1 Introduction

The asymmetry between Low Negation Polar Questions (LNPQs) and High Negation Polar Questions (HNPQs), demonstrated by example (1) from English below, has received a great deal of attention, leading to a rich, stimulating and at times contradictory body of research (Ladd 1981; Büring & Gunlogson 2000; van Rooy & Šafárová 2003; Romero & Han 2004; Krifka 2017; AnderBois 2019; Arnhold et al. 2021; Goodhue 2022, among many others; see Romero 2023 for an extensive literature review on the topic).

    1. (1)
    1. a.
    1. Did Peter not have a Martini?                     LNPQ
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. Didn’t Peter have a Martini?                       HNPQ

Sticking to the very basics, the most widely acknowledged differences between English LNPQs and HNPQs can be summarized in the following: (i) LNPQs feature TP-level negation whereas HNPQs involve CP-level negation (Holmberg 2016; Krifka 2017; Goodhue 2022) –justifying the use of the respective labels– and (ii) LNPQs may optionally convey positive speaker bias, that is the speaker’s epistemic preference for the answer corresponding to the positive polarity propositional alternative, while HNPQs are always interpreted as biased (Romero & Han 2004).1

Romero and Han (2004) cite the following example to speculatively suggest that the English question asymmetry presented above is also found in Greek:

    1. (2)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. dhen
    2. not
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. Dhen
    2. not
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Didn’t Yanis drink coffee?’
    2. (Romero & Han 2004: 614, ex. (14))

The authors predict that the variant in (2a), exhibiting S-Neg-V-O word order, corresponds to English LNPQs and is, thus, optionally interpreted as positively biased. On the contrary, the variant in (2b), that exhibits Neg-V-S-O word order, is predicted to pattern with English HNPQs in obligatorily conveying positive speaker bias.

The hypothesis alluded to in passing in Romero and Han (2004) is intriguing but also rather bold in light of the peculiarities of the Greek subject. On the one hand, Greek is a null-subject language (Holton et al. 2012). Notice that, if the full-DP subject in (2) above is replaced by a pro, the distinction between (2a) and (2b) is no longer perceivable:

    1. (2ˈ)
    1. a.
    1. pro
    2. pro
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Did he not drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. Dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. pro
    2. pro
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Didn’t he drink coffee?’2

To complicate things even more, Greek subjects have been convincingly shown to surface both pre- and post-verbally, even in the absence of Aˈ-movement or dislocation operations (Roussou & Tsimpli 2006; Spyropoulos & Revithiadou 2009; Oikonomou & Alexiadou 2022), suggesting that the language displays two word orders unmarked with respect to Information Structure: VSO and SVO. Interestingly, Philippaki-Warburton (1985) provides arguments that VSO is the word order that involves the smallest number of syntactic operations, while Keller and Alexopoulou (2001) show experimentally that SVO is the word order most preferred by native Greek speakers. The availability of both unmarked word orders in Greek, in combination with the fact that this language distinguishes declarative sentences from their interrogative counterparts mostly via intonation (Holton et al. 2012: 504), result in a situation such that an SVO question can receive the same interpretation as its VSO counterpart:

    1. (3)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Did Yanis drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. Ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Did Yanis drink coffee?’

Strikingly, the pair of examples in (3) are minimally different from the ones in (2) in further featuring the negative marker dhen. How plausible is it, then, that the mere presence of negation is enough to cause or reflect an interpretative asymmetry between SVO and VSO polar questions in Greek?

In this squib, I build on a demonstrable bi-partite distinction of Greek negative polar questions involving narrow focus in order to show that (i) Greek questions do display two negative variants (in line with Romero and Han 2004), although not necessarily mapped onto distinct surface word orders, and (ii) the variant corresponding to English HNPQs has richer syntactic and LF-structure. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes how focus interacts with negation in the context of Greek polar questions and identifies a Greek HNPQ-like variant exhibiting focus-fronting. Section 3 sketches out a first analysis of this question variant that accounts for the set of its distinctive properties. Section 4 concludes the paper.

2 Focus as a window to the Greek negative question interpretation

A focused constituent in Greek may either stay in-situ or be moved to the left periphery of the sentence (Tsimpli 1995), as illustrated by the pairs of examples in (4) and (5) below. Following standard practice, focused phrases are flagged throughout the paper via the use of small caps.

