LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within
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"LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within" is a peer-reviewed online journal, published annually by the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. "LingBaW" is an outlet for original scholarly research conducted by linguists of different persuasions. It is meant to capture the latest advances in language studies and the enthusiasm of contemporary debate on current topics in linguistics. "LingBaW" illuminates universal and system-specific patterns as well as variety in the structure and use of natural languages. The journal is intended to promote the most excellent language-oriented projects of international scholarship. Contributions focused on the recent theoretical developments and innovative applications of research findings can be published in the form of both full-scale articles and shorter reviews. Hence, we invite all linguists to submit their articles to "LingBaW" and in this way enrich the forum of linguistic dialogue.
Open Access
LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
Editorial Team
Editor-in-Chief
Anna Bloch-Rozmej (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
Deputy Editors-in-Chief
Anna Bondaruk (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Haike Jacobs (Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández (University of Seville, Spain)
Wojciech Malec (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Thematic Editors
Maria Bloch-Trojnar (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Bożena Cetnarowska (University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland)
Anna Malicka-Kleparska (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Statistics Editor
Karolina Hosang (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Editorial Assistant
Anna Prażmowska (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Email address: lingbaw@gmail.com
Editorial Board
Artemis Alexiadou, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Outi Bat-El, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Halina Chodkiewicz, Pope John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska, Poland
Eugeniusz Cyran, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
Aidan Doyle, University College Cork, Ireland
Danuta Gabryś-Barker, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland
Cliff Goddard, Griffith University, Australia
Alexander Grosu, Tel Aviv University, Israel
John Harris, University College London, UK
Lars Hellan, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Uwe Junghanns, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
Henryk Kardela, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland
Katalin É. Kiss, Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, Hungary
Hanna Komorowska-Janowska, SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland
Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
Rafael Marín, Université de Lille, France
Paul Meara, Swansea University, UK
Mirosław Pawlak, Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland
Markus A. Pöchtrager, University of Vienna, Austria
Adam Przepiórkowski, Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Bożena Rozwadowska, University of Wrocław, Poland
Pavol Štekauer, P. J. Šafárik University in Kosice, Slovakia
Balázs Surányi, Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics & Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary
Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland
Bogdan Szymanek, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
Beata Trawiński, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, Germany
Ljudmila Veselovská, Palacky University Olomouc, the Czech Republic
e-ISSN:2450-5188
DOI: 10.31743/lingbaw
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LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Faculty of Humanities
Al. Racławickie 14
20-950 Lublin
Poland
Principal Contact
Anna Bloch-Rozmej (Editor-in-Chief)
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
lingbaw@gmail.com
LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Faculty of Humanities
Al. Racławickie 14
20-950 Lublin
Poland
Principal Contact
Anna Bloch-Rozmej (Editor-in-Chief)
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
lingbaw@gmail.com
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- ItemA case for two voices in Old Church Slavonic – reflexively marked OCS verbs(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Malicka-Kleparska, AnnaOld Church Slavonic data manifest significant similarities in the distribution and formal properties of anticausatives, reflexives, subject experiencer verbs, statives, and reciprocals, while their semantics may also be viewed as partly uniform. The structures representing the said classes of verbs are very frequent in the language, while passive structures, formed with analytic morpho-syntactic constructions, are relatively infrequent. Consequently, the expressions headed by anticausatives, reflexives, subject experiencer verbs, statives, and reciprocals (as well as dative impersonal structures) encroach on the area of semantics belonging in Modern Slavic to be the realm expressed in terms of passive morpho-syntax. The conclusion that can be drawn from this state of affairs is that Old Church Slavonic is characterized by the opposition of active and middle voices, while the passive voice is in its infancy.
