의문문의 의미

Abstract

This paper defines the semantic content of questions. In section 1 I discussed the theoretical background. In section 2 I noted weakness in Hintikka's approach to the logic of questions. It was discussed and assumed that the semantics of questions can be constructed in terms of answers. In section 3 the answerhood was defined. Answers were argued to be statements, but not noun phrases. In section 4 types of answers were discussed. The notions of possible answers, true answers, and complete answers were defined. Conventional implicatures of questions were discussed in section 5. It was concluded that an alternative question conventional1y implicates that one and only one .of the presented alternatives is true. A WH-question is assumed to implicate that there exists at least one true answer to it. In section 3 I discussed expressed meanings of questions. The expressed meaning of a question was defined in terms of its true answers, which collectively constitute a complete answer to the question. That is, a question denotes the set of propositions expressed by all true answers. This set actual1y defines a complete answer to the given question. These two aspects of meaning-expressed and implicate -constitute the semantic content of a question.