    1. (4)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe.
    2. coffee
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis.
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Yanis drank coffee.’
    1. (5)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe.
    2. coffee
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis.
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Yanis didn’t drink coffee.’

Even more interestingly, it has been experimentally shown that Greek fronted foci (4b, 5b) do not differ from their narrow focus in-situ counterparts (4a, 5a) with respect to the type/flavor of focus conveyed (Gryllia 2008; Skopeteas & Fanselow 2011). This is in line also with the more general finding that Information Structure in Greek correlates only weakly with word order (Keller & Alexopoulou 2001; see also Skopeteas 2016 for an overview) and even intonation (Baltazani 2002).

2.1 Narrow focus in Greek polar questions

Moving to the realm of questions, Greek polar questions also allow both in-situ and fronted narrow foci:

    1. (6)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Did Yanis drink coffee?’

As expected on the basis of the state of affairs described earlier, (6a) and (6b) do not encode different types of focus and, thus, receive the same interpretation. Concretely, both questions are interpreted as requests on the part of the speaker for the addressee to confirm whether Yanis drank coffee or else inform what it was that Yanis drank. This is shown by the fact that a response containing only the positive polarity particle ne ‘yes’ is perfectly acceptable, but a response containing the negative polarity oxi ‘no’ is odd, unless complemented with the drink that Yanis actually consumed:

    1. (7)
    1. Q:
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?/
    2. coffee
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Did Yanis drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. A1:
    1. Ne.
    2. ‘Yes.’ = Yanis drank coffee.
    1.  
    1. A2:
    1. Oxi, #(tsai)
    2. ‘No, tea.’ = Yanis drank tea.

The response pattern in (7) seems to suggest that Greek polar questions with narrow focus are interpreted in a way similar to cleft-questions, like (8) below.

    1. (8)
    1. Kafes
    2. coffee
    1. itan
    2. was
    1. afto
    2. this
    1. pu
    2. that
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Was it coffee that Yanis drank?’

For this parallel to go through, it needs to be shown that the two constructions share an existence presupposition (Percus 1997; see also Skopeteas & Fanselow 2011). On the one hand, the narrow focus polar question in (9) is indeed infelicitous in a context where the speaker believes that Yanis drank nothing:

    1. (9)
    1. I don’t believe that Yanis drank anything, tell me:
    1. #kafe
    2.   coffee
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1.   ‘Did Yanis drink coffee?’

On the other hand, the speaker’s belief that there is something that Yanis drank does not pass von Fintel’s (2004) hey-wait-a-minute-test:

    1. (10)
    1. A:
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Did Yanis drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. B:
    1. #Opa
    2. hey
    1. katse!
    2. sit.imp
    1. Dhen
    2. neg
    1. iksera
    2. I.knew
    1. oti
    2. that
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kati…
    2. something
    1. ‘Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t know that Yanis drank something…’

I infer from the above that the affinity between Greek polar questions with narrow focus and cleft-questions is limited to the fact that both are suggestive of the existence of an entity that satisfies the question sentence radical. Crucially, unlike clefts, polar questions do not carry an existence presupposition but merely give rise to a weak existence inference. This inference may be attributed to the fact that the non-focus part of the question is deaccented and, therefore, often interpreted as corresponding to backgrounded information (Baltazani 2002). Alternatively, the existence inference may also be attributed to the speakers’ mere expectation that one of the alternatives raised by the presence of focus (Rooth 1992) is true –see Bianchi and Cruschina (2016) for this claim with respect to Italian narrow focus polar questions. Be that as it may, the bottom-line is that Greek polar questions featuring narrow focus have different truth conditions from the corresponding cleft questions but the same truth conditions as their no-focus polar question counterparts (see also Skopeteas & Fanselow 2011).

The empirical picture gets significantly complicated once we turn to Greek polar questions with narrow focus that also feature negation.

    1. (11)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee?’/ ‘Didn’t Yanis drink coffee?’

The English translations provided above are indicative of an apparent asymmetry between Greek in-situ and fronted foci in polar questions: While (11a) is unambiguously interpreted as a question about what Yanis did not drink, the string in (11b) is ambiguous between a reading coinciding with that of (11a) and a distinct reading according to which the speaker is actually interested in what Yanis did drink. Is this asymmetry first evidence that the relation between Greek in-situ and fronted foci is to be revisited?

