Can Multiple Contents Be Simultaneously At-Issue?

Bibliographic Data

ID24218334
AuthorsTodd Snider (0000-0002-9011-1411, Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 72074 Tübingen, Germany)
Year2026
Volume11
Issue10
Pages207
Publication date2026-09-30
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages11100207
OpenAlexW7214984382
LanguageEN
References cited60

There is a prevailing assumption in the at-issueness literature that utterances express exactly one content (usually a proposition) that is at-issue, with any other contents being not-at-issue. This article examines this assumption critically, asking whether it can ever be the case that multiple contents are at-issue simultaneously. Looking at the three leading approaches to defining at-issueness, and considering them as both backward- and forward-oriented phenomena, we observe some similarities and some divisions among how these approaches answer this question. We spotlight conjoined question sequences, an empirical construction that might require multiple contents to be simultaneously at-issue, and discuss how these various approaches might account for the observed data.

propositions · question sequences · utterance content · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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