Wh-questions

O presente trabalho aborda perguntas com sintagmas adverbiais altos, as principais análises cartográficas para elas propostas e, na sequência, se volta para as propriedades sintáticas e interpretativas de 'como assim' de incredulidade no Português Brasileiro (PB). Sentenças com 'como assim' podem apresentar quatro leituras: causal, de propósito, elucidativa e de incredulidade. Assumimos que sentenças com 'como assim' de incredulidade envolvem um operador I-REQUEST
(nos termos de KRIFKA, 2012), já que não atuam como uma solicitação de informações por parte do falante, e sim solicitam uma confirmação do interlocutor sobre seu proferimento. Nesses contextos, 'como assim' veicula, como parte de sua pragmática, uma expressão de incredulidade do falante acerca da possibilidade de o interlocutor realizar tal confirmação. 'Como assim' de incredulidade é um Speech
Act e, por isso, não pode ocorrer em contextos encaixados. Além disso, por nascer em uma posição alta, em Spec de IntP, é insensível à negação e não pode aparecer 'in situ'.

This work deals with questions containing high adverbial wh-phrases, discussing the main cartographic analysis proposed for these sentences and the syntactic and interpretive properties of interrogatives with incredulity 'como assim' in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Sentences with 'como assim' can present four readings: a causal reading, a purpose reading, an elucidative reading and an incredulity reading. We assume that sentences with the incredulity reading involve an I-REQUEST operator (in terms of KRIFKA, 2012), since they do not act as a request of information from the speaker, but rather as a request of confirmation, from the hearer, of the content of his/her previous utterance. In these contexts, 'como assim' conveys, as part of its pragmatics, an expression of the speaker’s incredulity about the possibility of confirmation, from his interlocutor, of the assertion previously uttered. Incredulity 'como assim' is a Speech Act, therefore cannot occur in embedded contexts. Furthermore, since como assim is externally merged in a high position, in Spec of IntP, it is insensitive to negation and cannot occur 'in situ'.

Wh & ex-situ focus constructions in Creoles have been analysed in terms of movement to the
left periphery (Saramaccan: Aboh (2006), Jamaican: Durrleman (2008), Papiamentu:
Kouwenberg & Lefebvre (2007)) and as clefts (Haitian: Lumsden & Lefebvre (1990)
Manfredi (1993), Jamaican: Patrick (2007), Veenstra (2008)). Our goal is to reassert the
cartographically-rooted left-peripheral account, as in Rizzi (1997; 2004a) and related work.

Bantu languages, which are spoken throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, permit wh-questions to be constructed in multiple ways, including wh-in-situ, full wh-movement, and partial wh-movement. Shona, a Bantu language spoken by about 13 million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, allows all three of these types. In this dissertation, I conduct the first in-depth examination of Shona wh-questions, drawing on fifty hours of elicitation with a native speaker consultant to explore the derivational relationships among these strategies.

Wh-in-situ questions have received a wide variety of treatments in the syntactic literature, ranging from covert or disguised movement to postsyntactic binding of the wh-phrase by a silent question operator. In Bantu languages, wh-in-situ questions are often taken to be derived via a non-movement relation (e.g., Carstens 2005 for Kilega, Diercks 2010 for Lubukusu, Muriungi 2003 for Kîîtharaka, Sabel 2000 for Kikuyu and Duala, Sabel & Zeller 2006 for Zulu, Schneider-Zioga 2007 for Kinande), but alternatives have rarely been considered. I demonstrate how movement-based analyses that have been proposed for wh-in-situ in non-Bantu languages make the wrong predictions for Shona wh-in-situ, which lacks word order permutation, extraction marking, island effects, and intervention effects. These properties provide support for the traditional Bantuist view that the relation between the pronunciation site of an in-situ wh-phrase and its scopal position in the left periphery is not movement; I claim that in Shona it is unselective binding.

Many Bantu languages, including Shona, prohibit wh-phrases from appearing in the canonical preverbal subject position. Wasike (2007) demonstrates that this restriction applies to topicalized non-subjects as well as preverbal subjects. I replicate these results for Shona and argue that they cast doubt on Sabel & Zeller's (2006) attempt to characterize the ban with an appeal to improper movement. I argue instead that restrictions on the distribution of wh-in-situ in Bantu are tied to restrictions on the domain for focus licensing. This claim is further bolstered by an examination of crosslinguistic variation within Bantu with respect to whether the ban on in-situ preverbal wh-subjects applies in embedded clauses. I observe a previously unnoticed generalization: languages that universally ban in-situ preverbal wh-subjects (like Zulu) have immediately after the verb (IAV) focus effects; languages that do allow in-situ preverbal wh-subjects in embedded clauses (like Shona, Lubukusu, and Kîîtharaka) also lack IAV effects.

