ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at certain kinds of non-interrogative questions and non-question interrogatives, starting with the former. Non-interrogative questions, declarative sentences used to express uncertainty, allow for a range of different phrasal tone sequences. In fact, the range is the same as for interrogative questions: low rise, high rise, fall-rise, and fall. The topic of high rises in declaratives provides a suitable occasion to discuss a general issue regarding tonal meaning. Formally: tonal implementation of the abstract ASSERT morpheme is said to be blocked because the ASSERT morpheme is embedded under an equally abstract, non-assertive TRY-morpheme. It is tentatively suggested that in speech communities which use the high rise relatively frequently in what appear to be functionally statements, convention favors use of this tonal try-marker, just as other groups may favor use of certain lexical addressee-oriented tags aimed at eliciting backchannel cues.
