“How” questions and the manner–method distinction

On the logical makeup of how- and why-questions

“…that depending on the question nucleus' content, Hamblin answers may or may not be pairwise incompatible. However, we will see that the particulars of the data pattern that emerges are surprising, leading one to wonder how to predict from the nucleus' content whether or not a question's Hamblin answers are pairwise incompatible, and, relatedly, how the newly discovered logical typology of howand why-questions might relate to grammatical or notional typologies that have been proposed in previous literature (e.g., Higginbotham 1993;Oshima 2007;Saebø 2016).…”

“…The body of work on the semantics of wh-questions, sparked by classic works like Hamblin 1973, Karttunen 1977, and Groenendijk & Stokhof 1982, 1984, is substantial, yet most of this literature focuses narrowly on questions about individuals or degrees. In particular, discussion relating to the semantics of howand why-questions -questions about modes and reasons, as we will say -has remained sporadic (e.g., Oshima 2007;Abrusán 2014;Saebø 2016). 1 The reasons for this limitation presumably include the uncertainty regarding the contents of the propositions that constitute answers to howand why-questions, which limits the utility of these questions in the investigation of certain general issues in the study of questions, most notably the semantics of question embedding.…”

“…This analysis of (4) as a response to (1) is furthermore amenable to a modification that still avoids Abrusán's objection and that almost achieves full compatibility with the particulars of Oshima's proposal. Saebø (2016) argues at length that a howquestion can be grammatically ambiguous between a question about manners, which are expressed by adverbials like slowly, and a question about methods, which are expressed by by-phrases like by pushing hard. Yet a conjunction like slowly and by pushing hard is surely a felicitous response to a question like, say, How did she open the door?.…”

“…One possible typology might be derived by extrapolating from the dimensions of modes that were sketched (with reference to a particular example) in Oshima 2007 and that we presented in section 2. In section 2, we also made reference to Saebø's (2016) proposal that how-questions include grammatically distinct questions about manners and questions about methods. In a similar vein, Higginbotham (1993) proposed (in passing) that why "incorporates" either because or in order to, suggesting that why-questions can generally be parsed as questions about two type of reasons, such as causes (with because) and goals (with in order to).…”

The generality problem for intellectualism

“…The joke lies in Liberace deliberately misinterpreting the question as concerning the manner of his playing . Manners are features of actions and are associated with adverbs like “slowly,” “carefully”, and “gracefully.” By contrast, methods are more like instructions and are associated with the by‐gerund construction, as in “by lifting from the knees.” I will rely on an intuitive sense of this distinction, leaving space to substitute in a more developed theory (see Jaworski, ; Sæbø, ).…”