- ItemA comparison of the modal dać się structure with the dispositional middle in Polish(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Bondaruk, AnnaThe paper compares the modal dać się structure with the dispositional middle in Polish. It is argued that the two structures are similar as regards argument realization, i.e. in both constructions, the theme argument appears in the structural subject position. The two structures also have a dispositional meaning in common. However, they show a number of differences. They differ in the presence of a syntactically active agent, their aspectual properties, the availability of episodic interpretations, the obligatory presence of an adverbial modifier, and verb class restrictions. Although these differences seem to argue against a common syntactic derivation for the two structures analysed here, they do not preclude classifying the modal dać się structure as a subtype of the dispositional middle. If middles are seen as a notional category, understood as a special meaning that different grammatical structures can have, along the lines postulated by Condoravdi (1989), then the modal dać się structure can be subsumed under the label of middle. In fact, it is argued that the modal dać się structure represents Type II middles in Ackema and Schoorlemmer’s (2005) typology, and it shows properties typical of lassen-middles in German (Pitteroff 2014).
- ItemA critical study of group-defining categories in the discursive construal of national identity(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Shtok, NinaOn 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. The beginning of this war marked a significant turning point with far-reaching consequences for the countries involved. Russian political discourse has responded swiftly to the conflict with a marked increase in nationalist rhetoric. This surge underscores a renewed emphasis on national unity and a collective sense of purpose, alongside a growing imperative to safeguard Russian integrity and sovereignty. The discourse has increasingly framed the war as a battle against external threats, positioning Russia as a defender of traditional values and a bulwark against perceived Western encroachments. This nationalist narrative, actively promoted by the government, serves to mobilise public support for its policies. Official speeches by the head of state play a central role in disseminating this ideology. Accordingly, this paper sets out to analyse selected addresses by the Russian President delivered during the conflict’s initial year to uncover the discursive mechanisms shaping Russian national identity. It relies on a discourse-historical approach, which provides effective tools for advancing this endeavour.
- ItemA dictionary of legal English collocations as an aid for mastering the legal English genre(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2020) Mroczyńska, KatarzynaThe article begins with a brief overview of collocations and their features as being central to legal language and, as such, worth studying, especially in view of the fact that legal language studies tend to be mostly interested in terminology rather than phraseology. To bridge this gap, the article offers a tool for legal English learners, i.e. the dictionary of legal English collocations based on judgments of the UK Supreme Court. Our dictionary project is aimed at analysing the corpus we created, using Sketch Engine software, a cutting-edge lexicographic tool which enables the uploading and exploration of users’ own corpora. The project will focus on analysing bipartite legal English collocations appearing in the corpus. The next stage of the project will be the preparation of the final product of our research, i.e. a dictionary of legal English collocations. We believe that such a dictionary will prove a useful aid for mastering the conceptual structure of legal English.
- Item“A glass half full” or “a breastless dwarf”: Metaphorical talk in women’s accounts of Turner syndrome(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Ciepiela, KamilaThis paper examines body-related metaphors used by Polish women to describe lived experiences associated with Turner syndrome (TS), and highlights the contribution this form of analysis can make to the study of health, emotional well-being, and social identity. Turner syndrome is a genetic aberration that affects females, and results in short stature, ovarian failure and a number of less typical body deformations; it often takes a long time to be appropriately diagnosed. Metaphor analysis is employed to analyze a data subset of four semi structured interviews audio recorded and translated from Polish into English. The analysis is carried out with metaphor operationalized as a framing device in discourse, whose main function is to impose a particular axiologically-charged construal of TS. Metaphorical concepts lying at the basis of the metaphors used were identified and grouped into four themes: (i) diagnosis and therapy; (ii) Turner syndrome (iii) appearance (iv) self-esteem and social positioning. The results of the analysis show that a range of composite metaphors develop on the basis of the BODY IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT as a primary metaphor but their occurrence depends on the salience of particular bodily symptoms of TS in individual women. Results are discussed with regard to the function and the utility of metaphor analysis in health, emotional well-being, and social identity research.
- ItemA new beginning? A bibliometric analysis of L2 vocabulary research in 1985(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2017) Meara, PaulThis paper uses a co-citation analysis to examine the research on L2 vocabulary acquisition that was published in 1985. This year seems to mark a kind of transition in the field. Unlike the earlier years analysed in this series of papers, 1985 shows signs of a coherent L2 vocabulary research front developing. The number of papers that qualify for inclusion is much greater than in previous years, and the analysis suggests that recognisable research themes are beginning to be clearly articulated.