Full wh-movement in Shona gives rise to questions that bear a certain similarity to English wh-questions. However, using a range of diagnostics including extraction marking, island effects, reconstruction effects, and the distribution of temporal modifiers, I argue that what appears to be full wh-movement in Shona actually has a cleft structure: the wh-phrase moves to become the head of a relative clause, which is selected by a copula in the matrix clause. Just as in wh-in-situ, an ex-situ wh-phrase is pronounced lower than its scopal position, and the relation between these two positions is established via unselective binding. Additional evidence for this proposal comes from the sensitivity of partial wh-movement to island boundaries below but not above the pronunciation site of the wh-phrase, a pattern that has been predicted by previous analyses (e.g., Abels 2012, Sabel 2000, Sabel & Zeller 2006) but for which empirical support has been lacking until now. I therefore unify full and partial wh-movement under a single analysis for cleft-based wh-in-situ that involves a step of relativization (independently needed for relative clauses) and a step of unselective binding (independently needed for wh-in-situ).

It is a familiar fact that crosslinguistically wh- Echo Questions present considerable challenges to traditional theories of syntax of non-echo wh-interrogatives, since they systematically appear to contradict general claims about question formation such as the obligatoriness of wh-movement. This paper presents some novel facts concerning the syntax of Russian ‘request-for-repetition’ Echo Questions in contexts of multiple wh-elements (one of which is echo-introduced and the rest proceed from the previous utterance) and explores a possible way to account for their key syntactic features in terms of a double-CP structure (cf. Sobin 2010).

Wh-question is a term in generative grammar for a question that is formed with an interrogative word (what, who, whom, whose, which, when, where, why, or how) and that expects an answer other than "yes" or "no."
Which means that in order to answer a wh-question, the speaker needs more information than simply affirmative or negative. In English, the wh-words are always in the sentence initial position while in Chinese, the wh-words tend to stay where they are. This is why language like Chinese and Japanese are defined as “in-situ” language. They don’t allow the wh-words movement like English does.
Mandarin Chinese has the SVO order at sentence structure. The word order in a wh-question does not differ from its declarative counterpart. Which means that no matter the wh-words are functioning as a subject or object, they will stay right at the same place in the sentences without any structural changing or place changing.

The aim of this research is to examine the effectiveness of WH Questions Strategy in improving the reading comprehension skills of Grade Three pupils of Sirawan Beach Elementary School. Descriptive-comparative method was employed, utilizing secondary sources available. It was found out that WH Questions Strategy has a significant effect on the reading comprehension skills of the respondents. Thus it was recommended that WH Questions Strategy should also be used by the other teachers.

Embedded Interrogatives in Classical Greek Prose: Constituent Questions
This thesis investigates embedded constituent interrogatives at the syntax/semantic interface. Three areas are
analysed: interrogative terms; embedding predicates; moods and tenses. The interrogative terms belong to three
paradigms: ὅς (relative), τίς (direct interrogative) and ὅστις (so-called indefinite relative). Τίς/ὅστις pattern together
distributionally, while ὅς shows a different pattern. The distinctive semantic criterion is their ability (ὅς) or inability
(τίς/ὅστις) to identify an antecedent for interpretation of the variable. Τίς/ὅστις clauses are licensed in environments
where this process is blocked, that is under non veridical (NPIs licensing) operators and in focus position, whereas ὅς
clauses are presupposed and have scope over such operators. The key notion we propose is identification. It carries over
to exclamatives. As for the embedding predicates, we propose two semantic features, open/closeness of the answer and
rogative/resolutiveness, whose ± setting yields four classes. The analysis of the moods and tenses focuses on the
deliberative subjunctive and its alternatives and on the oblique optative, which, we propose, is a narrative tense.
Put together, these three studies display coherent results: only resolutive predicates embed ὅς-clauses; rogative
verbs behave differently w.r.t. the sequence-of-time phenomenon; oblique optatives do not show up in ὅς-clauses etc.
More generally, the Greek data help enhance parts of the linguistic theory. With some modifications, the cartographic
approach provides good explanations for the Greek completive system. Our results also have important consequences on
the syntax and the semantics of relatives.
Keywords : Classical Greek ; syntax ; semantics ; completives ; interrogatives ; indirect questions ; embedded
interrogatives ; constituent questions ; polar/yes-no interrogatives ; questions ; interrogation ; relatives ; exclamation ;
exclamatives ; factivity ; veridicality ; prolepsis ; abstract objects ; propositional attitudes ; oblique optative

