Chapter published in:
Syntactic Geolectal Variation: Traditional approaches, current challenges and new tools
Edited by Alba Cerrudo, Ángel J. Gallego and Francesc Roca Urgell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 34] 2021
► pp. 263–294

Chapter 9
On the role of prosody in wh-in-situ

Cross-linguistic comparison and experimental evidence from Basque

| CNRS-IKER
| CNRS-IKER

A growing number of works propose a direct role of PF in the generation of wh-in-situ. Relying mainly on data from Basque, we critically evaluate two such proposals (Richards, 2010; Mathieu, 2016) and argue that they face a range of empirical and conceptual shortcomings. We contrast these with the more “syntactocentric” proposal of Cheng & Rooryck (2000) for French, based on an intonational Q-morpheme that surfaces as a final rise in polar and wh-in-situ questions. We report the outcome of a production experiment providing evidence that the final rises of polar and wh-in-situ questions in Navarro-Labourdin Basque do not differ substantially, thus suggesting that Cheng & Rooryck’s (2000) proposal may be extended to this variety cohabiting with French.

Keywords: wh-in-situ, wh-movement, prosody, variation, Basque
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Basque interrogative strategies: The emergence of wh-in-situ
    • 2.1Interrogatives in Basque
    • 2.2The new wh-in-situ strategy of Navarro-Labourdin Basque
  • 3.Interface approaches to wh-in-situ
    • 3.1 Cheng & Rooryck (2000) : An intonation morpheme licensing wh-in-situ and yes/no questions
    • 3.2Richards (2010, 2016)
    • 3.3 Mathieu (2016)
  • 4.Problems with prosody-based analyses
    • 4.1Stress patterns and interrogative strategies
    • 4.2Prosodic phrasing and interrogative strategies
  • 5.Assessing the prosodic patterns of interrogatives in Basque: An experiment
    • 5.1Extending Cheng & Rooryck’s (2000) analysis to Basque
    • 5.2The experiment
      • 5.2.1The questionnaire
      • 5.2.2Measurements
      • 5.2.3Results
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.34.09dug
References
Altube, S.
(1920) De sintaxis euskérika. Donostia: Martin Mena y Cía.Google Scholar
Arregi, K.
(2002) Focus on Basque movements (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Artiagoitia, X.
(2000) Hatsarreak eta Parametroak Lantzen. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Arabako Foru Aldundia.Google Scholar
Aurrekoetxea, G., Gaminde, I., & Iglesias, A.
(2011) Corpus based prosodic variation in Basque: Y/N questions marked with the particle al . Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XX, 11–31.Google Scholar
Beckman, M. E., & Pierrehumbert, J. B.
(1986) Intonational structure in Japanese and English. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 255–309. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Y., & Gussenhoven, C.
(2008) Emphasis and tonal implementation in Standard Chinese. Journal of Phonetics, 36, 724–746. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, L. L-S.
(1991) On the typology of wh-questions (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Cheng, L. L-S., & Downing, L. J.
(2011) Mapping phonology to syntax: Evidence from two wh-in-situ languages. Paper presented at GLOW 34, University of Vienna.
Cheng, L. L.-S., & Rooryck, J.
(2000) Licensing wh-in-situ. Syntax, 3(1), 1–19. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N.
(1995) The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cole, P., & Hermon, G.
(1994) Is there LF wh-movement? Linguistic Inquiry, 25(2), 239–262.Google Scholar
Dahan, D., & Bernard, J-M.
(1996) Interspeaker variability in emphatic accent production in French. Language & Speech, 39(4), 341–374. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
David, A. B.
(2014) A descriptive grammar of Pashto and its dialects. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dayal, V.
(1996) Locality in wh-quantification: Questions and relative clauses in Hindi. Dordrecht: Kluwer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Delais-Roussarie, E., Post, B., Avanzi, M., Buthke, C., Di Cristo, A., Feldhausen, I., et al.
(2015) Intonational phonology of French: Developing a ToBI system for French. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonation in Romance (pp. 63–100). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Déprez, V., Syrett, K., & Kawahara, S.
(2013) The interaction of syntax, prosody, and discourse in licensing French wh-in-situ questions. Lingua, 124, 4–19. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dhongde, R. V., & Wali, K.
(2009) Marathi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dohen, M., & Lœvenbruck, H.
(2004) Pre-focal rephrasing, focal enhancement and postfocal deaccentuation in French. INTERSPEECH 2004: 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 785–788).
Duguine, M., & Irurtzun, A.
(2014) From obligatory wh-movement to optional wh-in-situ in Labourdin Basque. Language, 90(1), e1–e30. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Eguzkitza, A.
(1987) Topics on the syntax of Basque and Romance (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). UCLA.Google Scholar
Eilam, A.
(2008) Intervention effects: Why Amharic patterns differently. In N. Abner & J. Bishop (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 141–149). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Elordieta, A.
