Questions under discussion and the semantics/pragmatics divide

Grindrod, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8684-974X and Borg, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2725-9568 (2019) Questions under discussion and the semantics/pragmatics divide. Philosophical Quarterly, 69 (275). pp. 418-426. ISSN 1467-9213 doi: 10.1093/pq/pqy058

Abstract/Summary

The ‘question under discussion’ (or ‘QUD’) framework is a pragmatic framework that draws on work in the semantics of questions to provide an appealing account of a range of pragmatic phenomena, including the use of prosodic focus in English and restrictions on acceptable discourse moves (Roberts 1996). More recently, however, a number of proposals have attempted to use the framework to help to settle issues at the semantics/pragmatics boundary, fixing the truth-conditions of what is said by a speaker (which many theorists take to be a semantic matter). In this discussion piece, we suggest that this kind of putative extension of the work to be done by the QUD framework is illegitimate, as the framework ultimately seems to depend on a prior grip on semantic content. To see this, we first outline the QUD framework and then raise our concern.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/80434
Identification Number/DOI	10.1093/pq/pqy058
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Cognition Research (CCR) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > Philosophy
Publisher	Wiley-Blackwell
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