Agrammatic aphasia is a language disorder due to brain damage, in which grammar is particularly impaired. A core issue in neurolinguistic research is to what extent the language problems that people with aphasia suffer are exclusive to their brain damage. Possibly, the processes that are vulnerable in aphasia also require more cognitive resources for the healthy brain. A way to tap into unimpaired language processing is to study event-related potentials (ERPs) registered at the scalp. ERPs are brain responses that can be related to different levels of linguistic processing, including grammar. Also eye-movements can be used to study brain responses to language, given that gazes are drawn to objects in a closely time-locked manner with what is being heard (Cooper, 1974). In this dissertation, the neural correlates of time reference expressed by verbs were investigated in aphasic and non-brain-damaged speakers of Dutch, German, and Russian using accuracy and reaction time measures, as well as ERP and eye-tracking.
Chapter 1 provided the theoretical background of the studies, leading to the research questions for the studies. Results from several structurally different languages demonstrated that agrammatic aphasic patients find it more difficult to produce and comprehend verb forms that refer to the past than verb forms that refer to the present, captured in the Past DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH; Bastiaanse et al., 2011). The PADILIH holds that verb forms referring to the past, such as ‘wrote’, are impaired in agrammatic aphasia, because they are discourse linked: in order to interpret past time reference, an additional link has to be made to some other event time in the discourse. Verb forms referring to the present, such as ‘writes’, are relatively spared, because they are locally bound: no additional discourse- link is needed because the event time the verb refers to is in the here-and-now of the moment of speaking. The PADILIH is based on two assumptions: (1) Present tense is locally bound within the sentence and past tense is discourse linked (Zagona, 2003) and (2) Discourse linking is impaired in agrammatic aphasia, whereas local binding is intact (Avrutin, 2000). Discourse linking difficulties can also be observed in the pronominal domain (Edwards & Varlokosta, 2007; Grodzinsky et al., 1993; Ruigendijk et al., 2006) and in wh-phrases (Avrutin, 2000). In healthy speakers similar patterns can be traced (Dragoy et al., 2012; Faroqi-Shah & Dickey, 2009; Jonkers et al., 2007). This PhD project was aimed at addressing some remaining issues with respect to time reference and discourse-linking:
1. Past time reference is discourse linked.
2. The PADILIH applies to language use in general.
3. Past time reference difficulties are irrespective of tense.
4. Processing verbs that refer to the past is delayed in agrammatism.
Chapter 2 aimed to (1) investigate whether discourse-linking is the common denominator of the deficits in time reference, wh-questions, and object pronouns, and (2) to compare the comprehension of discourse- linked elements in people with agrammatic and fluent aphasia. Three sentence-picture-matching tasks were administered to 10 agrammatic, 10 fluent aphasic, and 10 non-brain-damaged Russian speakers: (1) the Test for Assessing Reference of Time (TART) for present imperfective (reference to present) and past perfective (reference to past), (2) the Wh-Extraction Assessment Tool (WHEAT) for which- and who-subject questions, and (3) the Reflexive-Pronoun Test (RePro) for reflexive and pronominal reference. Non-brain-damaged speakers scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the aphasic participants. An overall effect of discourse-linking was found in the TART and WHEAT for the agrammatic speakers, and in all three tests for the fluent speakers. Scores on the RePro were at ceiling. The results are in line with the prediction that comprehension problems of individuals with agrammatic and fluent aphasia for sentences that contain verbs with past time reference, which-question words and pronouns, are caused by the fact that these elements involve discourse linking. The effect is not specific to agrammatism, although it may result from different underlying disorders in agrammatic and fluent aphasia.
Chapter 3 first aimed to untangle tense problems from problems with past time reference through verb morphology in people with aphasia. Time reference does not always coincide with tense; in languages such as Dutch and English, reference to the past can be established by using past tense (e.g., ‘he wrote a letter’) or a present tense auxiliary in combination with a participle, i.e., the present perfect (e.g., ‘he has written a letter’). The second aim of this chapter was to compare the production of time reference inflection by people with agrammatic and fluent aphasia. A sentence completion task was used to elicit reference to the non-past and past in Dutch. Reference to the past was tested through (1) a simple verb in past tense and (2) a verb complex with an auxiliary in present tense + participle (the present perfect). Reference to the non-past was tested through a simple verb in present tense. Fourteen agrammatic aphasic speakers, sixteen fluent aphasic speakers and twenty non-brain-damaged speakers took part in this study. Non-brain-damaged speakers scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the aphasic participants. Agrammatic speakers performed worse than fluent speakers, but the pattern of performance in both aphasic groups was similar. Reference to the past through past tense and [present tense auxiliary + participle] was more impaired than reference to the non-past. An error analysis revealed differences between the two groups. People with agrammatic and fluent aphasia experience problems with expressing reference to the past through verb inflection. This past time reference deficit is irrespective of the tense employed. The error patterns between the two groups reveal different underlying problems.
In Chapter 4, an ERP study was presented that aimed to investigate time reference in the healthy brain. If the time frame (past, present, future) is set by a temporal adverb, the verb inflection should correspond (yesterday he walked; today he walks). Temporal violations by simple verbs (single, lexical verbs inflected with tense) in the present tense and with present time reference elicit a P600 effect (Dragoy et al., 2012; Baggio, 2008). However tense does not always coincide with time reference; in languages such as Dutch and English, reference to the past can be established by using the present tense in the present perfect (e.g., ‘he has eaten the cake’). The study in Chapter 4 investigated whether the P600 effects described by Dragoy et al. and Baggio were caused by tense or time reference violations of the verb. In the context of a past adverb, ERP responses to auxiliaries in present tense with either congruent past time reference or incongruent non-past time reference were compared. The findings showed that the P600 effect for violations of the temporal context was caused by the time reference of the complete verb form, rather than by the tense.
The goal of Chapter 5 was to (1) investigate whether differences exist between non-brain-damaged individuals and agrammatic aphasic individuals in correctly processing of future and past time reference inflection, and (2) enlighten the underlying mechanism of time reference comprehension failure by agrammatic aphasic speakers. A visual-world experiment combining sentence-picture matching and eye- tracking was administered to 12 non-brain-damaged individuals and 6 agrammatic aphasic individuals, all native speakers of German. Participants heard German sentences with periphrastic future (‘will + V’) or periphrastic past (‘has + V-d’) verb forms while they were presented with pictures on a computer screen. Non-brain-damaged speakers scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the agrammatic aphasic speakers. The future condition was more difficult than the past condition for non-brain-damaged speakers (derived from response times) and agrammatic aphasic speakers (derived from response times and accuracy). However, eye movement patterns suggested a similar interpretation of future time reference in both groups, while agrammatic aphasic speakers showed a delay relative to non-brain-damaged speakers in interpretation of past time reference. The results support the PADILIH, because processing reference to the past in discourse syntax requires additional resources and, thus, is problematic and delayed for people with aphasia.
Chapter 6 concluded the dissertation with a general discussion and implications. The outcomes of the research contribute to the knowledge on the influence of discourse linking on past time reference assignment, compared to non-past time reference. This dissertation sheds light on how these types of time reference are represented in the brain, how they are processed and how they can be affected by brain damage. Individuals with agrammatic aphasia often omit or substitute (past) tense inflection. The knowledge on time reference acquired within this project adds to the understanding of the underlying deficits in aphasia, which is of importance for the development of assessment and treatment methods for individuals with aphasia. Chapter 6 concludes with some directions for further research.