- ItemA study on the relationship between musical ability and EFL pronunciation proficiency(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Kaszycka, MariolaThis study investigates the relationship between musical ability and pronunciation proficiency of English as a foreign language [EFL] of university students of English philology. English pronunciation of the participants is evaluated by academic teachers of English in three categories: the general impression of the foreign or native accent, the accuracy of production of English sounds and the use of word stress and intonation. This experiment was conducted entirely online. Participants’ musical ability was tested using Gordon’s Advanced Measure of Music Audiation [AMMA]. The results of this study demonstrate a moderately positive correlation between musicality and FL pronunciation proficiency. The more musical students, the higher marks from the judges. The present findings seem to be consistent with other studies which suggest that musical skills may positively affect the acquisition of foreign language pronunciation.
- ItemA time for consolidation: A bibliometric analysis of L2 vocabulary research 1985–1989(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Meara, PaulThis paper uses a co-citation analysis to examine the research on L2 vocabulary acquisition that was published in 1989. Two analyses are presented. The first is a detailed account of the 1989 research on its own terms. The second analysis places this work in a larger context by looking at research published in a five-year window covering 1985–89. The analyses identify important themes in the research and significant sources who are influencing the way the research is developing at this time. The main features of this work are the substantial growth in dictionary and corpus research, and the emergence of Paul Nation as the Most Significant Source in 1989.
- ItemAbandoning the EPP-feature in Polish dual copula clauses by redefining the predication relation(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Jurczyk, RafałThis paper questions the logic behind the presence and the working of the EPP-feature in Polish dual copula clauses (henceforth, DCCs) with the pronominal copula to, the verbal copula być ‘to be’, and two nominative 3rd person DPs, as represented in Bondaruk (2019). The criticism follows from: (i) – Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) downward Agree operation; (ii) – the view that the predicator encodes the predication relation between the pre-copular subject and the post-copular predicate; (iii) – selective multiple Agree, whereby the satisfaction of the EPP- and uφ-features is divorced. Adopting (i)–(iii), Bondaruk’s scrutiny allows either the pre- or the post-copular DP to occupy SpecTP, thereby accounting for DCCs’ agreement and configurational patterns, but, simultaneously, suffering from theoretical shortcomings it creates. We argue for a simpler satisfaction of the subject requirement which does not rely on the troublesome EPP-feature, but is motivated formally by the relation between T and the higher DP. We derive this requirement by following Zeiljstra’s (2012) upward Agree which only takes place once interpretable features c-command uninterpretable features, and Rothstein’s (2004) approach which is based on a neo-Davidsonian event semantics and which argues that be and its complement form a complex predicate, separated from the pre-copular DP both semantically and syntactically.
- ItemAccent boundaries and linguistic continua in the laryngeal subsystems of English(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2022) Balogné Bérces, KatalinA parallel is drawn between the northernmost regions of England represented by Durham and Yorkshire and the transition zone Ouddeken (2016) identifies between voicing and aspiration languages in the Dutch-German dialect continuum. It is argued that, owing to historical changes and dialect contact, the Northern Englishes discussed exhibit hybrid laryngeal systems as a result of being geographically intermediate between Scots in Scotland, which is a voice language similar to Dutch, and mainstream varieties of English spoken more to the south in England (and in most of the rest of the English-speaking world), which are aspiration systems of the German type. We model the emergence of laryngeal systems as the setting of three parameters: (i) whether the laryngeally marked/specified obstruent series contains [voice] (L-system) or [asp] (H-system); (ii) whether the laryngeal prime is able to spread (right-to-left); and (iii) whether the system has pre-obstruent delaryngealisation (POD) (due to which in C1C2, C1 becomes unmarked/underspecified). While spreading L with POD derives voice languages and non-spreading H with no POD derives aspiration languages, two mixed combinations derive the intermediate categories of Durham and Yorkshire (spreading L & no POD and spreading H & no POD, respectively). We also show that all remaining combinations are attested cross-linguistically or else theoretically uninterpretable.
