Intervention Effects follow from Scope Rigidity in Turkish

Intervention effects in Turkish wh-questions can be obviated by the overt movement of the wh-phrase past the intervener. This cross-linguistically robust method of intervention obviation raises an important question: what is it that bans the covert movement of the wh-phrase? I argue that this question finds a natural answer in Scope Rigidity, a general restriction on the availability of inverse scope. Importantly, including wh-phrases in the domain of Scope Rigidity calls for a scopal account of wh-phrases. I argue that this general approach has welcome consequences in explaining the source of intervention effects and in predicting what can intervene, and can even accommodate how extraction islands containing wh-phrases behave in intervention configurations.