Hubert Truckenbrodt. “Die illokutionäre Interpretation der interrogativen Satzformen”:http://www2.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de/~hubert/papers/Fragen.pdf. Universität Tübingen, Oktober 2003.
bq. In this paper it is argued that the meaning of a direct question (V2-question in German) is related to the meaning of an embedded question [whether/who … ] by the matrix interpretation ‘The speaker wants that it be common ground [whether/who … ]’. This is a modification of the imperative-epistemic approach of Åqvist and Hintikka. The new element is that the common ground, proposed for assertions by Stalnaker, is also a central element of the interpretation of questions. It is further argued that the inclusion of the common ground in the question interpretation is grammatically conditioned by the presence of the finite verb in C: The German sentence type of matrix verb-final questions is argued to contrast minimally with V2-questions in this regard. The results are embedded in a set of more general hypotheses about the relation of grammatical elements to elements of the illocutionary interpretation. Together, these amount to the claim that grammatical V2 licenses an illocutionary interpretation that crucially involves the listener of a speech act in the illocutionary intention. In the case of epistemic speech acts, involvement of the listener amounts to evaluation relative to the common ground.
Note: the paper itself is in German.
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