%0 Journal Article %A Gunlogson, Christine %T A question of commitment %D 2008 %J Belgian Journal of Linguistics %V 22 %N 1 %P 101-136 %@ 0774-5141 %R https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.22.06gun %I John Benjamins %X This paper addresses certain restrictions on the use of declaratives as questions in English. Declaratives are taken to express commitment by the speaker, even in a questioning use. The analysis traces the restrictions to two distinct contextual factors: (i) a general principle requiring that a commitment have a recognized source, i.e., a discourse agent who plausibly has independent evidence supporting the content committed to; (ii) specific to a questioning interpretation, the need for the context to support the inference that the speaker’s commitment depends upon the addressee’s anticipated confirmation. Rising intonation contributes a very general element of meaning, indicating that the utterance it marks is contingent upon some discourse condition obtaining; the specific conditions required for a questioning interpretation instantiate one such type of contingency. The proposals are modeled via elaboration of standard contextual structures in a possible-worlds framework. %U https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.22.06gun