Wh-movement, interpretation, and optionality in Persian

Karimi, Simin; Taleghani, Azita H.

doi:10.1075/la.101.09kar

Part of

Phrasal and Clausal Architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretation
Edited by Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian and Wendy K. Wilkins
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 101] 2007
► pp. 167–187

Wh-movement, interpretation, and optionality in Persian

Simin Karimi

Azita H. Taleghani

We examine the syntactic behavior of wh-arguments and wh-adjuncts in Persian, a wh-in-situ language that exhibits (seemingly) optional wh-movement. We show that the two types of wh-phrases have distinct internal structures that are responsible for their different syntactic behavior. The analysis indicates that wh-movement has an effect on the semantic output of the derivation, and thus wh-scrambling is not a semantically vacuous operation. We finally show that the wh-feature must be in a local Agree relation with a wh-operator in Spec/CP to allow scope marking and sentence typing. This last claim predicts that an intervening polarity item would block the Agree relation, a prediction that is borne out empirically.

Published online: 21 February 2007

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.101.09kar

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[no author supplied]

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