This work is the first comprehensive description of Sumerian constructions involving a copula. Using around 400 fully glossed examples, it gives a thorough analysis of all uses of the copula, which is one of the least understood and most frequently misinterpreted and consequently mistranslated morphemes in Sumerian.
It starts with a concise introduction into the grammatical structure of Sumerian, followed by a study that is accessible to both linguists and sumerologists, as it applies the terminology of modern descriptive linguistics. It provides the oldest known and documented example of the path of grammaticalization that leads from a copula to a focus marker. It gives the description of Sumerian copular paratactic relative clauses, which make use of an otherwise only scarcely attested relativization strategy. At the end of the book, the reader will have a clear picture about the morphological and syntactic devices used to mark identificational, polarity and sentence focus in Sumerian, one of the oldest documented languages in the world.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) rarely produce wh-questions (e.g. “What hit the book?”) in naturalistic speech. It is unclear if this is due to social–pragmatic difficulties, or if grammatical deficits are also involved. If grammar is impaired, production of wh-questions by rote memorization might precede comprehension of similar forms. In a longitudinal study, 15 children with ASD and 18 initially language-matched typically developing (TD) toddlers were visited in their homes at 4-month intervals across a 3-year period. The wh-question task was presented via intermodal preferential looking. Silent “hitting” events (e.g. an apple hitting a flower) were followed by test trials in which the apple and flower were juxtaposed on the screen. During test trials, subject-wh- and object-wh-question audios were sequentially presented (e.g. “What hit the flower?” or ”What did the apple hit?”). Control audios were also presented (e.g. “Where's the apple/flower?”). Children's eye movements were coded off-line, frame by frame. To show reliable comprehension, children should look longer to the named item (i.e. apple or flower) during the “where” questions but less at the named item during the subject-wh and object-wh-questions. To compare comprehension to production, we coded 30-min spontaneous speech samples drawn from mother–child interactions at each visit. Results indicated that comprehension of subject- and object-wh-questions was delayed in children with ASD compared with age-matched TD children, but not when matched on overall language levels. Additionally, both groups comprehended wh-questions before producing similar forms, indicating that development occurred in a similar manner. This paper discusses the implications of our findings for language acquisition in ASD.

