Wh-adjuncts, Left Periphery, and Wh-in-situ

2014 ◽  
pp. 401-428
Author(s):  
Masao Ochi
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery

Documenting the Ikpana interrogative system

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-100
Author(s):  
Jason Kandybowicz ◽  
Bertille Baron Obi ◽  
Philip T. Duncan ◽  
Hironori Katsuda
Keyword(s):  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Southeastern Part ◽  
Endangered Language ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Volta Region ◽  
Movement Asymmetry ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Abstract This article provides a comprehensive treatment of the interrogative system of Ikpana (ISO 639-3: lgq), an endangered language spoken in the southeastern part of Ghana’s Volta region. The article features a description and analysis of both the morphosyntax and intonation of questions in the language. Polar questions in Ikpana are associated with dedicated prosodic patterns and may be segmentally marked. As for wh- interrogatives, Ikpana allows for optional wh- movement. Interrogative expressions may appear clause-internally in their base-generated positions or in the left periphery followed by one of two optionally droppable particles with distinct syntactic properties. In this way, wh- movement structures are either focus-marked constructions or cleft structures depending on the accompanying particle. We identify an interesting wh- movement asymmetry – unlike all other wh- movement structures, ‘how’ questions may not be formed via the focus-marked or cleft strategy. We document a number of other attested wh- structures in the language, including long-distance wh- movement, partial wh- movement, long-distance wh- in-situ, and multiple wh- questions. We argue that by allowing our documentation efforts to be shaped and guided by theoretically driven research questions, we reach deeper levels of description than would have been possible if approached from a purely descriptive-documentary perspective.

scholarly journals LEFT BRANCH EXTRACTION OUT OF THE DETERMINER PHRASE IN SAUDI NORTHERN REGION DIALECT OF ARABIC: A NEW PERSPECTIVE

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Khalaf M.J. AlShammiry
Keyword(s):  
Northern Region ◽  
The Other ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Determiner Phrase ◽  
Base Position ◽  
Left Branch ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Perspective

To my knowledge, Left Branch Extraction (LBE) out of the Determiner Phrase (DP) is not previously attested in Modern Standard Arabic ( MSA) or any of the Arabic dialects. In Saudi Northern Region dialect of Arabic (SNRDA), the wh-degree question kam “how many/much” can appear at the left periphery of the clause leaving the noun and other postnominal modifiers in the base position, in both the subject and the object positions. In this paper, I will argue for a new perspective for the syntactic phenomenon LBE in which the extracted element is a full DP, not part of a DP as previous studies assume, that moves leaving the other DP in situ. That is to say, I will argue that there are two DPs in the argument position; one of those two DPs is the numeral and the other is all that comes after the numeral including the overt noun and its postnominal modifiers. It is only the wh-item kam “how many/how much”, which moves to the left periphery of the clause. My argument is supported, besides other things, by morpho-syntactic similarities between the numeral and the noun, for example both participating in topic and focus constructions and both use of pro-clitic h- and the use of the definite article al- “the” with other pre-nominal modifier like the quantifier kil “all” and baadh “some. This paper is unique in that it provides a new perspective on LBE in a dialect of Arabic which is rarely discussed.

Clause Structure Folding and the “Wh-in-Situ Effect”

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Moro
Keyword(s):  
Structural Property ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Remnant Movement ◽  
Locality Conditions

Why must a coordinative head show up before an adverbial wh-phrase in situ in Italian? In this article, I explore this rather neglected fact, showing that it reveals an otherwise hidden structure. More specifically, I propose that the coordinative head does not directly merge with the wh-phrase it precedes; rather, it takes a full clausal complement, inducing remnant movement and stranding of the highest wh-phrase. This configuration yields the observed word order and explains many properties of these constructions by means of independent locality conditions. I argue that it is a rescue strategy languages may adopt to meet a structural property of the left periphery, and I address some questions that the comparative perspective raises.

On narrow focus in situ and ex situ in German and English

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Breul
Keyword(s):  
Ex Situ ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Narrow Focus

AbstractThis paper argues, against the position recently advocated by Fanselow & Lenertová (2011), that German has a functional phrase (FocP) in the clausal left periphery whose specifier position is dedicated to hosting a focus expression. It provides novel evidence that two sentences that are minimally different in that one has an

Eppur si muove!

