This thesis investigates the structure and interpretation of questions and answers in K’iche’, an
indigenous Mayan language of Guatemala, and aims to accomplish two interrelated goals. The first
goal is to extend the limited previous work on questions and answers in K’iche’ in order to come
to a better understanding of the language. The second goal is to bring theoretically interesting data
from an understudied language like K’iche’ to bear on the modeling of question-answer exchange
in discourse and thereby to facilitate an informed comparison between K’iche’ and well-studied
languages like English, and study the implications of the data for the formal analysis of questions
and answers.
I first discuss two focus constructions with different interpretations in K’iche’ and distinguish
between (what I call) answer focus constructions from aree focus constructions. I show that the
interpretation of aree focus constructions gives rise to existence and exhaustivity implications (the
latter when they are used to reply to constituent questions), neither of which necessarily arises from
the interpretation of answer focus constructions. Previously, differences in the interpretations of
these two focus constructions were either overlooked (e.g., Larsen, 1988; Trechsel, 1993) or not
explicitly shown to be the case (Can Pixabaj & England, 2011). Moreover, this finding goes against
the standard assumption, based on Aissen 1992, that focus constructions in Mayan are interpreted
like it-clefts across the board.
Next, I discuss the distribution and interpretation of negation in K’iche’ both in non-focus sentences
and in focus constructions. In particular, I show that in answer focus constructions, the
negation clitic =t(aj) 'NEG’ has a variable distribution which has not been noted in the previous
literature: it attaches to a prosodic word of the expression in the pre-predicate focus position but not
necessarily to the first one (contra Henderson 2012). Interestingly, this variability in distribution has
no effect on the interpretation of the sentence. The distribution of negation in aree focus constructions,
on the other hand, is similar to its distribution in non-focus sentences: the clitic =t(aj) 'NEG’
attaches to the first prosodic word of the predicate of the sentence to be negated.
Based on how negative answers are formed and interpreted in K’iche’, I show that there are
two different kinds of negative responses to positive constituent questions with different structures
and interpretations. In the first kind of negative response, =t(aj) 'NEG’ attaches to a prosodic word
of the focused expression and I argue that this kind of response qualifies as a negative answer.
For the second kind of negative response, where =t(aj) 'NEG’ occurs on the verbal part of the
sentence, I show that the preverbal expression is not focused but rather contrastively topicalized. I
argue that this kind of response, although possible, does not qualify as an answer in the technical
sense. Building on these observations, I take up the much-discussed issue of association with focus
(e.g., Jackendoff, 1972; Rooth, 1996; Beaver & Clark, 2008; Herburger, 2016) in negative answers
and argue that the facts about K’iche’ motivate an alternative analysis which has implications for
English. I propose an analysis of negative answers and negative responses in K’iche’ and in English,
without making recourse to association with focus or a mechanism to achieve that effect. The
analysis also has the interesting implication that English does not have long negative answers.
Next, I turn to a discussion of broad focus and narrow focus polar questions in K’iche’. In
particular, I show that the interpretation of a negative polar question in K’iche’ gives rise to the
inner versus outer negation ambiguity and that, similar to languages like English and German, this
ambiguity has a morphosyntactic reflex (e.g., Ladd, 1981; Buring & Gunlogson, 2000).
I then discuss narrow focus polar questions and consider the relevance of inner versus outer
negation to the interpretation of negative narrow focus polar questions. In particular, I show that the
distribution of negation in narrow focus polar questions is sensitive to the inner versus outer negation
interpretations associated with negative polar questions: negation occurs in the preverbal domain if
the question has an outer negation interpretation and in the verbal domain if the question has an
inner negation interpretation. Thus, the distribution of negation in narrow focus polar questions
proves to be another morphosyntactic reflex of the inner/outer negation ambiguity in K’iche’.
In order to provide a compositional analysis of the K’iche’ data, I extend the dynamic context
model put forth in Martin 2013 and Martin & Pollard 2014, and develop a neo-Hamblinian analysis
of questions and answers, which is based on the original definition of questions in Hamblin 1957
and Hamblin 1971.This dynamic analysis improves on and, in certain respects, is similar to previous
approaches to the question-answer relation, especially those that employ a Question Under
Discussion (QUD)-stack (e.g., Ginzburg, 1994; Roberts, 1996/2012; Farkas & Bruce, 2009).
Finally, I discuss a number of remaining issues, and suggest several future avenues for research
on the grammar of K’iche’.