As opposed to English, French wh-questions can take a wide variety of forms. I identify four basic patterns: (a) wh- in situ: Vous êtes allés où?; (b) wh- raised, verb in situ: Où vous êtes allés?; (c) est-ce que insertion: Où est-ce que vous êtes allés?; (d) subject-clitic inversion: Où êtes-vous allés?, and argue that these are in fact ‘allo-questions’. Based on a review of historical factors, as well as on recent corpus studies, I show that each of the four question types corresponds to a distinct pragmatic function and compare French and English usage. Finally, wh- in situ constructions are formally analysed as a covert form of multiple wh-question, using an unselective binding mechanism.
2022. The acquisition of wh-questions: Beyond structural economy and input frequency. Language Acquisition 29:1 ► pp. 79 ff.
Pablos, Leticia, Jenny Doetjes & Lisa L.-S. Cheng
2018. Backward Dependencies and in-Situ wh-Questions as Test Cases on How to Approach Experimental Linguistics Research That Pursues Theoretical Linguistics Questions. Frontiers in Psychology 8
Persson, Rasmus
2017. Fill-in-the-Blank Questions in Interaction: Incomplete Utterances as a Resource for Doing Inquiries. Research on Language and Social Interaction 50:3 ► pp. 227 ff.
Reinhardt, Janina, F. Neveu, G. Bergounioux, M.-H. Côté, J.-M. Fournier, L. Hriba & S. Prévost
2016. Établir un corpus oral de questions : L’analyse semi-automatisée avec Praat et Perl à l’exemple de cinq épisodes deMaya l’Abeille. SHS Web of Conferences 27 ► pp. 11007 ff.
Rosemeyer, Malte
2023. French and Spanish wh-interrogatives with and without wh. Journal of French Language Studies 33:2 ► pp. 227 ff.
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