The functions of grammaticalized complement-taking-predicate clauses in interrogatives: a typology

Abstract Grammaticalized complement-taking-predicate (CTP) clauses like I think have been much studied in declaratives but not in interrogatives. We propose a typology of the grammatical functions that these CTP-clauses can convey, i.e., polarity bias, polarity reversal, modal orientation and opinion marker, and we relate these to the different dialogic functions that interrogatives can serve , i.e., Question, Query and Challenge. We apply the proposed analysis to samples of are you sure , do you think and is there a chance from the British Spoken sub-corpus of Wordbanks Online and discuss how their source semantics influences the grammatical and dialogic functions they specialize for: are you sure reverses polarity, typically in Queries; do you think is used mainly as opinion marker in Questions; and is there a chance marks modal orientation in Questions.