On the role of verbal semantics in question embedding: the case of to know

Abstract We propose a novel semantic analysis of the verb to know that takes the idea of question orientation of interrogative-embedding predicates to the limit. The new analysis conceptualizes knowledge as a judgment about an ability to answer questions and not as a sort of belief. This way the fact that the argument of to know is a question becomes crucial for the analysis of what knowledge is. The proposal naturally derives the different exhaustive interpretations of embedded questions from an interaction between the lexical semantics of the embedding predicates and a novel pragmatic principle. It also offers an explanation for several puzzles about question embedding under to know and seems easily extendable to other question-embedding verbs.