INTERACT10N OF FOCUS AND ELLIPSIS IN THE INTERPRETATION OF ALTERNATIVE QUESTIONS

This paper presents the observation that negative alternative questions across languages can be formed only when negation has not been inverted (Han (1999)), and proposes to derive this fact from the effects of Focus on negation and the LF-syntax of yn-questions. Although the questions in (1) have the same components (they both contain the proposition expressed by John drank coffee or tea plus negation), they do not have the same interpretation. (1b) has either a yn-question reading or an alternative question (alt-) reading. Under, the yn-reading, the possible answers are Yes, John drank coffee or tea and No, John did not drink coeffer or tea, John didn’t drink one of them, and the possible answers are John did not drink coffee and John did not drink tea (see Karttunen (1977), Larson (1985), Higginbotham (1993) on the semantics of alt-questions). (la), on the other hand, has only the yn-reading.