This thesis aims to show that there are certain universal phenomena observed among interrogative constructions of natural languages and to present consistent and simple analysis of the phenomena by examining the syntax and semantics of these constructions. The main claims are the following. First, I will argue that both overt (or SS) and covert (or LF) movement of wh-phrases are constrained by the same sets of syntactic rules. In-situ wh-phrases, which are thought to move covertly, have not been seen as subject to syntactic constraints such as the subjacency condition. On the basis of this, Huang (1981/82), among others, claims that covert movement is not subject to such syntactic constraints. I will show that this is not the case by presenting evidence for a pied-piping mechanism, which enables in-situ wh-phrases to escape violations of the subjacency condition. In this way, I will provide support for the first claim that overt and covert movement are equally conditioned. The second claim is that, contra Pesetsky's (2000) claim, the behaviour of in-situ wh-phrases does not differ from language to language. I will argue that non-D-linked in-situ wh-phrases adopt covert movement whereas D-linked in-situ wh-phrases can optionally undergo Agree. The third major claim in this thesis is that there is always one overt wh-movement per interrogative clause. This is the case even in the case of multiple-wh questions. In order to provide sufficient support for this claim, it is necessary to provide an explanation for why every wh-phrase must move in Bulgarian and other similar languages with multiple wh-questions. Following Bošković (1998), I will argue that all overt movement except wh-movement is caused by phonologically relevant focus features in the language. I will also show that the WH feature of a wh-phrase is one type of contrastive-focus phenomenon and that this phenomenon requires two distinct features: semantically relevant and phonologically relevant features. It follows that multiple overt movement of wh-phrases is necessary for languages which require movement of a phonologically focused phrase (e.g. Bulgarian) whereas a single overt movement of a wh-phrase is observed in languages without movement of focused phrases (e.g. German).

This dissertation draws on the systematic nature of restrictions on code-switching (CS) to provide evidence concerning the morphosyntactic properties of wh-questions in Spanish and English, particularly with respect to inversion. CS allows one to independently control the language of individual words, and their associated syntactic properties, and observe the effect that those properties have on a given sentence's acceptability. In this way, CS becomes a tool of linguistic analysis.

Data comes from Spanish-English CS. Both Spanish and English exhibit a phenomenon known as subject-version, in which the subject is sometimes required to appear after the verb or auxiliary, but the structural requirements vary by language and include various factors. This raises two important questions that are the focus of this dissertation: (i) what head or phrase ultimately determines the word order (i.e. the grammatical subject positions) in a given wh-question? and (ii) what are the restrictions on code-switching between the complementizer head, the tense head, and the wh-phrase?

To answer these questions, a controlled experiment was conducted in which participants provided written acceptability judgments for both CS and equivalent monolingual sentences. In response to the first question, the results of this dissertation provide evidence that the complementizer is ultimately responsible for determining the properties of inversion for a given wh-question. Regarding the second question, the results also provides evidence for restrictions on code-switching between C and T and C and the wh-phrase. In particular, it provides evidence that a code-switch between an English simple wh-phrase and a Spanish C is ungrammatical in embedded questions with a Spanish T.

Additionally, this dissertation serves as one example of an experimental approach to investigating code-switching, particularly with respect to syntactic structure. There are a variety of different concerns that need to be addressed in conducting such research, and this dissertation offers one perspective.

In conclusion, the combination of controlled experimental methods and the unique analytical potential of CS to tease apart otherwise opaque syntactic relationships makes for a valuable tool for addressing a wide range of questions in theoretical linguistics.

Interlingüísticamente las preguntas qu- de eco presentan serias dificultades para las tradicionales teorías de la sintaxis de las preguntas-qu canónicas, ya que parecen contradecir sistemáticamente las generales reglas de formación de interrogativas, manifestando, por ejemplo, el SQu in situ. En este artículo se presentan nuevos datos sobre la sintaxis de las preguntas qu- de eco en español y se ofrece un análisis que permite dar cuenta de sus principales características sintácticas.

Following (Huggard 2011) Hittite does attest wh-in-situ in that there is no obligatory wh-movement to the specifier of the highest CP projection. However, pace (Huggard 2011), Hittite wh-in situ does not involve wh-phrases in the base-generated position. It is syntactic movement out of vP to a low position within the CP layer. Wh-words merge in the same position as focus (Spec,FocP) and then optionally scramble further on to Spec,ForceP. Relative pronouns, bare existential quantifiers and subordinators merge in Spec,QP and then scramble optionally to Spec,TopP or Spec,ForceP. The feature that wh-words satiate in Spec,FocP is +focus and the feature that relative pronouns satiate in Spec,QP is +quantifier.

This paper offers a qualitative and quantitative analysis of French and Italian wh-in situ questions based on spontaneous spoken data. A pragmatic analysis relying on two parameters, propositional activation and pragmatic function, reveals that the licensing conditions and the use of this structure largely differ in the two languages. While French wh-in situ do not require an activated proposition and can introduce a discourse-new topic, Italian wh-in situ mostly require an activated proposition and, at least in the analyzed corpus data, do not introduce discourse-new topics. An examination of the contexts also reveals that the different licensing conditions influence the interactional uses of these questions. Finally, we claim that both French and Italian wh-in situ require a pragmatic condition, which is their 'anchoring' to given, or at least inferable, information in the linguistic context (as is typical of Italian) or to predictable situations in the extralinguistic context (such as expected discourse moves in social interactions, as is the case for French).