Looking closer, the string in (11b) is ambiguous but its realizations are not. Concretely, under its negative reading, (11b) is pronounced with the whole non-focus part deaccented. In this sense, it coincides with (11a), differing minimally from the latter in featuring the focused constituent in a fronted instead of its base position. Under its positive reading, (11b) does not involve deaccenting of the non-focus part. Furthermore, its focused constituent is separated from the rest of the sentence by a slight intonational break. Consequently, (11) should be revised as follows, with italics flagging the deaccented material:

    1. (11ˈ)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe?
    2. coffee
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee?’
    1.  
    1. c.
    1. kafe,
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis?
    2. Yanis
    1. ‘Didn’t Yanis drink coffee?’

In the following subsection, I show that Greek questions of the (11ˈc) type –let us dub them Focus Fronted Negative Polar Questions (FF-NPQs)– are similar to English HNPQs.

2.2 Greek FF-NPQs are HNPQs

Greek FF-NPQs pattern with English HNPQs in (i) featuring a negative marker that is syntactically merged outside the TP-domain and takes semantic scope over something bigger than the proposition encoded by the question sentence radical, and (ii) in obligatorily conveying positive speaker bias. Building partly on the type of argumentation put forth to establish the English LNPQ vs. HNPQ distinction and its parallels (Romero & Han 2004; Goodhue 2022, a.o.), let us see the empirical evidence on which generalizations (i) and (ii) are based.

Greek is one of the languages that display Negative Concord (Giannakidou 1998; Zeijlstra 2004), meaning that its negative markers can license Negative Concord Items (NCIs) without giving rise to a double negation reading. Importantly, unlike Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) that can be licensed long-distance by any non-veridical operator, Greek NCIs need to be locally licensed by a negative operator (Giannakidou 1998). This state of affairs can be used to diagnose the status of the negative marker dhen in Greek FF-NPQs in the following way: If FF-NPQs are compatible with an NCI such as the emphatic kanenas ‘nobody’, then dhen has the status of standard sentential negation. If NCIs are not tolerated in FF-NPQs, then their negative marker must have a merging site outside the TP-domain (see also Greco 2020).

    1. (12)
    1. a.
    1. #kafe,
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kanenas?
    2. nobody
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kanenas?
    2. nobody
    1. ‘Did nobody drink coffee?’

The infelicity of (12a) suggests that dhen in FF-NPQs cannot license the NCI kanenas. The contrast with the perfectly felicitous canonical negative question in (12b) shows that the unavailability of kanenas in (12a) is not due to the presence of a focus-fronted constituent –which is also present in (12b)– but due to dhen not being in a local syntactic relation with the NCI.

The negative marker featured in Greek FF-NPQs does not scope out of the TP-domain of the clause only syntactically but also semantically. This is witnessed by the interpretation of FF-NPQs modified by again-adverbials, as-parentheticals and until-adverbials (see Goodhue 2022). Starting from the first case, again-adverbials are considered to come with the presupposition that whatever is denoted by their complement has happened before (von Stechow 1996). Notice that the presupposition triggered by the presence of pali ‘again’ in (13A) below is that Yanis drank coffee before, not that he did not. In other words, dhen is not part of the complement of pali in this case. Strikingly, the interpretation of the standard negative question in (14A) is significantly different.

    1. (13)
    1. A:
    1. kafe,
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. pali?
    2. again
    1. ‘Didn’t Yanis drink coffee again?’
    1.  
    1. B:
    1. Opa
    2. hey
    1. katse!
    2. sit.imp
    1. Dhen
    2. neg
    1. iksera
    2. I.knew
    1. oti
    2. that
    1. ixe
    2. had
    1. ksanapxi…
    2. again.drunk
    1. ‘Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t know he had drunk coffee before…’
    1. (14)
    1. A:
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. pali?
    2. again
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee again?
    1.  
    1. B:
    1. Opa
    2. hey
    1. katse!
    2. sit.imp
    1. Dhen
    2. neg
    1. iksera
    2. I.knew
    1. oti
    2. that
    1. ixe
    2. had
    1. ksanamini
    2. again.stayed
    1. xoris…
    2. without
    1. ‘Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t know he had stayed decaffeinated before…’

Modification of an FF-NPQ by an as-parenthetical makes very much the same case. Dhen in (15a) is again not interpreted as part of the proposition modified by the parenthetical, leading to a reading according to which the addressee predicted that Yanis did drink coffee. However, the addressee of (15b) is understood to have predicted the exact opposite:

    1. (15)
    1. a.
    1. kafe,
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis,
    2. Yanis
    1. opos
    2. as
    1. proevlepses?
    2. you.predicted
    1. ‘Didn’t Yanis drink coffee, as you predicted?’
    2. Inference: The addressee predicted that Yanis drank coffee.
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis,
    2. Yanis
    1. opos
    2. as
    1. proevlepses?
    2. you.predicted
    1. ‘Did Yanis not drink coffee, as you predicted?’
    2. Inference: The addressee predicted that Yanis didn’t drink coffee.

