Episode 51: Jeroen Groenendijk and Floris Roelofsen discuss inquisitive semantics
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What is inquisitive semantics and why does it matter for questions vs. statements?
Hey, Matt Teichman here from Elucidations. When we recorded the episode you're about to hear, Floris Rilofsen was postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation in Amsterdam, but I'm very pleased to announce that he has since been promoted and is now assistant professor of logic and semantics at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation. Congratulations, Floris. Now on to the show.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast ordinarily recorded at the University of Chicago, but which today is being brought to you from Amsterdam. With me today are Jeroen Ronen Dijk, Professor of Philosophy of Language at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam, and Floris Roelofsen, Postdoctoral Fellow, also at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, and they are here to talk with me about inquisitive semantics. Jeroen Ronendijk and Floris Roelofsen, welcome.
Thank you. Thank you.
So Inquisitive Semantics is a new research program that the two of you and others have been developing that takes as its starting point some classic work on the semantics of questions in the languages that people speak. So what is it that a question means, as opposed to a flat declarative statement? Maybe we could start off by talking about the difference between a yes-no question or a who, what, where, when, how type question.
Yeah, so as you say, inquisitive semantics is a project in semantics which is concerned especially with the semantics of inquisitive constructions in language. And among those are, of course, questions. yes-no questions and WH questions like where is Matt and traditionally in semantics the focus is more on declarative constructions which contrast with inquisitive ones in that they declare something about a certain state of affairs like Matt is here and And people have been thinking about the meaning of such declarative statements in terms of truth conditions. So the traditional idea in formal semantics is that you know the meaning of truth. a sentence if you know under what conditions that sentence is true.
This is a reasonable way of thinking about the meaning of sentences if you focus on declarative statements, because those statements are true or false given a certain situation. And indeed, if you know the meaning of that statement, then you know in which circumstances it's true and in which circumstances it's false. But if you think about, for instance, a question or other inquisitive type of sentences, then it does not make sense anymore to think, at least not primarily, about the meaning of such sentences in terms of truth conditions, because a question like, is Matt home or where is Matt? is not true or false in a given situation. So this requires really a new notion of meaning, and that's the central aim of this new research program.
Okay, so to take an example, if I say, Madison is the capital of Wisconsin, what's the meaning of that sentence? Well, it's whatever it would take for the sentence to be true. So for the sentence to be true in the world, you know, Madison actually has to be the capital of Wisconsin. So what it is to know what that sentence means, to know how the world has to be arranged, what has to be the case in the world in order to make the sentence true, right? But it seems like that picture kind of breaks down if you try to apply it to questions for the reason you just stated. Because, yeah, where is Matt? Well, it's not like you can say that's either true or false. It's not like somebody could say, where is Matt?
And another person could shout out, you're lying or something like that. It makes sense. This seems like a real puzzle here.
How do truth‑conditions explain the meaning of declarative sentences?
So, you know, what is it that a question means?
Well, one thing to think about the meaning of questions is as something that should at least capture when the question is answered satisfactorily. So if the meaning of a declarative statement lies in its truth conditions. So you know the meaning of a declarative statement when you know when it's true and when it's false.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is inquisitive semantics and why does it matter for questions vs. statements?
0:00–4:20
2
How do truth‑conditions explain the meaning of declarative sentences?
4:20–8:08
3
Why can’t questions be understood by truth‑conditions alone?
8:08–13:02
4
How does a question change the set of possible worlds in a conversation?
13:02–16:50
5
What are hybrid propositions and how do they combine assertion with inquiry?
16:50–20:47
6
How do disjunctions and indefinites introduce inquisitive meaning?
20:47–25:12
7
What challenges do conditional and disjunctive questions pose for traditional semantics?
25:12–28:15
8
Where can listeners find more resources on inquisitive semantics?
28:15–33:25
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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