Editing Question (section)

==== Request for confirmation and speaker presupposition ====
Questions may be phrased as a request for confirmation for a statement the interrogator already believes to be true.

A [[tag question]] is a polar question formed by the addition of an interrogative fragment (the "tag") to a (typically declarative) clause. For example:

:You're John, {{underline|aren't you?}}
:Let's have a drink, {{underline|shall we?}}
:You remembered the eggs, {{underline|right?}}

This form may incorporate speaker's [[presupposition]] when it constitutes a [[complex question]].
Consider a statement
:(A) Somebody killed the cat
and several questions related to it.
:(B) John killed the cat, did he?  (tag question)
:(C) Was it John who killed the cat?
As compared with:
:(D) Who killed the cat?
Unlike (B), questions (C) and (D) incorporate a presupposition that somebody killed the cat.

Question (C) indicates speaker's commitment to the truth of the statement that somebody killed the cat, but no commitment as to whether John did it or did not.<ref name="saltpet">[[Stanley Peters]], "Speaker commitments: Presupposition", ''Proceedings of the Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT)'' 26: 1083–1098, 2016, ([https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/SALT/article/download/26.1083/3703 (download PDF)])</ref>