Marina Stoyanova, Unique focus: Languages without multiple wh-questions (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today123). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. vii+184 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Exhaustivity and the Syntax of Wh-interrogatives: The case of Hungarian
Hungarian wh-interrogatives are reexamined in light of Exhaustivity operator (EI-Op) analysis for movements earlier (mis)construed as triggered by a syntactically active [Focus] feature. Taking a fresh look at the EI-Op proposal, the paper reexamines what drives obligatory wh-preposing in interrogatives, its potential landing sites and relation to preposed nonwh-phrases, and analyzes the role played by the syntactic EI-Op, a clausal EI 0 head, and the head of CP (Force 0 ) in wh-movement and interpretation. I motivate a variant of the cross-linguistically attested phrasal Q-particle, namely a [Q]-bearing EI-Op heading Hungarian "wh-phrases", and show the EI 0 clausal head to trigger overt "wh-movement", and the [Q]-feature of the head of CP to only undergo ' Agree' with the [Q]-bearing EI-Op phrase (alias wh-phrase).
Focus, exhaustivity and the syntax of Wh-interrogatives
Approaches to Hungarian, 2013
Hungarian wh-interrogatives are reexamined in light of Horvath's (2007) Exhaustivity operator (EI-Op) analysis for movements earlier (mis)construed as triggered by a syntactically active [Focus] feature. Taking a fresh look at the EI-Op proposal, the paper reexamines what drives obligatory wh-preposing in interrogatives, its potential landing sites and relation to preposed non-wh-phrases, and analyzes the role played by the syntactic EI-Op, a clausal EI 0 head, and the head of CP (Force 0) in wh-movement and interpretation. I motivate a variant of the cross-linguistically attested phrasal Q-particle, namely a [Q]-bearing EI-Op heading Hungarian "wh-phrases", and show the EI 0 clausal head to trigger overt "wh-movement", and the [Q]-feature of the head of CP to only undergo 'Agree' with the [Q]-bearing EI-Op phrase (alias wh-phrase).
PLoS ONE, 2023
The Mehri Language is an endangered language spoken in eastern Yemen, a subgroup of the Semitic language family, and a Southern Arabic language. The syntax of Mehri wh-questions has not been explored within minimalism; hence, there is a morpho-syntactic need to provide a modern analysis of wh-questions in order to show how the interrogative structures can be derived. This study aims to examine the syntax of the wh-question movement in Mehri's unaccusative/ergative and unergative structures and answer the following questions within Chomsky's (2000 and 2008) Phase-based Theory: (i) Does the Mehri language allow fronting of wh-phrases to [Spec-CP]? And (ii) how can wh-movement in Mehri unaccusative and (un)ergative structures be accounted for? This work presents a novel analysis of whquestion movement in unaccusative/ergative and unergative structures in Mehri; it demonstrates that the source head C triggers the movement of wh-adjunct and wh-subject phrases. In wh-adjunct extraction, two strategies are employed: overt wh-fronting and whin-situ; when the head Foc inherits an edge feature from C, wh-adjunct overtly undergoes movement from its original position within v*P to the left peripheries of [Spec-FocP] and subsequently to [Spec-CP]. When the lexical wh-adjunct remains within v*P, its question features covertly move to [Spec-CP], because the head Foc does not inherit an edge feature from C. In wh-subject extraction, the wh-subject overly undergoes movement to [Spec-CP] because C obligatorily inherits the edge feature to the head Top, which triggers movement of the illogical subject in unaccusative/ergative structures and the logical external specifier in unergative structures to [Spec-CP]. Moreover, Mehri obeys the Phase Impenetrability Condition of Chomsky, where wh-subject and wh-adjunct phrases must pass through certain phases until [Spec-CP].
Syntactic inquiries into discourse: restrictions on multiple interrogative
Multiple interrogatives in German involve highly thematic Wh-elements. This is captured by the notion of "Discourse-Restricted Quantification" (DRQ): discourse restrictions in German (and possibly other languages, though not English) force both Wh-elements in double questions (Multiple Wh) to move to a syntactically thematic position which is assumed to be a functional projection in an articulated CPstructure; this projection is Top(ic)P. This movement is motivated by an underlyingly complex structure assigned to the elements which in turn has overt realizations that can be found in (interrogative) partitives. The movement is instantiated similarly to pre-subject scrambling, independently taken to be topicalization. The higher Wh-topic then moves to CP in order to check the Wh-feature; the other Wh checks its Wh-feature covertly. Evidence from a number of languages shows interesting correlations of Wh-movement and Topicalization supporting this proposal. Semantically, the scope of multiple Whphrases in German is subject to DRQ: the sets of referents for both Wh-elements are limited in that they must be known to speaker and hearer. The differences between German and English will be addressed and there is also plenty of cross-linguistic discussion. A wide range of phenomena are scrutinized here, including (but not exclusively) Wh-adjuncts, Wh-islands and child language. The upshot is that a conception of Wh-topics is not only more natural than one would think at first but also superior to any other account presently made public in the minimalist literature.
