Focus intervention effects in Mandarin multiple wh-questions

Focus in Greek wh-questions

We present an analysis of multiple focus sentences in Greek. On an empirical level, we show that the current generalisation in the Greek literature that multiple focus is unavailable in Greek is too strong as it stands. What is unavailable is multiple maximal foci in sentences where one focused item has moved to the left periphery. We view the unavailability of multiple foci in such sentences a...

ADVERBS IN MANDARIN WH - QUESTIONS Xin - xian

Focus Intervention Effects in Questions

Introduction Beck (1996) and Beck & Kim (1997) discuss the interaction between wh-in-situ elements and quantifiers, and propose that an intervening quantifier blocks LF movement of wh-in-situ to an operator position. This “intervention effect” is further discussed by Pesetsky (2000) with reference to LF feature movement. Wh-intervention effects exist in a wide variety of languages (see e.g. Hoj...

Focus Prosody in Tokyo Japanese Wh-Questions with Lexically Unaccented Wh-Phrases

This study presents new data on prosodic effects of focus in wh-questions in Tokyo Japanese, by examining prosodic effects of focus on and after lexically unaccented compound wh-words (e.g., nani.iro ‘what.color’). The results show that the realization of post-focal reduction differs considerably depending on the accentedness of the wh-word as well as of post-wh-words. When there is an accent o...

WH-questions without WH-words

Such WH-less WH-Questions (let us call them WLWQs) are very often used as questions in written tests or uttered by quizmasters in quizzes, though not often in daily conversations. 2 I assume that, despite their restriction in the range of registers, WLWQs are also constrained by the knowledge of human language. To my knowledge, there has been no previous research on WLWQs in the field. This pap...