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“How” questions and the manner–method distinction

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Abstract

How questions are understudied in philosophy and linguistics. They can be answered in very different ways, some of which are poorly understood. Jaworski (Synthese 166:133–155, 2009) identifies several types: (i) ‘manner’, (ii) ‘method, means or mechanism’, (iii) ‘cognitive resolution’, and develops a logic designed to enable us to distinguish among them. Some key questions remain open, however, in particular, whether these distinctions derive from an ambiguity in how, from differences in the logical structure of the question or from contextual underspecification. Arguing from two classes of responses, adverbs and by gerunds, I give the answer that the logical structure of the question is indeed relevant: loosely, manners are adjuncts but methods are arguments.

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Notes

  1. The example is easily replicated:

    1. (i)

      – How do hedgehogs make love?

      – Very, very carefully!             [http://jokes4us.com/animaljokes/hedgehogjokes.html]

  2. To be exact, what the predicate is combined with is the trace of how; cf. Sect. 4.

  3. Ideally, there should be a unique solution, just one true answer in terms of the question theory of Karttunen (1977); cf. George (2011, p. 208f.): “a trivia question ...expects a unique answer that can be given briefly.”

  4. I follow common practice in linguistics since Kratzer (1996) in assuming that the agent is introduced by a separate functor above the verb phrase.

  5. The types s, e, v, and t are the types of points of evaluation (worlds), individuals, events, and truth values, respectively; any type \(\langle a,\!b\rangle \) is the type of functions from things of type a to things of type b, so that, for example, \(\langle v,\!t\rangle \) is the type of functions from events to truth values, equivalently, the type of sets of events.

  6. The metalinguistic functor \([\![\,\cdot \,]\!]\) maps an expression to its meaning, or intension; when relativized to a point of evaluation, or world, w, the output is the expression’s denotation, or extension, at that point. The metalanguage \(\lambda \) represents functional abstraction, so that the definiens stands for a function from events (e) to truth values, equivalently, a set of events.

  7. The symbol ‘?’ indicates that the sentence is only marginally acceptable.

  8. In a given case, RP will be determined by \(\phi \) and x; for example, if \(\phi \) is break a promise, RP might be ‘conflict with a promise made by x’. Mostly, though, RP will be more complex and difficult to spell out (Bennett 1994, p. 36).

  9. Key elements of the analysis to be presented were developed in (Sæbø 2008).

  10. The logical-type subscript \(\langle s, \langle v,t \rangle \rangle \) restricts the variable P to functions from worlds, or points of evaluation more generally, to sets of events; that is, to properties of events.

  11. Causation is usually conceived in terms of counterfactual dependence.

  12. The symbol ‘#’ indicates semantic anomaly.

  13. I am indebted to Hedde Zijlstra for pointing this out.

  14. The composition principle at work in this step is Intensional Functional Application (Heim and Kratzer 1998, p. 308)

  15. On the notion of lexical coercion, see, e.g., Asher (2011, p. 214ff).

  16. In (42) and (44), g is the current variable assignment, whereas w is the current world. The representations in (44) are a bit simplified; P(e), g(1)(e), and \(\mathtt{Become}(\mathtt{prince}(b))(f)\) are short for, respectively, \(\lambda i \,P_i(e)\), \(\lambda i \,g(1)_i(e)\), and \(\lambda i \, [\mathtt{Become}_i(\mathtt{prince}_i(b))(f)]\).

  17. A brief review of the Groenendijk and Stokhof theory is given in an Appendix.

  18. That the trace variable has the type of sets of events is to say that the value assigned to it by an assignment function g relative to a point of evaluation w, \(g(1)_w\) (its extension at g and w, \([\![\,\)t\(_1\,]\!]^{g,w}\)), is a set of events. The value assigned to it by g as such, g(1) (its intension at g, \([\![\,\)t\(_1\,]\!]^{g}\)), is a property of events, a function from points of evaluation to sets of events.

  19. ‘Extensional’ criterion predicates do seem to exist, though, like stand out, which seems to only require a set of events, states, or individuals, a case I will return to in Sect. 4.3.

  20. Schnieder (2009, p. 664) takes an example of this kind to indicate that ‘only an explanatory how-she-did-it yields a correct ‘by’-statement’.

  21. For discussions of modifiers and composition principles, see Castroviejo and Gehrke (2014) and Morzycki (to appear, chapter 5, sections 3 and 4).

  22. Where the method of killing Holofernes is implicitly existentially quantified over, cf. (46) in section 4.2.

  23. Jaworski (2009), who introduced the distinction, subdivides what I call method questions, ‘analytic’ questions in his term, into ‘means’, ‘mechanism’ and ‘method’ questions.

  24. The added complexity is evident in Jaworski’s analysis in terms of analysis schemes.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the audiences at the Göteborg PhilLang Seminar on May 19, 2014, and at the Göttingen Linguistics Colloquium on October 29, 2014, for valuable comments and suggestions.

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  1. University of Oslo, ILOS, Box 1003, 0315, Oslo, Norway

    Kjell Johan Sæbø

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Appendix: Building how questions

Appendix: Building how questions

Here I give a brief outline of the building blocks of the meaning of a question in general and a how question in particular, and how they are put together, in a compositional version of the theory of Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984), in main part due to Šimík (2011). I illustrate the general model by reference to the simplest case of wh- questions, who questions, before turning to how.