This dissertation investigates the syntactic and semantic aspects of long-distance dependency involved in Korean wh-Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Korean wh-NPIs consist of a whitem and a focus particle -to meaning ‘also’ or ‘even’. In all reported cases, the wh-item and -to appear adjacent to each other. However, the wh-item and -to can appear discontinuously when the NPI licenser is located in a different clause from the wh-NPI. I will call this new form of wh-NPIs “split wh-NPIs”. The central claims of this dissertation are the following. The first, long-distance dependency displayed in split wh-NPIs is attained via overt movement of a focus particle -to ‘also/even’ in an effort to form a local relation with an NPI licenser.
Second, -to is interpreted with its associated wh-item via point-wise semantic composition without forming a local relation at LF. These conclusions are motivated by finding two sets of new data: 1) split wh-NPIs cannot be formed across island boundaries, 2) split wh-NPIs are susceptible to focus intervention effects. This analysis has important implications for another wh-in-situ construction in Korean, wh-questions. By comparing split wh-NPIs with wh-in-situ questions, I argue that wh-in-situ questions do not involve any type of movement.

This study considers L2 French and L3 English ultimate attainment among L1 Moroccan Arabic adult learners. It contrasts the acquisition of two types of wh-questions: discourse-linked and non-discourse-linked questions in root and embedded forms. The results of two acceptability judgment tasks indicate that the advanced learners in L2 French and L3 English are nativelike on d-linked wh-questions but less accurate on non-discourse-linked interrogatives. They successfully unlearn resumption as an L1 strategy to form discourse-linked questions. Therefore, contra the prediction of the Interface Hypothesis, discourse-linking is acquirable though it is a property of the syntax-discourse interface. It does not pose more learning difficulty than quantification (formal wh-feature) of narrow syntax. The study indicates that embedding and thereby the processing cognitive load are the deterministic variables, not the language domain of constructions.

This chapter explores the applicability of the pragmeme framework (Mey 2001, Capone 2005, Allan 2010) to sociolinguistic interviews. It presents an analysis in terms of frequency of speakers' answers to the same sequence of questions –specifically, polar ques-tions– in a set of interviews in Spanish. The results show that, rather than a single polar element, most of the interviewees give an expanded polar answer, although the place of this expansion and the very presence or absence of an initial polar element may vary. The paper argues that the " expanded polar answer " is an interactional pragmeme with a dyadic nature. Due to the conventional common scene (Rancière 1995, in Mey 2001) of the interview itself, the pragmeme is made relevant by the requirements of the situation, where the interviewee is supposed to provide information. It presents four allopracts more or less central in the category according to the presence of certain formal elements.

This paper attempts to investigate word order and verbal movement in Moroccan Arabic in the Minimalist framework. We observe that the unmarked word order in MA is SVO while the derived structure is VSO. SVO follows an English-like derivation where the subject moves from [Spec, vP] to [Spec, TP] whilst the verb moves from v to T. This paper raises the issue of the verbal movement when it comes to VSO order in languages that have VSO as the derived order and SVO as the underlying order. To derive VSO, we propose that the verb moves from T to Focus based on pragmatic reasons: verbs positioned in the left-periphery denote new information that is focused compared to SVO. We also test our new proposal against the marginal word orders OSV and OVS and propose that object topicalization is the result of the object moving to [Spec, TopicP] which dominates FocusP. Moreover, we go back to the issue of verbal movement and trace the verbal cyclic movement. We argue that the verb moves from V to v based on the position of the adverb. The verb further moves to T based on the quantifier evidence and feature checking: Focus and T form a complex and probe into v to check [TNS] and [V] features. Moreover, T-to-Focus occurs in wh-constructions except when /lli/ 'that' is present. In WH-VO (WH as a wh-subject), the verb stays in T while the wh-subject stays in [Spec, TP]. If /lli/ 'that' is present, then the wh-subject is forced to move further to [Spec, FocusP]. In WH-SV, the wh-elements move to [Spec, FocusP] while the subject moves to [Spec, TopicP] and the verb moves to Topic. In WH-VS, the wh-elements move to [Spec, FocusP] while the verb moves to Focus.

