Abstract

REIG ALAMILLO, Asela. Interrogatives marked with qué and qué no in Mexican Spanish: the degree of their epistemic bias. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2024, vol.11, e295.  Epub May 20, 2024. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v11i00.295.

Within the paradigm of Spanish polar interrogative constructions, the interrogatives marked with qué used in Mexican Spanish (¿Qué Julia llamó?, ¿qué Julia no llamó?, ¿qué no Julia llamó?) have not been studied so far. This article analyzes the non-propositional meaning of these constructions based on the theoretical proposal by Sudo (2013). The paper argues that the two proposed biases, epistemic bias, and evidential bias, are necessary for analyzing these polar interrogatives. However, they are insufficient to capture the differences between the two negative polar interrogatives. The paper proposes that these interrogative constructions differ in their epistemic bias degree: with both requiring positive belief, but with different degrees of certainty.

Keywords : marked polar questions; epistemic gradient; epistemic bias; evidential bias; Spanish polar questions.

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