Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

5.2 
Rhetorical Questions: Speaker-Oriented Interrogatives 
When ekan/eken appear in interrogative utterances, two interpretations surface. The first 
interpretation, which was discussed in the previous chapter, involves the questioning of either the 
knowledge of the addressee or the expectation of an answer containing non-firsthand information 
source. These readings are well-attested cross-linguistically when forms bearing evidential 
meaning occur in interrogative contexts. The second interpretation is that of a rhetorical 
question, which, broadly defined, refers to any utterances formally marked as interrogative but 
which expect no answer. 
Rhetorical questions have generally not been thought of as employing the emotive 
function of language, and previous accounts have questions typically focused on what Sadock 
(1971) calls queclaratives, that is, rhetorical questions that are semantically equivalent to 
assertions of the opposite polarity, as in (207). This sort of rhetorical question can be seen as a 
type of indirect speech act, as an utterance with the form of an interrogative is employed to 
perform a declarative speech act. 
(207) Don’t you love syntax? ≈ You love syntax. 
Due to the semantic/pragmatic reversal of polarity associated with queclaratives, they may co-
occur with negative polarity items, such as anybody in (208), even when an overt marker of 
negation is not present (Han 1998). Note, however, that it is impossible to tell (208a) apart from 
(208c) without context or intonation: 

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(208) a. 
What has John done for anybody? (Rhetorical question) 
b. 
John hasn’t done anything for anybody. (Statement) 
c. 
#What has John done for anybody? (Question) 
Athough queclaratives may license NPIs, they are otherwise not formally marked in English. 
Queclaratives are not, however, the only type of rhetorical questions, at least if the main 
criteria used to define them is that of not expecting a reply. Even in English, it is possible to find 
examples of questions that do not expect a response, yet which do not meet the criteria for 
queclaratives: 
(209) Am I cute, or what? (≈ I am cute.) 
(210) Why does God hate me? 
The above two examples are clearly rhetorical questions, in as much as neither question 
anticipates a reply, yet they are clearly not queclaratives. Example (27) is semantically 
equivalent to a statement of the same polarity, and (28) expects no answer, as it is a 
philosophical musing. 
More recent approaches to the expression of emotivity have found that the combination 
of emotivity and interrogativity produce a wide range of results. For Japanese, Maynard (2002) 
lists four types of emotive questions: 
i.) 
Self-inquiry interrogatives, in which the speaker addresses a question to him or herself 
ii.) 
Self-acceptance interrogatives, in which the speaker is involved with the processing of 
new information, particularly surprising or unexpected information 
iii.) 
Metacommunicative interrogatives, in which the speaker’s non-expectation of an answer 
is employed to modify the speech act, particularly in a way that expresses doubt 
iv.) 
Rhetorical questions, in which the speaker employs an utterance with interrogative form 
to express a non-interrogative proposition of the opposite polarity. 

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In the interest of maintaining consistent terminology, Maynard’s rhetorical questions will be 
referred to as queclaratives. As none of the question types described above anticipate any 
response, the entire class of emotive questions described above will be called rhetorical