Wh-in-situ and Scrambling in the Context of Comparative Altaic Syntax* Opening Remarks

The idea for WAFL came about through a series of conversations that Jaklin Kornfilt and I have had over the past ten years. As we looked at constructions in Japanese, Turkish, and related languages, it became apparent that an analysis of a particular construction in Japanese could be confirmed, extended, or even questioned by comparing it to Turkish, and vice versa. Of course, one can always make comparison of any two languages, but there is a sense that comparing Japanese and Turkish had a special meaning because they share so many basic properties. The similar nature of these two languages led to two sorts of questions: what is the nature of the similarities?; and what is the nature of the differences? Examples of similarities include wh-in-situ, scrambling, head finalness, and presence of morphological case marking. Examples of differences include the agreement system -Japanese doesn’t evidence any overt agreement while Turkish has a rich system of agreement, and the way the case system is implemented in a variety of syntactic environments. The similarities gave us assurance, possibly not always to be trusted, that we were making meaningful comparisons – oranges to oranges, an assurance that is not always there when comparing such vastly different languages as English and Japanese. It recalls Richie Kayne’s work on Romance, in which he exploits small differences between languages that are otherwise quite similar to try to get at some deep observation. In the brief remarks to follow, I will give concrete