed Questions 69 syntactic legislation of English, as the tag question transformation, or its modern descendants, would require. The reason is that, next to tags that show polarity switch, such as You’re going to beat me up, aren’t you?, there are others that do not, such as You’re going to beat me up, are you?, which will be discussed further in the next section. Of course these two are intoned quite differently, at least in many circumstances, but, also of course, they are used to do very different things as well. My point is that, if syntax just provides the tags, leaving their polarity free, it need do no more. Rules of sentence choice specify, for each sentence-type, what it may be used for. Those in which there is a shift of polarity are used in pursuit of the eliminative tactic; these sentence-types I will continue to call ‘tag questions’. Those in which there is no shift in polarity are used more aggressively; these I will call ‘tag challenges’.¹⁴

First, we must ask why tag questions, which are closed, can be either positive or negative, when full closed questions are restricted to the negative. Why are tag questions closed? When I say It’s hot, isn’t it?, I first assert it is hot, and then ask the question . . . isn’t it? Clearly the tag question must not be understood as open, since to ask an open question on a point that I have just committed on would be self-impeaching. If I am willing to assert that P, I cannot in the same breath go on to ask the open question whether not-P. And if I am willing to ask the open question whether not-P, I cannot just have asserted P. And all of this is true, mutatis mutandis, with the polarities reversed, were I to say It isn’t hot, is it? So tag questions are not, and cannot be, open questions. They can, however, be used as closed questions; it is not self-impeaching, having asserted P, to ask whether not-P as a closed question: this merely brings the further point in question whether not-P, presenting it as having outweighed