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.

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.

Against some approaches to long-distance agreement without AGREE

With the introduction of AGREE into Minimalism by Chomsky (2000), the relationship between the two elements in an agreement relationship went from being strictly local (Specifier-Head) to being unbounded (c-command with no intervening strong phase boundary) in order to accommodate long-distance agreement phenomena. Concern over the less restricted nature of the new approach led researchers to propose alternatives that eschewed the unbounded reach of AGREE , in the hope that a more restrictive theory might yet be salvaged. This paper scrutinizes some of the most widely cited and fully developed of these alternative proposals (employing predicate inversion of expletives, restructuring, covert movement), applied to extensively studied spheres of data (English existentials, Icelandic agreement), and concludes that they are deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed. While Chomsky’s version of AGREE is far from providing a complete and satisfactory theory of agreement, it has yet to be shown that it can be eliminated.

Dative antecedents for reflexives and pronouns

This paper aims to advance a comprehensive theory of binding, which can account for all binding patterns found in Polish, some of which are particularly puzzling for traditional and novel formulations of Binding Theory. Namely, Polish reflexive pronouns/possessives are typically (nominative) subject oriented but they can also have dative Object Experiencers, OEs, as antecedents. Yet, OEs are also appropriate local antecedents for pronominal possessives. Our analysis explains the complementarity of pronouns and reflexives and lack thereof by assuming that the Spell-out form of the reflexive/pronoun is determined by its covert movement, while a binding dependency is established via Agree for [var(iable):_] feature.

Covert movement in English probing wh-questions

Besides fronted information-seeking questions, English also allows for two types of wh-in-situ ones: echo questions, which are used to request a repetition or a clarification of a previous utterance, and probing questions, which are often used in quiz shows, classroom settings, and child-directed speech to “prompt” the addressee for an answer. An acceptability judgment task shows that PQs with multiple wh-phrases get a significantly lower acceptability score than echo questions with multiple wh-phrases despite their similarity in surface structure, which suggests a syntactic difference below the surface. Independent syntactic evidence confirms the result and further suggests that while echo questions involve no syntactic movement (Dayal, 1996), probing questions involve covert wh-movement.

Reducing Long-Distance Binding to Logophoric Exemption

This chapter re-examines the hypothesis that some anaphors can be long-distance bound independently of their discursive conditions. All analyses of long-distance anaphora, whether they assume binding domain parameterization or covert movement, rely on the existence of a specific type of anaphors that can be bound out of the Condition A domain and are further characterized by monomorphemicity, subject orientation, sloppy readings, and blocking effects. The goal of this chapter is to question this empirical claim and examine the hypothesis that such purported long-distance anaphors can in fact be reduced to exempt anaphors subject to logophoric conditions. Some tests are proposed and applied to Icelandic sig, Mandarin ziji, French soi, and Norwegian seg/sin using online questionnaires. The results suggest that the hypothesis that long-distance binding should be eliminated from the theory and reduced to logophoric exemption is viable—pending further cross-linguistic studies.

Antecedent-Contained Deletion

This chapter introduces the linguistic phenomenon of Antecedent-Contained Deletion (ACD): a type of construction in which a site of Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) is contained in the antecedent from which it derives its interpretation. The chapter reviews theoretical approaches to resolving interpretation in ACD structures (drawing primarily on the covert movement operation of Quantifier Raising (QR)), and the accessibility of one or more sentential interpretations when the site of ellipsis is embedded in non-finite and finite clauses. Behavioural responses from offline judgement studies with children and adults, as well as online studies with adults, provide data bearing directly on these theoretical accounts.