Částice ,náhodou‘ a ,snad‘ ve zjišťovacích otázkách
The particles ‘náhodou’ and ‘snad’ in Czech polar questions

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the meaning and distribution of two Czech particles – ‘náhodou’ ‘by any chance’ and ‘snad’ (without a straightforward translation to English) – in direct and indirect polar questions. We argue that these particles are epistemic in the sense that they systematically appear in polar questions whose main goal is to acquire new information, rather than, say, make an offer or a request. The particles contribute mainly to the so-called question biases, i.e., they help indicate the speaker’s (in direct questions) or attitude holder’s (in indirect questions) attitude to one or both of the propositional alternatives in the denotation of the question. This attitude can either be based on prior beliefs (so-called epistemic bias) or currently relevant evidence (evidential bias). Relying on a corpus analysis (looking at both ‘snad’ and ‘náhodou’) and a naturalness rating experiment (on ‘náhodou’), we draw inferences about the interpretive and distributional impact that the particles have on the polar question in which they appear. We find that ‘náhodou’ is limited to negative questions and that it mostly contributes positive bias (both epistemic and evidential). The particle ‘snad’ mostly conveys that the two biases (epistemic and evidential) are in conflict. We also observe a significant weakening of both particles’ meaning contribution in indirect questions.

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