The purpose of this study is twofold: while (i) describing embedded content questions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD), (ii) it aims to explain why and how TİD distinguishes between wh-complements embedded under different types of verbs. Embedded questions comprise a broad area of research in any language. This study, however, will give the center stage to the description of the syntactic and prosodic properties of wh-complements embedded under two semantically distinct environments: verbs of retaining knowledge such as know, remember and forget, and inquisitive verbs such as ask, wonder and investigate (Karttunen 1977), while discussing the theoretical implications of the differences. Two central findings of my inquiry are that (i) the syntactic distribution of wh-items in embedded content questions differs from the syntactic distribution of wh-items in simplex questions (for the latter see Makaroğlu 2012, İşsever & Makaroğlu 2013, and Göksel & Kelepir 2013), and (ii) the relationship that holds between an inquisitive verb and its wh-complement is not the same as the relationship between a verb of retaining knowledge and its wh-complement. This will become apparent by two crucial findings: (a) the presence of a specific non-manual marker in the former verb type, associated with the clause-typing of content questions in TİD (Göksel & Kelepir 2013), as opposed to the absence of it in the latter, and (b) the preferred position of wh-complements with respect to different types of matrix verbs. After a thorough examination, we shall see that both complement types obey the same embedded clause-internal syntactic restrictions while they differ from each other with respect to their position in the matrix clause and their prosodic properties. Although throughout the literature there is a tendency to study the [+wh] complements of all types of embedding verbs uniformly, this study highlights the necessity to further classify these wh-complements depending on the type of the matrix verb that they are embedded under.

This paper addresses partial wh-movement in Shona ([sna], Bantu, Zimbabwe), which is sensitive to islands below but not above the pronunciation site of the wh-phrase. This contrasts with partial wh-movement in languages such as Kîîtharaka (Muriungi 2003, Abels 2012) and Singaporean Malay (Cole & Hermon 1998), which is sensitive to islands both below and above the pronunciation site. I argue for a composite derivation of the Shona phenomenon: the wh-phrase moves overtly to its pronunciation site at an intermediate clause boundary, where it is unselectively bound by a null operator in the scopal position.

I show that in Shona partial wh-movement, the relation between the wh-phrase's base position and its pronunciation site patterns like full wh-movement in terms of island sensitivity, cleft structure, extraction marking, and reconstruction effects. On the other hand, the relation between the wh-phrase's pronunciation site and its scopal position displays the same lack of island sensitivity and lack of extraction marking exhibited by wh-in-situ in this language. Thus, Shona partial wh-movement can be reduced to a hybrid of full wh-movement and wh-in-situ. This composite derivation has been predicted to be possible (Sabel 2000, Abels 2012), but clear empirical support for it has been lacking until now.

This paper argues that a particle, de, in Sinhala marks what is to be pied-piped in wh-questions, and Japanese has a phonologically nulll counterpart too. Moreover, it show that pied-piping of the matrix clause can be possible under certain circumstances such as how many/much questions.

In this paper I describe the grammatical markers and relevant lexical elements used in different types of interrogative sentences in Bashkir, and their distribution.
I discuss polar and alternative questions in Bashkir, which both involve a special interrogative particle =mE, and their intonation patterns, and review the non-interrogative uses of the particle =mE. I discuss content questions (“wh questions”), including the inventory of interrogative words, their position, and the intonation patterns used in such questions. I review the attested peripheral markers used in interrogative sentences, i. e. tag-like and particle-like markers, which are mostly used in biased questions. Finally, I discuss the expression of some special types of questions, including non-standard illocutionary types (“deliberative”, permissive, and hortative), echo questions, and embedded questions.

In this talk I would like to discuss the third type of wh-questions in English and Japanese, quiz questions, which have so far received little attention in the literature, and will claim that the origins of quiz questions are different in English and Japanese: English has derived quiz questions from its echo questions whereas Japanese has inherited the same Q feature from its ordinary type of wh-questions.

This dissertation strives to explain certain long-standing issues in Mandarin questions within a new framework, i.e. the Alternative Semantics theory, and also to bring in hitherto unnoticed new data.
Part I of the dissertation examines argument wh-questions. Starting from Tsai’s (1999) Lexical Courtesy Hypothesis, according to which wh-movement in general should be avoided if possible, I present an analysis of Mandarin wh-in-situ within the framework of Alternative Semantics (Rooth 1985, Shimoyama 2001) which does not resort to LF movement or unselective binding. Furthermore I propose that the scope marking of questions in this theory is achieved by focus intonation. Experimental phonetic data are provided to support this important new claim. I also apply this new theory to polarity, A-not-A and alternative questions in Mandarin, showing that they are formed by syntactic specification of a set of alternatives on different levels respectively. The Alternative Semantics analysis is further extended to wh-existential and wh-universal constructions. I show that existential closure can be applied either locally or non-locally as a consequence of the compositional semantics in the wh-existential constructions. In the universal construction “mei…dou” (“every…all”), the long-standing problem of double-distributivity is accounted for by universal concord in the sense of Kratzer (2006)
Part II examines “how” and “why” questions using event semantics. Data from Mandarin show that there is an event singularity presupposition in manner “how” and causal “why” questions, and this presupposition leads to a singleton set when the true answers are considered. This explains such cross-linguistic puzzles as the distribution of the exhaustivity marker “all” in wh-questions and the lack of quantificational variability effect in embedded manner and causal questions. I also propose an analysis of verbal “how” questions in Mandarin (e.g. Yuehan zenme-le Mali? literally “John how-ed Mary?”). The verbal “how” is treated as a ditransitive verbal variable in the lexicon, and it can account for the three special constraints on the use of such verbal “how” questions, i.e. the malefactivity reading, incompatibility with negation, and lack of a ditransitive use.
I also propose a new typology of wh-questions based on the parameters of the interpretational variability of wh-pronouns and scope marking strategies.