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 147-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Munaro ◽  
Cecilia Poletto ◽  
Jean-Yves Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
The Other ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Comparative Syntax ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Town

This article offers a comparative syntax approach to wh-questions in French and Bellunese, a Northern Italian dialect spoken in the town of Belluno. A striking difference between the two languages, otherwise very closely related, lies in the fact that bare wh-words in root questions, which display obligatory subject clitic inversion (SCLI), must appear at the right edge of the sentence in Bellunese. In French on the other hand apparent in situ structures ban SCLI and do not accept que in sharp contrast with Bellunese. To make sense of these data we suggest that despite appearances wh-words in Bellunese do move to the left periphery, just as they must in French SCLI structures. This in turn requires that the remaining IP also move to the left periphery which should then be “highly split”. The minimal parameter distinguishing French and Bellunese, we claim, lies in the existence of a class of non assertive clitics in Bellunese, which have turned into interrogative markers. Their absence in French triggers obligatory wh-movement to a high operator position at the left edge of the CP domain. In this light it is suggested that French wh in situ questions also involves invisible remnant IP movement and wh movement to a truncated left periphery.

scholarly journals Marking Mirativity in Syntax: Minimalsit Mechanisms

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Murdhy Rada Alshamari ◽  
Manal Saleh Alghannam
Keyword(s):  
Structural Feature ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Najdi Arabic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pf Interface ◽  
Discourse Particle

This paper offers a generative minimalist investigation to the derivation and interpretation of mirativity information in Central Najdi Arabic (CNA), arguing that grammar of CNA morphologically marks mirativity in syntax by means of the discourse particle wara. Implementing minimalist mechanisms (Chomsky 2001), it is shown that wara instantiates a functional, discoursal projection MrvP in the left periphery of the sentence, articulating the feature [Mrv] at the PF-interface. LF-interface analyses demonstrate that [Mrv] on wara is interpretable/valued, while the counterpart on the subject DP that wara marks is uninterpretable/unvalued. Agree between wara and the subject DP creates a PF-chain wara>SubjectClitic>SubjectDP that results in the subject DP being marked with and interpreted mirativity at LF-interface. Further explorations show that movement of the subject DP across wara is only legitimised if the subject DP has a discourse, information structural feature beyond [Mrv]. Evidence for this claim comes from the fact that when wara marks the subject DP with mirativity, the subject DP remains in situ. Thus, on minimalist empirical groundings, movement is argued to be motivated by interpretive reasons beyond mirativity. Further analyses show that Agree between wara and subject is of mutual manner; wara u-[φ]-probes the subject goal, while the goal seeks valuation of u-[Mrv] on it (Alshamari 2017).

scholarly journals Clausal ellipsis

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Hans Broekhuis ◽  
Josef Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Two Alternatives

Abstract This article compares two alternatives to the standard movement-and-deletion approach to clausal ellipsis, which postulates deletion of TP after the remnants of ellipsis are (sometimes exceptionally) A′-moved into the left periphery of the clause. One alternative is the in-situ approach, which denies the involvement of movement in the derivation of clausal ellipsis; it claims that clausal ellipsis can apply to any run-of-the-mill syntactic structure and simply deletes the familiar/given information from the propositional domain of the clause. Another alternative is the selective spell-out approach; it denies the involvement of deletion and states that the remnants undergo regular A′-movement into the specifiers of specific semantically relevant functional projections (CP, FocusP, NegP, etc.), which are subsequently selected for spell-out. This article argues that the selective spell-out approach is superior to the two deletion approaches.

