The periphery of vP in the theory of wh-in situ

This article outlines an implementation of Cable’s (2010) Grammar of Q that takes into account the role played by the periphery of vP, hitherto unexplored in this framework. Empirically, what I offer is a new example, in a new language family, of a known manifestation of wh-in situ: I indeed argue that Trevisan, a Northern Italian dialect, displays compulsory clause-internal focus movement of both wh-elements and contrastive foci. Theoretically, I use the Trevisan data to present a new, tweaked application of previously proposed approaches whereby wh-elements do not contribute to clause-typing and Q-particles are cross-linguistically needed in the computation of answer-seeking wh-questions. My claim is that wh-in situ languages are characterised not only by language-specific choices between projection and adjunction of Q and overt vs covert movement of Q, but also in terms of the loci where the features relevant to wh-questions, [q] and [focus], are checked: while some languages check both in C (‘feature bundling’), others make use of the clause-internal vP-periphery to check [focus] (‘feature scattering’). The theory developed in this article provides an innovative understanding of the mechanisms involved in Northern Italian wh-in situ: what it offers is a novel, economic understanding of the morphosyntax of this question-formation strategy that reduces all core properties to different combinations of the setting of simple, universal micro-parameters related to interrogative wh-movement.

Focus Position for Stripping Remnant

The current paper examines the syntactic properties of HA stripping: a type of ellipsis. Within the Minimalist framework, the paper adopts the PF-Deletion approach to show that stripping in HA is derived firstly by the movement of the remnant constituent from TP to Focus Position (FP), and, secondly, by the deletion of the TP. These two operations are licensed by the Ellipsis feature (E) located in the focus head F°. Thus, on the one hand, the paper contributes to the existing body of literature supporting the hotly-debated issues on the movement of the stripping remnants, and on the other, enriches the very minimal HA studies on ellipsis. The findings show that HA stripped constituents must move to Spec, FP, before the TP- deletion process. Two pieces of evidence in support of the focus movement to FP spring from Island sensitivity and p-stranding facts in HA.

Object Cliticization in Standard Arabic

<p>Unlike displaced lexical DP objects in Standard Arabic (SA) syntax, displaced pronominal objects, however, have received less critical attention especially within Rizzi’s (1997, 2004) left periphery theory and, therefore, some areas of this constructions remain poorly understood. The present paper examines pronominal object cliticization in SA, the status of the clitic, the derivation of the process and the reasons behind its obligatory movement. The analysis is couched within Minimalist Syntax (Chomsky 2001, 2005) and Split CP (Rizzi, 1997, 2004) to explain the motivation for this movement and its landing site. To achieve the aim of the study, a questionnaire containing samples of the studied structures were presented to five native speakers of Arabic who were asked to provide grammaticality judgments. It is suggested that, in this context, the object clitic can be analyzed as undergoing focus movement as a separate verbal complement like a full DP with an additional cliticization process to the head T hosting the lexical verb. </p>

Object Cliticization in Standard Arabic

<p>Unlike displaced lexical DP objects in Standard Arabic (SA) syntax, displaced pronominal objects, however, have received less critical attention especially within Rizzi’s (1997, 2004) left periphery theory and, therefore, some areas of this constructions remain poorly understood. The present paper examines pronominal object cliticization in SA, the status of the clitic, the derivation of the process and the reasons behind its obligatory movement. The analysis is couched within Minimalist Syntax (Chomsky 2001, 2005) and Split CP (Rizzi, 1997, 2004) to explain the motivation for this movement and its landing site. To achieve the aim of the study, a questionnaire containing samples of the studied structures were presented to five native speakers of Arabic who were asked to provide grammaticality judgments. It is suggested that, in this context, the object clitic can be analyzed as undergoing focus movement as a separate verbal complement like a full DP with an additional cliticization process to the head T hosting the lexical verb. </p>

Against Tanglewood by Focus Movement: A Reply to Erlewine and Kotek 2018

We reply to Erlewine and Kotek’s (2018) claim that the phenomenon of covariation under focus ( Tanglewood sentences; Kratzer 1991 ) is subject to syntactic islands and that it should therefore be handled by a focus movement theory (contra Kratzer’s view). We present novel data that are at odds with Erlewine and Kotek’s conclusions and demonstrate the necessity of an island-insensitive mechanism to capture focus covariation. We revisit Erlewine and Kotek’s main arguments against such a system and show that they are systematically confounded. Moreover, removing the confounds cancels the force of the arguments, corroborating the central point of this article.

The Structure of Split Questions in Mandarin Chinese

This article proposes a pro analysis for split questions (SQs) in Chinese, dissimilar to the biclausal account employing focus movement and deletion in Arregi 2010 and the one employing the silent head in Kayne 2015 and Tang 2015. SQ consists of a wh-clause and a tag clause. We argue that the entire SQ is an information/confirmation-seeking question, represented by a Speech Act Phrase (SAP)-shell structure (Speas and Tenny 2003; Oguro 2017, etc.) with wh-clause in its specifier and the tag in its complement. The tag of Chinese SQ is a base-generated clause, [pro (copula) tag ma/ne], composed of an empty subject pro, an optional copula, a tag, and a final particle, instead of being derived from a fully-fledged structure parallel to the wh-part akin to those of English and Spanish SQs. Such a pro analysis overcomes difficulties encountered in the other accounts regarding the distribution of the final particles and their clause-typing, the optionality of the copula, the ubiquitous uses of tag, the connectivity effects, and the island-insensitivity. Analytically, two seeming variants of SQ imply that the derivation of an SQ depends on whether its tag moves and whether a copula exists.

Focus Association by Movement: Evidence from Tanglewood

We argue for the existence of covert focus movement in English focus association with only. Our evidence comes from Tanglewood configurations of the form in Kratzer 1991 . We show that Tanglewood configurations are sensitive to syntactic islands, contrary to Kratzer’s claims and predictions. We propose that Tanglewood configurations always involve covert movement of the focused constituent—possibly with covert pied-piping—to bind a bound variable in the ellipsis site. This availability of covert pied-piping explains examples such as Kratzer’s where the Tanglewood construction appears to be island-insensitive. We show that covert focus movement is long-distance and not simply Quantifier Raising. Kratzer’s proposal that ellipsis enforces the identity of focus indices and several other previous approaches are shown to overgenerate Tanglewood readings.