Responsive predicates are question-embedding: evidence from Estonian

Abstract

The proper semantic treatment of the complements of Responsive Predicates (ResPs),those predicates which may embed either declarative or interrogative clauses, is a longstandingpuzzle, given standard assumptions about complement selection. In order to avoidpositing systematic polysemy for ResPs, typical treatments of ResP complements treat theirarguments either as uniformly declarative-like (propositional) or interrogative-like (question).I shed new light on this question with novel data from Estonian, in which there are verbsthink-like meanings with declarative complements and wonder-like meanings with interrogativecomplements. I argue that these verbs’ meaning is fundamentally incompatible with aproposition-taking semantics for ResPs, and therefore a question-taking semantics is to be preferred.Keywords: responsive predicates, embedded clauses, interrogatives, contemplation, Estonian.