1.1 The semantics of a who question

Consider (58) and its logical form (59).

figure b

The extensions of who\(_1\), the raised pronoun binding the trace \(\hbox {t}_1\), and \(\hbox {Q}_\mathrm{who}\), the relevant covert question operator, are given in (60) and (61) (where a is the type of variable assignments and the domain restriction to humans is ignored).

  1. (60)

    \([\![\,\hbox {who}_i\,]\!]^{g,w_0} \, = \, \lambda \phi _{a(st)} \lambda w \lambda x_e \, \phi _w^{g[i\rightarrow x]}\)

  2. (61)

    \([\![\,\hbox {Q}_\mathrm{who}\,]\!]^{g,w_0} \, = \, \lambda P_{s(et)} \lambda w \ P_w=P_{w_0}\)

Piecing the extensions of all terminal and branching nodes in (59) together, we arrive at (62) as the extension of (58) at the point of evaluation \(w_0\):

  1. (62)

    \(\lambda w \,[\, \lambda x \,\exists e\!<\!n \ \mathrm{kiss}_w(x)(e) \wedge \mathtt{agent}_w(e)(b) \ = \lambda x \,\exists e\!<\!n \ \mathrm{kiss}_{w_0}(x)(e) \wedge \mathtt{agent}_{w_0}(e)(b) \,]\)

The corresponding intension is an equivalence relation between points of evaluation. As such, it induces a partition of Logical Space; if the domain contains just 3 individuals, a partition with 8 cells, where each is a complete answer; cf., e.g., Table 1.

Table 1 The complete answers to whom did Belle kiss
Full size table

1.2 The semantics of a manner how question

Consider now (63) and its logical form (64) (in a one-dimensional notation).

  1. (63)

    how did Belle kiss the Beast

  2. (64)

    \(\hbox {Q}_\mathrm{how}\) [ \(\hbox {how}_1\) [ Tense [ Belle [ Voice [[ kiss Beast ] \(\hbox {t}_1\) ]]]]]

The extension of the raised how\(_1\) binding the trace \(\hbox {t}_1\) and the covert question operator of the appropriate type, \(\hbox {Q}_\mathrm{how}\), are given in (65) and (66).

  1. (65)

    \([\![\,\hbox {how}_i\,]\!]^{g,w_0} \, = \, \lambda \phi _{a(st)} \lambda w \lambda m_{s(v t)} \, \phi _w^{g[i\rightarrow m]}\)

  2. (66)

    \([\![\,\hbox {Q}_\mathrm{how}\,]\!]^{g,w_0} \, = \, \lambda M_{s((s(v t))t)} \lambda w \ M_w=M_{w_0}\)

Piecing the extensions of all terminal and branching nodes in (64) together, we arrive at (67) as the extension of (63) at the point of evaluation \(w_0\):

  1. (67)

    \(\lambda w \,[\, \lambda P \,\exists e\!<\!n \ \mathrm{kiss}_w(b_1)(e) \wedge \mathtt{agent}_w(e)(b_2) \wedge P_w(e) = \lambda P \,\exists e\!<\!n \ \mathrm{kiss}_{w_0}(b_1)(e) \wedge \mathtt{agent}_{w_0}(e)(b_2) \wedge P_{w_0}(e) \,]\)

Suppose—unrealistically, but anyway—that there are 3 relevant and suitable properties of events, the corresponding intension induces a partition of Logical Space with 8 cells, where each cell is a complete answer; cf., e.g., Table 2.

Table 2 The complete answers to how did Belle kiss the Beast
Full size table

1.3 The semantics of a method how question

Consider (68) and its logical form (69), essentially the same structure as (64):

  1. (68)

    how did Belle turn the Beast into a prince

  2. (69)

    \(\hbox {Q}_\mathrm{how}\) [ \(\hbox {how}_1\) [ Tense [ Belle [ Voice [[ turn [ Beast into a prince ]] \(\hbox {t}_1\) ]]]]]

The semantics is different, though; while [ kiss Beast ] denotes a set of events which intersects with the extension of \(\hbox {t}_1\), [ turn [ Beast into a prince ]] denotes a function from properties of events which applies to the intension of \(\hbox {t}_1\). Thus although how and the covert question operator \(\hbox {Q}_{\mathrm{how}}\) continue to have the meaning specified in (65) and (66), the extension of (68) at \(w_0\) becomes (70) (note that neither the relation between propositions \(\mathtt{Cause}_w\) nor the function from sets of states to sets of events \(\mathtt{Become}_w\) for a given w is spelt out here):

  1. (70)

    \(\lambda w \,[ \,\lambda P \,\exists e <n \,\exists f\,\mathtt{Cause}_w(\lambda i [ \mathtt{Become}_i(\mathtt{prince}_i(b_1))(f)])(\lambda j P_j(e)) \wedge \mathtt{agent}_w(e)(b_2) \, = \lambda P \,\exists e \!<\!n \,\exists f\,\mathtt{Cause}_{w_0}(\lambda i [ \mathtt{Become}_i(\mathtt{prince}_i(b_1))(f)])(\lambda j P_j(e)) \wedge \mathtt{agent}_{w_0}(e)(b_2) \,]\)

As usual, the partition of Logical Space induced by the corresponding intension will, if there are 3 relevant and suitable properties of events, consist of 8 cells, each a complete answer to the question, for example, those in Table 3.

Table 3 The complete answers to How did Belle turn the Beast into a prince
Full size table

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Sæbø, K.J. “How” questions and the manner–method distinction. Synthese 193, 3169–3194 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0924-9

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