Moving thirdly to until-adverbials, these are compatible with punctual predicates only if the latter are negated and, thus, turned into durative (see Goodhue 2022). Note that in (16) below, the adverbial mexri ta mesanixta ‘until midnight’ is not available for the FF-NPQ in (16a) but is perfectly compatible with the standard negative question in (16b). One can make sense of this contrast only if the punctual predicate perno ta xapia mu ‘take my pills’ is negated in the latter but not in the former.

    1. (16)
    1. a.
    1. #ta
    2.   the
    1. xapia
    2. pills
    1. tu,
    2. his
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. pire
    2. took
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. mexri
    2. until
    1. ta
    2. the
    1. mesanixta?
    2. midnight
    1.  
    1. b.
    1.   ta
    2.   the
    1. xapia
    2. pills
    1. tu
    2. his
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. pire
    2. took
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. mexri
    2. until
    1. ta
    2. the
    1. mesanixta?
    2. midnight
    1.   ‘Did Yanis not take his pills until midnight?’

The point that one could make up to now is that the negative marker dhen featured in Greek FF-NPQs is similar to the negative marker n’t in English HNPQs in that they are both syntactically and semantically distinct from canonical sentential negation. However, the fact that both negative markers can be negatively defined with respect to sentential negation is not a compelling argument in support of their grammatical affinity. The last empirical observation that completes the picture and significantly strengthens the parallel is that, like English HNPQs, Greek FF-NPQs necessarily convey positive speaker bias. An FF-NPQ about Yanis drinking his coffee black is infelicitous in the context of (17), where the bartender is clueless as to Yanis’ coffee habits, but most felicitous in the context of (18), where Yanis and the bartender are very well acquainted.3

    1. (17)
    1. Context: Upon leaving home, Yanis decides to try the new hipster coffee place around the corner for the first time. The following exchange takes place.
    1.  
    1. Yanis:
    1. Kalimera,
    2. good.day
    1. enan
    2. one
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. se
    2. you
    1. parakalo.
    2. I.beg
    1. ‘Good morning. Can I get a coffee, please?’
    1.  
    1. Bartender:
    1. #sketo,
    2.   black
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ton
    2. it
    1. pinis?
    2. you.drink
    1.   ‘You drink it black, right?’ (lit. ‘Don’t you drink it black?’)
    1. (18)
    1. Context: Upon leaving home, Yanis decides to pass by his favorite hipster coffee place around the corner. The following exchange takes place.
    1.  
    1. Yanis:
    1. Kalimera,
    2. good.day
    1. enan
    2. one
    1. kafe
    2. coffee
    1. se
    2. you
    1. parakalo.
    2. I.beg
    1. ‘Good morning. Can I get a coffee, please?’
    1.  
    1. Bartender:
    1. sketo,
    2. black
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ton
    2. it
    1. pinis?
    2. you.drink
    1. ‘You drink it black, right?’ (lit. ‘Don’t you drink it black?’)

Taking into account all the above, Greek FF-NPQs pattern with English HNPQs with respect to their characteristic properties. But how and, as importantly, why is this HNPQ-like interpretation mapped onto the form instantiated by Greek FF-NPQs?

3 Analysis

One of the distinctive properties of Greek FF-NPQs, reflected also in the label chosen for them, is that they feature a fronted focused constituent. Traditionally, ex-situ focused constituents in Greek are taken to move to SpecCP (Tsimpli 1995). Consequently, the null hypothesis regarding the syntactic derivation of an FF-NPQ like (19a) below is that it has the structure shown in (19b).