- ItemAcoustic analysis of monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs in Mandarin for 3- to 5-year-old children with articulatory phonological disorders(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2018) Chu, Man-ni; Syu, Jia-lingTen 3- to 5-year old children (5M, 5F) who were diagnosed as children with articulatory phonological disorders (CWAPD) and attending a therapy program were recruited to participate in a ‘repeat-after-her’ experiment. They were asked to produce a total of 85 real Mandarin words, including 28 monophthongs, 41 diphthongs, and 16 triphthongs. The results indicated that CWAPD have no problem producing monophthongs. However, attempts to articulate diphthongs and triphthongs induced more errors. CWAPD showed more errors when producing words with 1st sonorant diphthongs than words with 2nd sonorant diphthongs—this is because the least sonorant segment in the last position is prone to distortion. Similar phenomena were found in other triphthongs, except with /iai/ and /iou/, which did not see deviant pronunciation. Comparing our study to the information provided by two therapists showed that the participating CWAPD encountered difficulties in producing multi-vowel syllables, where the position and sonorant matters. In addition, our results also reveal a similar vowel acquisition order among CWAPD as among normal children.
- ItemAd hoc properties and locations in Maltese(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Dalmi, GréteThis paper aims to show that the four-way BE-system of Maltese can best be accommodated in a theory of non-verbal predication that builds on alternative states, without making any reference to the Davidsonian spatio-temporal event variable. The existing theories of non-verbal predicates put the burden of explaining the difference between the ad hoc vs. habitual interpretations either solely on the non-verbal predicate, by postulating an event variable in their lexical layer (see Kratzer 1995; Adger and Ramchand 2003; Magri 2009; Roy 2013), or solely on the copular or non-copular primary predicate, which contains an aspectual operator or an incorporated abstract preposition, responsible for such interpretive differences (Schmitt 2005, Schmitt and Miller 2007, Gallego and Uriagereka 2009, 2011, Marín 2010, Camacho 2012). The present proposal combines Maienborn’s (2003, 2005a,b, 2011) discourse-semantic theory of copular sentences with Richardson’s (2001, 2007) analysis of non-verbal adjunct predicates in Russian, based on alternative states. Under this combined account, variation between the ad hoc vs. habitual interpretations of non-verbal predicates is derived from the presence or absence of a modal OPalt operator that can bind the temporal variable of non-verbal predicates in accessible worlds, in the sense of Kratzer (1991). In the absence of this operator, the temporal variable is bound by the T0 head in the standard way. The proposal extends to non-verbal predicates in copular sentences as well as to argument and adjunct non-verbal predicates in non-copular sentences.
- ItemAradıınız kişi (şu anda) ulaşılamıyor! The Turkish vowel system, (the so-called) 'Yumuşak g' (ğ), and Turkish phonology: On a missed opportunity(KUL Publishing House, 2023) Royer-Artuso, NicolasIn this paper, some core premises that are held about Turkish Phonology are put into question, both theoretically and empirically. Some modifications to the Turkish phonological inventory and to the language's phonotactic constraints are then proposed. It is shown how modifying the phonological inventory and modifying phonotactic statements about the language gives a more realistic perspective on the empirical data. In the conclusion, some new avenues of research are finally proposed.
