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Formal Studies in Slovenian Syntax: In honor of Janez Orešnik
Edited by Franc Lanko Marušič and Rok Žaucer
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 236] 2016
► pp. 193–220

The left periphery of multiple wh-questions in Slovenian

| University of Nova Gorica

In this paper I focus on multiple wh-questions in Slovenian and argue for an analysis in which wh-phrases move to the extended left periphery of the sentence. Assuming the Cartographic approach, I consider the order of wh-phrases in Slovenian multiple wh-questions, which was previously described as free, e.g. Golden (1997). While I confirm that the order of wh-phrases in the left periphery is generally free, I show that there are some exceptions, e.g. zakaj ‘why’ and kako ‘how’ tend to precede other wh-phrases. In addition, I show that the order of wh-phrases with respect to focus and topic phrases is free, but that one wh-phrase needs to appear in a clause initial position for a question to get a true wh-question reading. Based on this, I propose that the clause initial wh-phrase moves to the Interrogative Projection, in the sense of Rizzi (2001a), and the remaining wh-phrases to Wh-Projections. Crucially, because wh-movement is not restricted by a requirement on chains, cf. Krapova & Cinque (2005), the order of wh-phrases is free.

Published online: 8 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.236.09mis
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