    1. (19)
    1. a.
    1. ta
    2. the
    1. balonia,
    2. balloons
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. efere
    2. brought
    1. i
    2. the
    1. Maria?
    2. Maria
    1. ‘Didn’t Maria bring the balloons?’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. [CP [DP ta balonia] [Cˈ [C ?] [NegP [Neg dhen] [TP efere i Maria ta balonia]]]]

There are several problems with this hypothesis. First of all, this would be the structure prototypically assigned to the standard negative question with focus fronting in (20), whose interpretation has been shown to be significantly different from that of the FF-NPQ in (19a).

    1. (20)
    1. ta
    2. the
    1. balonia
    2. ballons
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. efere
    2. brought
    1. i
    2. the
    1. Maria?
    2. Maria
    1. ‘Did Maria not bring the balloons?’

Furthermore, the syntactic structure in (19b) does not explain why or how the focused constituent ta balonia in (19a) is prosodically organized as separate. Moreover, it does not leave space for a high merge and interpretation site for the negative marker dhen. In other words, the hypothesis that (19b) reflects the syntactic derivation of (19a) should be abandoned.

Departing again from the obvious dislocation of the focused element in FF-NPQs, the alternative to treat the dislocated constituent as an instance of a Hanging Topic (HT) or Clitic Left Dislocation (ClLD) offers itself.4 According to the most recent accounts (Ott 2014; Villa-García 2023), these constructions are uniformly treated as consisting in the juxtaposition of two clauses, with the HT or ClLD-ed constituent being the remnant of ellipsis in the first clause. Under this alternative hypothesis and, specifically, in the spirit of Ott (2014), the structure of (19a) is predicted to be as shown in (21).

    1. (21)
    1. [CP1 [DP ta balonia] [Cˈ efere i Maria ta balonia]] [CP2 [C ?] [NegP dhen efere i Maria?]]

The analysis proposed in (21) is superior to the previous one in that (i) it predicts the difference between FF-NPQs and standard negative questions like (20), (ii) it explains why the dislocated element is prosodically separated and does not cause the rest of the utterance to be deaccented, and (iii) in principle it allows the negative marker dhen to be merged as high as the CP-domain of the second clause goes. The problem that proves fatal for this alternative hypothesis is that, unlike ClLD and HT constructions, Greek FF-NPQs do not display resumption. Concretely, in (21) above, CP2 does not feature a pronominal clitic referring back to the balloons. This renders CP2 ungrammatical (unless one assumes more ellipsis) and, consequently, the whole hypothesis untenable.

Putting together the lessons taken from the two previous failed attempts, it seems that we need an analysis that involves focus-movement but, crucially, to a position higher than the SpecCP in (19b). A solution along these lines can be found in the literature on English HNPQs and, concretely, on the account put forth in Krifka (2017; see also Goodhue 2022). According to the author, English HNPQs are complex speech acts consisting of a question embedding a (de)negated assertion. Adapting this insight to the Greek data, the syntactic derivation of the FF-NPQ in (19a) is predicted to look as follows:

    1. (22)
    1. [CP1 [ta balonia] [Cˈ [C ?] [NegP [Neg dhen] [CP2 [ta balonia] [Cˈ [C assert] [TP efere i Maria ta balonia]]]]]]

Under this view, the focused constituent of FF-NPQs ends up in the specifier of a higher CP. This explains why it forms its own prosodic unit and does not trigger deaccenting of the remaining material (see Baltazani 2002). Moreover, the high merging site of the negative marker over the embedded assertive CP predicts that FF-NPQ dhen does not behave syntactically or semantically like a sentential negative marker.

The biggest advantage of this third analytical alternative is that, by treating FF-NPQs as questions embedding denegated assertions, it derives also their HNPQ-like interpretation and, specifically, their obligatorily biased reading. According to Krifka (2017), English HNPQs are interpreted as requests on the part of the speaker for the addressee to not commit to the truth of the expressed proposition. The addressee may take up this offer or reject it and actually commit to this truth. Importantly, only the latter option brings about a change in the interlocutors’ common ground. If the speaker is cooperative in the broad sense of aiming at enriching their common ground with the addressee, they will prefer that their utterance does have an impact on this common ground; in other words, they will prefer that their addressee actually undertakes this commitment. It is in this sense that a speaker uttering a Greek FF-NPQ is predicted to be positively biased with respect to the proposition expressed by the TP embedded in the assertion.

