On the “What as Why” Phenomenon in Japanese and Turkish

In quite a few languages, the wh-phrase corresponding to English ‘what’ can be used to ask for a reason, in addition to a canonical reason wh-phrase corresponding to English ‘why’: Japanese and Turkish are, among other languages, mainly considered in this paper. It has been reported that reason WHAT-words have more restrictions than WHY-words (e.g., Kurafuji 1996). Thus, the goal of this paper is, arguing (1a-b), to provide a unified analysis for the reason WHAT-words in the two languages. Also, it is shown that (1c) is obtained as a consequence of our analysis. (1) a. The reason WHAT-words have ordering restriction that is related to their Foc(us)-F(eature). b. The reason WHAT-words should be treated as non-D-linked wh-phrases. c. The reason WHAT-words are base-generated lower than the NegP; the WHY-words are higher than the NegP. The relevant examples are in (2). There, Japanese nani-o ‘what-Acc’ and Turkish ne ‘what’ function as a reason wh-phrase, just like the canonical reason wh-phrase in these language naze ‘why’ and neden ‘why’, respectively. (2) a. Japanese karera-wa nani-o /naze sawaide-i-ru no. b. Turkish Ne/Neden ağlıyorsun? they-Top what-Acc/why are making noise Q what/why you are crying ‘Why are they making a noise?’ ‘Why are you crying?’ However, there exist crucial differences between the WHAT-words and the WHY-words in both these languages. Firstly, unlike WHY-words in these languages, WHAT-words indicate a high degree of emotion, such as surprise, annoyance, or anger (e.g., Ochi 2004). Therefore, in (2), WHAT-questions are best uttered in a situation where the speaker is annoyed or upset. Secondly, it has been pointed out that Japanese nani-o must linearly precede the objet in a transitive sentence as in (3) (e.g., Konno 2004). In this paper, I further report that Turkish reason WHAT-word ne also has an order restriction; and ne must appear right before the verb as in (4). On the other hand, WHY-words in these languages are not subject to the order restriction. To account for these properties of the reason WHAT-words in Japanese and Turkish, I propose (5). (3) a. naze/nani-o henna uta bakari utatte-i-ru no. b. henna uta bakari naze/*nani-o utatte-i-ru no. why/what-Acc funny song only are singing Q funny song only why/ what-Acc are singing Q ‘Why are you singing only funny songs?’ (4) a. Kapıyı neden/ne çalıyorsun? b. Neden /*Ne kapıyı çalıyorsun? the door why/what you are knocking why/what the door you are knocking ‘Why are you knocking on the door?’ (5) The WHAT-words in Japanese and Turkish obligatorily bear a [Foc]-F when they are used as reason wh-phrases. Recall that the reason WHAT-words generally imply speaker’s emotion such as anger or surprise. Thus, we assume the [Foc]-F in (5) to be a realization of this additional information, which is relevant to expressive contents in the sense of Potts (2003). Let us first consider Turkish ne, keeping in mind that languages use different means to encode focus including word order or morphology. Turkish has a specific focus position: the position immediately preceding the verb (Erguvanlı 1979). Given (5), it then naturally follows that Turkish reason WHAT-word ne always appears in the focus position as in (4). At this point, it is important to note that the WHY-word neden can also appear in that position as in (4a), because wh-phrases typically signal information that is unknown and thus it is natural for them to occur in the focus position. However, the significant difference between neden and ne is that other elements can appear in the focus position in a neden sentence as in (4b) because neden does not always have to bear the obligatory [Foc]-F. Accordingly, given that the [Foc]-F of ne is always realized by the particular focus position in Turkish, the strict order restriction of ne in (4) naturally follows. As for Japanese nani-o, following Iida (2011), I assume here that a nani-o question always contains another phrase that bears a [Foc]-F, in addition to nani-o. This is because a nani-o question becomes more acceptable when it contains an intensifier like sonnani ‘such a’, or when the object has a focus particle like bakari ‘only’ as in (3). Eventually, a nani-o sentence contains two phrases with a [Foc]-Fs: in (3a), nani-o and the object henna uta bakari. However, this configuration faces the intervention effect (IE), as depicted in (3a)’s base structure (6). There, the [Foc]-F of the object cannot establish the legitimate Agree relation with the Foc, due to the closer [Foc]-F. (Here, we assume that nani-o is base-generated in the VP-adjoined position (Ochi 1999) and that nani-o is accompanied by an empty wh Op(erator), which moves up to the CP (Watanabe 1992).)