Beginning with Geis (1970), several authors have provided syntactic, semantic, and etymological arguments for a derivation of adverbial (subordinate) clauses that involves movement of an (often null) operator (see Haegeman 2010a for a review). This paper provides morphological evidence for this view while arguing for separate extraction sites for the moved elements in temporal and conditional clauses.

The Bantu language Akɔɔse (Hedinger 2008) exhibits wh-agreement (see Reintges, LeSourd, & Chung 2006 for a typology); that is, it marks its verbs with respect to whether an element has been extracted to the left periphery. The extraction of subjects is marked differently on the verb than the extraction of non-subjects. This extraction marking occurs not only in canonical wh-movement contexts (Chomsky 1977), such as constituent questions, relative clauses, cleft questions, and topicalization, but also in temporal and conditional adverbial clauses. Verbs in central temporal clauses take the non-subject extraction morphology, while verbs in central conditional clauses show the morphology found in subject extraction contexts.

This paper offers a syntactic account for the patterns in Akɔɔse wh-agreement morphology and uses this account to refine our knowledge of the extraction sites for the operators in central temporal and conditional clauses, as well as to argue that peripheral adverbial clauses do not involve extraction (supporting Haegeman 2007).

We argue that Abaza, a polysynthetic language from the Northwest Caucasian family, exhibits a syntax-semantics mapping that has not been observed in any other languages before. We show that Abaza lacks wh-words and, as a consequence, matrix and embedded wh  interrogative clauses, and conveys direct and indirect content question meaning by means of headless relative clauses. We propose a compositional semantic analysis of these headless relative clauses that assigns them the same meaning as concealed question DPs, i.e. individual concepts. When occurring as matrix clauses and conveying direct question meaning, these headless relative clauses require the relative verbal form to contain a clause typing affix from a specific set. We show that these affixes cannot be analyzed as “incorporated” or “cliticized” wh-words, but rather as operators turning individual concepts into questions,i.e., sets of propositions.

Semantics of Chinese Questions: An Interface Approach is the first major study of Chinese questions, especially wh-questions, within the framework of Alternative Semantics. It takes an interface approach to study the syntax, semantics and phonology of questions and proposes a phonological scope-marking strategy in Chinese questions, based upon experimental data. It also incorporates historical linguistic data regarding the grammaticalization of sentence-final particles such as –ne and –ma to study the formal diachronic semantics of questions. Primarily suitable for scholars in the field of Chinese linguistics, this book makes new theoretical contributions to the study of questions.

Beginning with Geis (1970), several authors have provided syntactic, semantic, and etymological arguments for a derivation of adverbial (subordinate) clauses that involves movement of an (often null) operator (see Haegeman 2010a for a review). This paper provides morphological evidence for this view while arguing for separate extraction sites for the moved elements in temporal and conditional clauses.

The Bantu language Akɔɔse (Hedinger 2008) exhibits wh-agreement (see Reintges, LeSourd, & Chung 2006 for a typology); that is, it marks its verbs with respect to whether an element has been extracted to the left periphery. This extraction marking occurs not only in canonical wh-movement contexts (Chomsky 1977), such as constituent questions, relative clauses, cleft questions, and topicalization, but also in temporal and conditional adverbial clauses.

Crucially, Akɔɔse wh-agreement encodes whether the extracted element originated above or below v. The distribution of wh-agreement morphology shows that the operator in central conditional clauses is extracted from a position above v (supporting Haegeman's (2010b) claim), the moved element in central temporal clauses originates below v (contra suggestions by Demirdache & Uribe-Extebarria (2004) and Haegeman (2007)), and there is no extraction in peripheral adverbial clauses (as argued in Haegeman 2007).

Wh-agreement provides compelling evidence for a movement analysis for both temporal and conditional central adverbial clauses. Due to its sensitivity to height of extraction, Akɔɔse lends insight into the question of where the moved elements originate, unlike languages like Irish (McCloskey 2001) where wh-agreement only registers the presence of movement.

Preschool children acquiring English and Brazilian Portuguese display a peculiar behavior when prompted to produce multi-clause wh-questions. In elicited production tasks, structures with an extra wh-element in medial position are sometimes produced. Such medial questions are impossible in the adult languages being acquired. Following a hypothesis put forth by Grolla & Lidz (2018), we propose that children's productions are not generated by children's grammar, but reflect difficulties of their developing cognitive system. More specifically, we propose that children's more limited inhibition control capacity leads them to pronounce elements with high activation levels in wrong places of the structure. Experimental data on both languages are provided which corroborate this claim. These data show that children with more limited inhibition control capacity are more likely to produce medial wh-questions.