- ItemAsking and answering: A contrastive study of English and Swedish basic communication verbs(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2016) Viberg, ÅkeThis article presents a contrastive study of the English verbs ask and answer and their Swedish correspondents based on data from the English Swedish Parallel Corpus (ESPC), which is bi-directional and contains Swedish and English original texts and their corresponding translations. As a background, a short overview is given of Verbal Communication Verbs (VCVs) in general with brief discussions of speech act theory (Searle), direct and reported speech and conceptual frames (FrameNet) and their syntactic realizations. The contrastive study is concerned with networks of polysemy and the relationships of various senses with differing syntactic realizations across languages. The senses of ask are primarily distributed between two verbs in Swedish: fråga ‘ask a question’ and be ‘request (politely)’ but even some verbs with more specific meanings are involved. The concept of answering forms a conceptual network which is similar in English and Swedish but contrasts with respect to the way meanings are divided up between various verbs. English has a number of verbs such as answer, reply, respond, correspond, retort and rejoin, whereas Swedish to a great extent relies on one verb (svara) and its morphological derivations: besvara, ansvara, motsvara, försvara. In the Conclusion, pedagogical applications of the study are briefly discussed.
- ItemAspect and pragmatics in Polish with a view to Sorbian(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2024) Zuchewicz, KarolinaIn this paper, I discuss the meaning of the perfective aspect in Polish by taking a look at the so-called general-factual contexts, i.e., contexts that refer to completed events. Slavic languages rely on both perfective and imperfective aspect in such cases but differ concerning specific restrictions on aspect choice (Altshuler 2014; Dickey 2000; Gehrke 2022, 2023; Grønn 2004; Klimek-Jankowska 2020, 2022; Łaziński 2020; Mehlig 2011; Mueller-Reichau 2018; Wiemer 2001, 2008, among many others). Whereas speakers of East Slavic languages mostly choose the imperfective aspect in general-factual contexts, speakers of West Slavic languages face a stronger competition between imperfective and perfective forms. This paper highlights the role of pragmatics in aspect choice in general-factual contexts in Polish. It makes use of the notion of pragmatic contract (Israeli 1996 for Russian) and argues that, while the presence of a contract correlates with a preference for the perfective aspect, the absence of a contract triggers a preference for imperfective forms. These assumptions are verified with data from the Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego (Przepiórkowski et al. 2012). The paper further shows that the pragmatic contract does not influence aspectual distribution in Upper Sorbian, pointing to a difference in the aspectual systems of the two West Slavic languages and confirming the status of Polish as transitional between East and West Slavic.
- ItemAutomatically generated language learning exercises for Finno-Ugric languages(KUL Publishing House, 2023) Ferenczi, ZsanettMorphologically rich languages always constitute a great challenge for language learners. The learner must be able to understand the information encoded in different word forms of the same root and to generate the correct word form to express certain syntactic functions and grammatical relations by conjugating a verb or declining a noun, an adjective or a pronoun. One way to improve one’s language skills is through exercises that focus on certain aspects of grammar. In this paper, a language learning application is presented that is intended to help learners of Finnish and Hungarian (with Hungarian and Finnish L1, respectively) acquire new vocabulary items, as well as practice some grammar aspects that according to surveys are considered difficult by learners of these languages with the other Finno-Ugric language being the learner’s native tongue, while alleviating the need to create these exercises manually. This application is a result of an on-going research project. In this research project, bilingual translation pairs and additional monolingual data were collected that can be utilized to build language learning exercises and an online bilingual dictionary with the help of automatic methods. Several linguistic patterns and rules were defined in order to automatically select example sentences that focus on a given part of the target language. These sentences were automatically annotated with the help of language processing tools. Due to the large size of the previously collected data sets, to date, only a subset of the analyzed sentences and the bilingual translation pairs has been manually evaluated. The results of this evaluation are discussed in this paper in order to estimate the precision of the methodology presented here. To ensure the precision of the information and the reliability of the application, only manually validated data sets are displayed. In this project, continuous data validation is planned, since it leads to more and more examples and vocabulary items that learners can benefit from.
