Two past forms inducing conjectural or non-intrusive questions

Abstract

This study argues that conjectural or non-intrusive questions are not only conveyed by future forms, as often discussed, but may be induced, combined with contextual factors, by past forms. Conjectural and non-intrusive questions are, respectively, uttered when the addressee is assumed as ignoring the answer and when she isn’t forced to answer. What is claimed to be conjectural or non-intrusive includes i) polite questions involving the French market imperfective past and its Japanese counterpart; ii) recall questions involving an evidential past in some languages. In the former case, the market past is claimed as referring to a moment when the shopkeeper made a conjecture about the customer’s need based on her observation: the politeness comes from highlighting, by using the past tense, the existence of this conjecture for the sake of the customer. In the latter, the evidential past is analyzed as referring to a moment when the speaker obtained the relevant information from others. The proposed hypotheses are supported by the fact that the two questions are incompatible with expressions forcing the addressee’s answer, and by the fact that the past form is combined with some conjectural expression obligatorily in both cases in Japanese and optionally in German recall questions.