This phrase is asking the listener to take action in the positive to help our neighbors.
- 1.a) "Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska?"
Switching should to a different place now asks the listener to NOT help out.
- 2.a) "We should not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska?"
How is should and not working in this sentence to change the request of the speaker?
4.8 Echo questions
The prototypical use of the echo question is to question whether one has correctly heard what the previous speaker said -- heard the stimulus, as we call it. My doubt as to whether I heard the stimulus correctly may arise because it was not perceptually clear (I may have had difficulty making it out above some background noise) or because its content is surprising or remarkable in such a way that I want to verify whether you did in fact say, or mean to say, what I apparently heard.
4.7.2 Declarative questions
Positive declarative questions have an epistemic bias towards a positive answer, negative ones towards a negative answer:
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- a. They've finished?
a. They've finished?
- b. They haven't finished?
b. They haven't finished?
The expected answer is here the statement with the same propositional content as the question -- i.e. They've finished and They haven't finished respectively. In asking a declarative question I am typically seeking confirmation of a proposition that I am inclined, with varying degrees of strength, to believe. There may be deontic or desiderative bias as well as epistemic, but this is not inherent to the construction as such.
