Alternative Questions in the Syntax-Semantics Interface

This paper deals with alternative questions in English, and proposes an analysis employing an alternative operator. I claim that the alternative question interpretation is not obtained by such syntactic processes as movement or gapping, but by scoping of an alternative operator that originates from the conjunction or. Accordingly, while the syntactic forms of alternative questions contain nothing more than a coordinate structure, their semantic component will be analyzed as including an alternative operator. Furthermore, using a 'multiple inheritance' type hierarchy of clauses, I will show that how the relationship between alternative questions and other types of questions can be represented.