- ItemAuxiliary clitics in Polish(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2018) Jagódzka, DorotaPolish auxiliary clitics constitute an interesting set of data which draws attention to cross-linguistic differences among Slavic languages. A general principle for clitic placement in Indo-European languages is the one described by Jacob Wackernagel in his 1892 work. He concluded that clitics appeared in the second position in the clause, after the first word in a sentence. This pattern was true to some degree in Old Church Slavonic and still holds for a number of contemporary Slavic languages e.g. Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Czech and Slovak which have second position clitics. Bulgarian and Macedonian have verb adjacent pronominal clitics and Polish has auxiliary clitics (Migdalski 2007, 2010, Pancheva 2005). Also in the older versions of Polish language the above mentioned tendency was strong. In Modern Polish auxiliary clitics attach to the l-participle most frequently. However, one of the unusual properties they possess is the ability to choose almost every clausal element for their host. Polish auxiliary clitics can trigger morphophonological alternations on their hosts, which is an affix-like property; however, at the same time they display clearly clitic-like behaviour when they attach freely to words of any lexical class. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze the morpho-syntactic properties of two kinds of auxiliary clitics: bound and free. The bound clitics carry person-number agreement markers for past tense (the so called ‘floating’ or ‘mobile’ inflections). The free clitic is the morpheme by used for conditional and subjunctive mood.
- ItemBeing at home: Global citizenship in Norwegian schools. A study of children’s poems(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2016) Erdmann, Susan; Gawronska, BarbaraThe paper addresses the question of self-perceived identity in children attending international schools in Norway. In this population, the distinction between “home culture” and “host culture” is no longer relevant, since most of the children represent “hyphenated” (e.g. Asian-British or American-Scandinavian) or merged nationalities and cultures. The goal of the study is to investigate how these pupils define themselves and the notion of “home”. To achieve at least a preliminary picture of the children’s self-perception, the authors have analysed poems on two topics: Me and Home, written by pupils of an international school and a Norwegian school, both informant groups aged 11-13. A semantic analysis of the poems indicates that the international school children present strong assertions of individual identity as defined against societal roles, while the Norwegian school pupils do not conceptualize identity formation as a struggle and their poems reflect a high degree of social, familial and national integration.
- ItemBut let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Meaning construction in medical encounters(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2019) Kárpáti, Eszter; Kleiber, JuditThis paper investigates interpretation in medical context. Our question is how institutional context influences the utterance meaning: if it is really triple layered (literal, utterance-type or pragmatic, Levinson 2000), or rather a continuum (Wilson 2016). Even idiomatic language use (Kecskes 2017) can induce uncertainty and obscurity, which can be and has to be solved in the given dialogue or discourse context (Wilson and Kolaiti 2017). The paper analyzes various medical encounters in a formal pragmasemantic model called ÂeALIS (Alberti and Kleiber 2014). The benefit of applying this system is that it represents the interlocutors’ mental states (beliefs, desires, and intentions) supplemented by the parameter of authority, by which the occurring mismatches can be captured formally. We have found that two main types of mismatch can be differentiated, and both of them can be originated from the fact that the context is not the same for the participants. Our findings support the view that meaning construction is rather flexible and context-sensitive: it can be considered as wandering along the meaning continuum without any clues.
- ItemCharacterising the alternative and polar questions of Irish(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2020) Nolan, BrianThis paper gives an account of the similarities and differences between alternative and polar questions, where these question forms stand at the intersection of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We contrastively examine the nature of alternative and polar yes-no questions. We characterise the forms of these question types and the functions they serve. We examine the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of each question form and their answers. We characterise the felicity conditions necessary for their successful realisation of the speech act of requesting information via the alternative and yes-no interrogatives and assume that information is freely exchanged under a Gricean presumption of cooperation. We show that alternative questions have some similarities, but also significant differences, to polar yes-no questions. Alternative questions do not allow for yes-no answers. Instead, an appropriate answer must contain one of a selection from the alternative choice options listed in the framing of the question. Alternative questions are dependent on the presence of disjunction. We characterise the syntax and semantics of polar yes-no questions. We demonstrate in respect of the answers to polar yes-no questions of Irish that they contain instances of ellipsis and are full clausal expressions with a complete semantics where the elided elements are from the question part of the question-answer pair. The propositional content of polar yes-no questions is inferred from the context, specifically from the question with which the answer is paired. Irish does not have any exact words which directly correspond to English ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and so employs different strategies where a yes-no answer is required.