Aren’t Gitksan Negative Polar Questions Biased?

This paper investigates the semantics and pragmatics of polar questions (PQs) in Gitksan. Four types of PQ are examined: PQs formed using the sentence-final clitic aa; PQs that contain aa plus the negation marker nee; PQs that contain aa, nee, and the focus marker dii; and PQs that contain aa plus verum marking. I show that PQs formed only with aa are the preferred option when the speaker believes the addressee will commit to the proposition in the question. PQs that contain negation are felicitous in some types of negatively biased context, but also—surprisingly—in pragmatically neutral contexts. PQs containing nee and dii are unambiguously negatively biased. I sketch an analysis that involves a distinction between monopolar and bipolar questions and an optional falsum operator. Gitksan is a language where monopolar questions are morphosyntactically simpler than bipolar questions; the latter are created in two explicit steps.