Immobile wh-phrases in Tagalog

WH-movement in Seediq and Tagalog

Similarity of wh-Phrases and Acceptability Variation in wh-Islands

In wh-questions that form a syntactic dependency between the fronted wh-phrase and its thematic position, acceptability is severely degraded when the dependency crosses another wh-phrase. It is well known that the acceptability degradation in wh-island violation ameliorates in certain contexts, but the source of this variation remains poorly understood. In the syntax literature, an influential ...

Nominalization and WH-movement in Seediq and Tagalog

This paper proposes a structural analysis of two types of wh-question formation in the Austronesian languages Seediq and Tagalog. Wh-questions formed on arguments are pseudo-cleft constructions; the wh-word functions as a predicate taking the rest of the clause, in the form of a headless relative, as its subject. The restriction that argument wh-questions can only be formed on absolutives is ac...

Scrambling of Wh-phrases in Japanese

Despite the a priori desiratum of assimilating the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions in Japanese to that in English, empirical evidence shows that overt displacement of wh-phrases in Japanese is not the same as overt wh-movement in English. The syntax of wh-phrases in Japanese is essentially the same as that of non-wh-phrases. Failure of scope reconstruction in certain cases is not ...

1 Inherent Focus on Wh - Phrases

In the first part of the paper, I propose a framework for focus and question interpretation. While both serve to introcude alternatives, I offer reasons that the two kinds of alternatives arise on different levels of semantic interpretation. The resulting approach can correctly account for all possible constellations of focus and questions, including intervention effects, without the use of typ...