The functions of grammaticalized complement-taking-predicate clauses in interrogatives: a typology.

Grammaticalized complement-taking-predicate (CTP) clauses like I think have been much studied in declaratives but not in interrogatives. We propose a typology of the grammatical functions that these CTP-clauses can convey, i.e., polarity bias, polarity reversal, modal orientation and opinion marker, and we relate these to the different dialogic functions that interrogatives can serve, i.e., Question, Query and Challenge. We apply the proposed analysis to samples of are you sure, do you think and is there a chance from the British Spoken sub-corpus of WordbanksOnline and discuss how their source semantics influences the grammatical and dialogic functions they specialize for: are you sure reverses polarity, typically in Queries; do you think is used mainly as opinion marker in Questions; and is there a chance marks modal orientation in Questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]