(2001) Verb movement and constituent permutation in Basque. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Elordieta, G.
(1997) Accent, tone, and intonation in Lekeitio Basque. In F. Martínez-Gil & A. Morales-Front (Eds.), Issues in the phonology and morphology of the major Iberian languages (pp. 3–78). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
(1998) Intonation in a pitch accent variety of Basque. ASJU: International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology, XXXII(2), 511–569.Google Scholar
(2003) Intonation. In J. I. Hualde & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), A grammar of Basque (pp. 72–112). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
(2007a) Constraints on intonational prominence of focalized constituents. In C. Lee, M. Gordon, & D. Büring (Eds.), Topic and focus: Cross-linguistic perspectives on meaning and intonation (pp. 1–22). Dordrecht: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2007b) A constraint-based analysis of the intonational realization of focus in Northern Bizkaian Basque. In T. Riad & C. Gussenhoven (Eds.), Tones and tunes, Vol. I: Typological studies in word and sentence prosody (pp. 199–232). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Elordieta, G., & J. I. Hualde
(2015) Intonation in Basque. In S. A. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic typology, II: The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 405–463). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Erdocia, K., Laka, I., Mestres-Missé, A., & Rodriguez-Fornells, A.
(2009) Syntactic complexity and ambiguity resolution in a free word order language: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidences from Basque. Brain and Language, 109, 1–17. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Etxepare, R., & Ortiz de Urbina, J.
(2003) Focalization. In J. I. Hualde & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), A grammar of Basque (pp. 465–522). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fujisaki, H., & Kawai, H.
(1988) Realization of linguistic information in the voice fundamental frequency contour of the spoken Japanese. Acoustics, Speech Signal and Processing, 88, 663–666. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gaminde, I.
(2000) Muskildiko galderen intonazioaz. Uztaro, 35, 71–88.Google Scholar
Gaminde, I., & Salaberria, J.
(1997) Ezpeleta, Lekorne eta Makeako azentu-ereduez. Uztaro, 20, 93–103.Google Scholar
Gryllia, S., Cheng, L. L-S., & Doetjes, J.
(2016) On the intonation of French wh-in-situ questions: What happens before the wh-word is reached? Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016, 611–614. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gu, Z., Mori, H., & Kasuya, H.
(2003) Analysis of vowel formant frequency variations between focus and neutral speech in Mandarin Chinese. Acoustical Science and Technology, 24(4), 192–193. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, C.
(2004) The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haile, A.
(1987) Lexical Stress in Amharic. Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 20, 19–43.Google Scholar
Hintz, D. M.
(2006) Stress in South Conchucos Quechua: A phonetic and phonological study. International Journal of American Linguistics, 72(4), 477–521. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hualde, J. I.
(1999) Basque accentuation. In H. van der Hulst (Ed.), Word prosodic systems in the languages of Europe (pp. 947–993). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
(2003) Accentuation. In J. I. Hualde & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), A grammar of Basque (pp. 65–72). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hualde, J. I., Elordieta, G., & Elordieta, A.
(1994) The Basque dialect of Lekeitio. Donostia: Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia & UPV/EHU.Google Scholar
Hualde, J. I., Elordieta, G., Gaminde, I., & Smiljanić, R.
(2002) From pitch-accent to stress-accent in Basque. In C. Gussenhoven & N. Warner (Eds.), Laboratory Phonology 7, 547–584. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hwang, H. K.
(2006) Intonation patterns of wh-interrogatives in South Kyungsang Korean and Fukuoka Japanese. Eoneohak, 45, 39–59.Google Scholar
(2011) Distinct types of focus and wh-question intonation. In W. S. Lee & E. Zee (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII) (pp. 922–925). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Hyman, L. M.
(2009) How (not) to do phonological typology: The case of pitch-accent. Language Sciences, 31, 213–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Irurtzun, A.
(2007) The grammar of focus at the interfaces (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz.Google Scholar
(2008) A derivational approach to the focus-structure. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne de Linguistique, 53(2/3), 327–354. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2016) Strategies for argument and adjunct focalization in Basque. In B. Fernández & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), Microparameters in the grammar of Basque (pp. 243–263). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ishihara, S.
(2011) Japanese focus prosody revisited: Freeing focus from prosodic phrasing. Lingua, 121(13), 1870–1889. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2015) Syntax-phonology interface. In H. Kubozono (Ed.), Handbook of Japanese phonetics and phonology (pp. 569–618). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ito, K.