Remnant movement and smuggling in some romance interrogative clauses

2020 ◽  
pp. 255-317
Author(s):  
Cecilia Poletto ◽  
Jean-Yves Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Result ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Morphological Properties ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Remnant Movement ◽  
Free Relative ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Italian Dialects

This chapter analyzes the syntax of interrogative clauses in French and in some Northern Italian dialects (NIDs), including so-called “wh-in-situ” configurations. It shows that their intricate properties can be derived from standard computations (“wh-movement” and remnant movement of vP/IP to a Top/ground slot) to either the vP Left periphery (“LLP”) or the CP domain (“HLP”). If so, it becomes necessary to raise the question of why some languages make use of the LLP or the HLP, or indeed both, like French, as argued in sections 2–7. In significant cases the morphological properties of the various Wh-words and the surface forms of the sentences provide all the clues required by the language learner and the linguist. In French, movement of interrogative pronouns to the HLP is actually movement to a free relative layer. This is an automatic consequence of the fact that, as in Germanic, most French and Romance wh-items are morphologically both (free) relative and interrogative pronouns. This will explain the distribution of French Quoi (what)—only an interrogative pronoun—and similar items in a number of NIDs (Che in Bellunese and Illasi, Què in Borgomanerese and Monese). In the same vein, sections 9–11 show that the fact that French Que is both an interrogative and relative element, in addition to being a clitic qua interrogative, will account for its properties in conjunction with a “smuggling” analysis of Subject Clitic Inversion (SCLI). Sections 14–16 show that many NIDs make use of both the LLP and the HLP and that smuggling is involved in deriving the form and interpretation of interrogative clauses in Bellunese, Illasi, and Monese. In addition to renewed empirical arguments in favor of remnant movement and smuggling, sections 2–7 argue that embedded interrogative infinitives in (at least) French are vPs and only have a (sometimes truncated) LLP. In addition to the fruitfulness of the “smuggling” idea for Romance, the main theoretical result of this chapter is that the interrogative syntax of the languages and dialects studied here supports the idea that “relative constructions” or “interrogative constructions” are not primitives of the language faculty, since in significant cases the derivation of questions activates both the interrogative side of the LLP and the (free) relative side of the HLP.

scholarly journals Focus in Italian echo wh-questions: An analysis at syntax-prosody interface

Probus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Badan ◽  
Claudia Crocco
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
General Level ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Focus Projection

Abstract In this article, we propose an analysis of the so-called echo wh-questions in situ in Italian at syntax–prosody interface. We conduct a prosodic analysis under an experimental approach, showing that a focalized wh-word in echo wh-questions shows its own peculiar properties, different from informative and corrective focus, so that we can analyze it as an instance of Mirative focus. We demonstrate that the wh-word in echo wh-questions occupies a focus position in the low periphery of the clause. We also argue that this position has syntactic properties that, interlaced together with the prosodic properties, lead us to define the projection as a dedicated focus projection for Mirative focus. Crucially, the focus position within the low periphery activated in an echo wh-question, has different syntactic, prosodic and interpretive properties with respect to the informational focus, and to the corrective focus. Therefore, at a general level, our analysis strengthens the idea that partly different intonations and interpretations are associated to positions within the low periphery as opposed to the positions in the left periphery.

Wh-questions in child L2 French: Derivational complexity and its interactions with L1 properties, length of exposure, age of exposure, and the input

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Prévost ◽  
Nelleke Strik ◽  
Laurie Tuller
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Exposure Age ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
L1 English

This study investigates how derivational complexity interacts with first language (L1) properties, second language (L2) input, age of first exposure to the target language, and length of exposure in child L2 acquisition. We compared elicited production of wh-questions in French in two groups of 15 participants each, one with L1 English (mean age 8 years 10 months or 8;10) and one with L1 Dutch (mean age 6;3), which were further subdivided into subgroups matched for the different variables under examination. Although in their L1s wh-questions display wh-movement and subject–verb/aux inversion, the learners did not perform similarly. A high number of wh-in-situ questions (i.e. the least complex option) was produced by the L1-English children, suggesting that derivational complexity can override L1 influence. In the L1-Dutch group, questions with overt wh-movement were more frequent. This may stem from the influence of generalized XP-movement to the left periphery in Dutch. Inversion (i.e. the most complex option) was rare in both groups and was related to contact with formal schooling. These results hold across the different subgroups, which suggests not only that complexity plays a role in child L2 acquisition, but also that its effects may differ according to the properties of the L1.

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