Towards the Semantics of Content Questions in Yorùbá

Although syntactic studies on Yorùbá content questions abound, their semantic aspects remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper examines the semantics of Yorùbá content questions, focusing specifically on in-situ content question constructions. Drawing data from spontaneous speech, it constructs pragmatic contexts to account for their specific interpretations. Framed within Information Structure (Chafe, 1976; Prince, 1981; Halliday, 1994; Lambrecht, 1994; Erteschik-Shir, 2007; van der Wal et al., 2025) and Alternative Semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Karttunen, 1977; Rooth, 1992, 2015), the analysis captures both the structural composition and semantic interpretations of in-situ content questions. The paper identify three distinct semantic construals: clarity, assurance, and amazement/displeasure. Additionally, it re-evaluates Jones’s (2006) claim that verb or VP focus cannot answer wh-questions in Yorùbá. It demonstrates that while Jones’s conclusions hold for restricted content questions, verb or VP focus cleanly answers unrestricted content questions. It concludes with the suggestion that future research should extend this semantic analysis to ex-situ content questions.