(2002) The interaction of focus and lexical pitch accent in speech production and dialogue comprehension: Evidence from Japanese and Basque (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
Jun, S. A., & Fougeron, C.
(2000) A phonological model of French intonation. In A. Botinis (Ed.), Intonation: Analysis, modelling and technology (pp. 209–242). Dordrecht: Kluwer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, R.
(1994) The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kim, J., & Jun, S. A.
(2009) Prosodic structure and focus prosody of South Kyungsang Korean. Language Research, 45(1), 43–66.Google Scholar
Kruschke, J. K.
(2013) Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 142, 573–603. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2015) Doing Bayesian data analysis: A tutorial with R, JAGS, and Stan (2nd ed.). London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kubozono, H.
(1987) The organization of Japanese prosody (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
(2007) Focus and intonation in Japanese: Does focus trigger pitch reset? In S. Ishihara (Ed.), Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure, 9, 1–27.Google Scholar
Lee, Hye-Sook
(2007) Interrogative intonation in North Kyungsang Korean: Language-specificity and universality of acoustic and perceptual cues. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory, 16, 57–100.Google Scholar
Lee, Y-C., Wang, T., & Liberman, M.
(2016) Production and perception of Tone 3 focus in Mandarin Chinese. Frontiers in Psychology, 7:1058. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Liu, F., & Xu, Y.
(2005) Parallel encoding of focus and interrogative meaning in Mandarin intonation. Phonetica, 62, 70–87. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maekawa, K.
(1999) Effects of focus on duration and vowel formant frequency in Japanese. In Y. Sagisaka, N. Campbell, & N. Higuchi (Eds.), Computing prosody: Computational models for processing spontaneous speech (pp. 129–145). New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Mathieu, E.
(2016) The wh-parameter and radical externatization. In L. Eguren, O. Fernández-Soriano, & A. Mendikoetxea (Eds.), Rethinking parameters (pp. 252–290). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ménard, L., Lœvenbruck, H., & Savariaux, C.
(2006) Articulatory and acoustic correlates of contrastive focus in French: A developmental study. In J. Harrington & M. Tabain (Eds), Speech production: Models, phonetic processes and techniques (pp. 227–251). New York, NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Ortiz de Urbina, J.
(1989) Some parameters in the grammar of Basque. Dordrecht: Foris. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1999) Force phrases, focus phrases and left heads in Basque. In J. A. Franco, A. Landa & J. Martín (Eds), Grammatical analyses in Basque and Romance linguistics: Papers in honor of Mario Saltarelli (pp. 179–194). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Patil, U., Kentner, G., Gollrad, A., Kügler, F., Féry, C., & Vasishth, S.
(2008) Focus, word order and intonation in Hindi. Journal of South Asian Linguistics, 1(1), 55–72.Google Scholar
Perrone-Bertolotti, M. D., Lœvenbruck, H., Sato, M., Pichat, C., & Baciu, M.
(2013) Neural correlates of the perception of contrastive prosodic focus in French: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Human Brain Mapping, 34, 2574–2592. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J. B., & Beckman, M. E.
(1988) Japanese tone structure. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rebuschi, G.
(1997) A note on focalization in Basque. In Essais de linguistique basque. Supplements of ASJU XXXV, 31–42.Google Scholar
Richards, N.
(2016) Contiguity theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
(2010) Uttering trees. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rietveld, T. C. M., & Gussenhoven, C.
(1985) On the relation between pitch excursion size and prominence. Journal of Phonetics, 13, 299–308. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Rijk, R. P. G.
(1969) Is Basque an SOV language? Fontes Linguae Vasconum 1: 319–351.Google Scholar
(1978) Topic fronting, focus positioning, and the nature of the verb phrase in Basque. In F. Jansen (Ed.), Studies on fronting (pp. 81–112). Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tegey, H., & Robson, B.
(1996) A reference grammar of Pashto. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
t’Hart, J.
(1981) Differential sensitivity to pitch distance, particularly in speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 69.3, 811–821. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Venditti, J. J., Maekawa, K., & Beckman, M. E.
(2008) Prominence marking in the Japanese intonation system. In S. Miyagawa & M. Saito (Eds.), Handbook of Japanese linguistics (pp. 456–512). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wali, K.
(2005) Marathi. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
Xu, Yi
(1999) Effects of tone and focus on the formation and alignment of f0 contours. Journal of Phonetics, 27, 55–105. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yokoyama, S.
(1979) Jisho midashigo no akusento no seikaku ni tsuite [On the nature of the accent of dictionary-listed words]. Conference handbook, The Acoustical Society of Japan.