Exhaustivity in single bare wh-questions: A differential-analysis of exhaustivity

Despite a large body of research, the linguistic nature of exhaustivity in single 'wh'-questions is unresolved. Moreover, little empirical evidence exists as to which related structures pattern with bare 'wh'-questions regarding exhaustivity. This paper explores the felicity of various exhaustivity violations in unembedded single bare 'wh'-questions in German and compares them to related structures. In two novel felicity judgment experiments, a total of 441 participants rated exhaustive as well as non-exhaustive plural and non-exhaustive singleton answers to 'wh'-questions or statements in a questionnaire. Answers were based on picture stimuli depicting individuals performing various actions. The felicity of non-exhaustive answers was compared across four main test conditions: bare 'wh'-questions ('wer '‘who’), 'wh'-questions with a lexical exhaustivity marker ('wer alles '‘who all’), plural definite descriptions contained in a restrictive relative clause (e.g., “the people who are fishing in the garden”), and the scalar quantifier “some” (e.g., “some people who are fishing in the garden”). We employ a novel methodological approach to improve the interpretability of statistical differences between experimental conditions by using the statistical measure of Minimal Important Difference (MID). Our results from estimated MIDs reveal that adults’ felicity judgments of non-exhaustive plural answers to bare 'wh'-questions pattern with those to 'wer alles'-questions and to plural definite descriptions: exhaustivity violations in the bare 'wh', the 'wer alles 'and the plural definite conditions were rated as less felicitous than exhaustivity violations in the 'some'-condition