A Minimalist Inquiry into Interrogative Wh-Movement in English and Urhobo
HUMANUS DISCOURSE, 2024
This paper investigates the motivation for interrogative wh-movement in English and Urhobo, the latter a South Western Edoid Nigerian language. The adopted theoretical framework is the minimalist program (MP) of generative grammar. Primary data is selected from English wh-interrogative sentences and their Urhobo translation equivalent. The translation equivalence is based on the grammaticality judgment of coordinate bilingual speakers of English and Urhobo. Two research questions guide the analysis: (i) What triggers the movement of the wh-word/phrase (WH-) or its translation equivalent from the VP-internal position to the specifier position of an adjoined complementiser phrase (Spec-CP), and (ii) why is this movement licensed or allowed when WH-is already assigned an interrogative interpretation at the VP-internal position? The data analysis suggests that in wh-optional languages such as English and Urhobo, the trigger or motivation for wh-movement is the presence of a strong illocutionary force question affix [+IFQ], which imposes both an interrogative interpretation (at LF
In-situ and ex-situ wh-question constructions in Moro
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2014
This paper addresses the formation of wh-questions in Thetogovela Moro, a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. Moro has both in-situ and ex-situ wh-questions, but exhibits a subject/non-subject asymmetry: while non-subjects may employ either construction, subjects must appear in the ex-situ form. Ex-situ wh-questions are analyzed as wh-clefts, and they share several properties with clefts and relative clauses. The fronted element is marked with a cleft particle and for noun phrases, a demonstrative that we analyze as a relative pronoun is used. Verbal tone patterns are those that are found in dependent clauses rather than main clauses. Subject questions, clefts and relative clauses are marked with a verbal prefix é-, while non-subject questions, clefts and relative clauses are marked with a verbal prefix ə-. We analyze these prefixes as dependent clause markers and provide evidence of additional dependent clause uses in the language. Finally, non-subject wh-questions bear an optional particle nəon the subject and/or verb. We offer several arguments that this is best analyzed as a complementizer.
This paper aims to explore the syntax of wh-and multiple wh-raising within the Minimalist framework. It first introduces Chomsky's (1995) treatment of wh-movement in English on the basis of which movement of question phrases in Standard Arabic will be analyzed. It also examines question word raising in Standard Arabic both at PF and LF and shows how feature checking plays a crucial role in licensing features in the syntax. Moreover, we examine the interaction between the syntax of question word raising in Standard Arabic and the Minimal Link Condition (MLC). The last section illustrates how the LF-representation plays a significant role in the syntax of multiple questions in Standard Arabic, English and the Slavic languages; it shows that Standard Arabic, like English, does not allow overt multiple wh-movement at PF (but rather at LF), while other languages do (the Slavic languages do permit overt multiple wh-questions to raise overtly to [Spec, CP] for feature checking considerations, a phenomenon that reflects the rich mystery behind the study of the syntax of the world languages). In other words, t he focus of this paper is on the interaction between multiple wh-questions and their LF-component with respect to movement operations operating in covert syntax.
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
This paper investigates the relevance of some syntactic principles in Generative Grammar. Specifically, the objective is to highlight the conflict between economy and uniformity in syntactic theory. This conflict is illustrated by some elements of wh-questions. Using the Minimalist Program as a current syntactic ‘approach’, we take MA wh-elements as a case study to test the relationship between the two principles. We, first, survey the importance of economy in the language itself. Second, we bring examples of the conflict in wh-interrogatives, specifically in wh-subjects, wh-objects, yes-no questions, and the [Q] feature. The significance of the research is that, in the absence of empirical evidence for uniformity, economy should be prioritized.
Syntactic inquiries into discourse restrictions on multiple interrogatives
Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen …, 1998
Multiple interrogatives in German involve highly thematic Wh-elements. This is captured by the notion of "Discourse-Restricted Quantification" (DRQ): discourse restrictions in German (and possibly other languages, though not English) force both Wh-elements in double questions (Multiple Wh) to move to a syntactically thematic position which is assumed to be a functional projection in an articulated CPstructure; this projection is Top(ic)P. This movement is motivated by an underlyingly complex structure assigned to the elements which in turn has overt realizations that can be found in (interrogative) partitives. The movement is instantiated similarly to pre-subject scrambling, independently taken to be topicalization. The higher Wh-topic then moves to CP in order to check the Wh-feature; the other Wh checks its Wh-feature covertly. Evidence from a number of languages shows interesting correlations of Wh-movement and Topicalization supporting this proposal. Semantically, the scope of multiple Whphrases in German is subject to DRQ: the sets of referents for both Wh-elements are limited in that they must be known to speaker and hearer. The differences between German and English will be addressed and there is also plenty of cross-linguistic discussion. A wide range of phenomena are scrutinized here, including (but not exclusively) Wh-adjuncts, Wh-islands and child language. The upshot is that a conception of Wh-topics is not only more natural than one would think at first but also superior to any other account presently made public in the minimalist literature.
The source of wh-morphology in questions and relative clauses
ConSOLE XV, 2008
Radek Šimík This paper proposes a solution to three related phenomena: (i) an asymmetry in scopal behavior of wh-phrases in questions and relatives, (ii) a symmetry between resumption (in Czech, Hebrew, and Greek relatives) and wh-relatives (in English), and (iii) a symmetry between gaps (as opposed to resumptives) and that-relatives. I make an explicit proposal concerning the fine-structure of operator DPs and argue that wh-morphology in questions and relatives is indicative of DP-internal quantification.