A comment is due before closing off this section. The structure proposed for FF-NPQs in (22) correctly derives their syntactic and interpretative behavior but does not establish any causal link between focus-fronting and high dhen in Greek. I submit that no such causal link exists. The FF-NPQ type of fronting does not bring about a high interpretation of dhen in Greek but is merely its symptom. The syntactic movement of a focused constituent to such a high landing site spells out the top specifier of the matrix speech act that remains for the most part unpronounced. In other words, FF-NPQ fronting simply flags the existence of a complex syntactic structure, which is correctly predicted to be potentially projected even in the absence of any focus-movement:

    1. (23)
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. kafe.
    2. coffee
    1. Dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie?
    2. drank?
    1. ‘Yanis drank coffee. Didn’t he?’

Used as a follow-up to the assertion that Yanis drank coffee, the negative question in (23) can only be intended as an HNPQ-type of question.

4 Taking stock

Going back to the beginning, what can FF-NPQs tell us about Romero and Han’s (2004) casual speculation that the English LNPQ vs. HNPQ distinction is found also in Greek? Greek FF-NPQs were shown to instantiate a question form reserved for positively biased questions that feature a negative marker with high syntactic and semantic scope. In other words, FF-NPQs are solid evidence for the existence of a ‘high’ negative marker in Greek. That said, the distinction between canonical sentential negation and high negation in Greek is not necessarily reflected in the surface word order, due to the constituent-ordering flexibility of the language (Holton et al. 2012). The strings in (24a) and (25a), for example, are structurally ambiguous in at least two ways:

    1. (24)
    1. a.
    1. O
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. tsai?
    2. tea
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. [TopP [DP O Yanisi] [Topˈ [CP [C ?] [NegP [Neg dhen] [TP [T ipie] [VP [DP proi] [Vˈ ipie tsai]]]]]]]
    2. ‘Did Yanis not drink tea?’
    1.  
    1. c.
    1. [TopP [DP O Yanisi] [Topˈ [CP1 [C ?] [NegP [Neg dhen] [CP2 [C assert] [TP [T ipie] [VP [DP proi] [Vˈ ipie tsai]]]]]]]]
    2. ‘Didn’t Yanis drink tea?’
    1. (25)
    1. a.
    1. Dhen
    2. neg
    1. ipie
    2. drank
    1. o
    2. the
    1. Yanis
    2. Yanis
    1. tsai?
    2. tea
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. [CP [C ?] [NegP [Neg dhen] [TP [T ipie] [VP [DP o Yanis] [Vˈ ipie tsai]]]]]
    2. ‘Did Yanis not drink tea?’
    1.  
    1. c.
    1. [CP1 [C ?] [NegP [Neg dhen] [CP2 [C assert] [TP [T ipie] [VP [DP o Yanis] [Vˈ ipie tsai]]]]]]
    2. ‘Didn’t Yanis drink tea?’

Notes

  1. Within HNPQs, a further distinction is sometimes made between questions intended to double-check the positive propositional alternative –Peter had a Martini in (1b)– or the negative propositional alternative –Peter did not have a Martini in (1b) (Ladd 1981; Romero & Han 2004). Importantly, this distinction does not interact with the presence of speaker bias in HNPQs and will not concern us here. [^]
  2. The English translations of the Greek questions provided in this example reflect merely Romero and Han’s (2004) predictions. [^]
  3. Apart from positive speaker bias, the existence of contextual evidence going against this bias is often also considered important for the licensing of HNPQs in English (see Romero 2023 for an overview). Interestingly, contextual evidence does not seem relevant for the licensing of Greek FF-NPQs. [^]
  4. For an overview of the research on such phenomena in Greek, see Skopeteas (2016). [^]

Abbreviations

Neg = negative marker, SVO = Subject-Verb-Object, VSO = Verb-Subject-Object

Funding information

The present study acknowledges financial support from the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (INVESIGPI 2023) and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (PID2023-150347NB-I00).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor of Glossa: a journal of general linguistics for their valuable comments and insightful suggestions that led to an immense improvement of the initially submitted manuscript. I would also like to thank Beste Kamali and the audiences of the GLiF research group seminars at Pompeu Fabra University, the workshop on Speech Act Related Operators in Berlin, the Polar (yes/no) questions: form, meaning and more workshop in Prague, and the Polar Question Form(s) Across Languages workshop in Amsterdam for stimulating and useful feedback on previous stages of the work presented here. All remaining errors are mine.

Competing interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.

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