What are we asking with a polar question in Serbian?

Abstract

This paper discusses contextual distribution of Serbian polar questions with or without high or low negation. The aim is to contribute  to cross-linguistic understanding of the interpretation of (negative) polar questions. All polar questions in Serbian are shown to be sensitive to: epistemic bias, tied to speaker’s beliefs and expectations, and evidential bias, tied to the evidence available in the conversation (Sudo 2013). The distribution of Serbian polar questions can be systematically captured by the interplay of syntax,  semantics and pragmatics, along the lines of AnderBois’ (2019) inquisitive semantics for questions. The current proposal provides further support for (a) two syntactic positions for negation in Serbian (Progovac 2005, Milićević 2006), and (b) both negations being  contentful (building on Milićević 2006).