On the interpretation of multiple questions

Željko Bošković | University of Connecticut

The paper shows that crosslinguistically, overt movement of a wh-phrase to SpecCP results in the loss of the single-pair interpretation for multiple questions, i.e. it forces the pair-list interpretation. It is shown that the damaging effect of overt movement to SpecCP on the availability of single-pair answers can be accounted for with an extension of Hagstroms (1998) semantics of questions to languages with overt wh-movement. More precisely, the effect is argued to follow from Relativized Minimality: In questions with a single-pair interpretation, the Q morpheme, which is base-generated below C, induces a relativized minimality effect when a wh-phrase crosses it on its way to SpecCP.

Keywords: multiple questions, relativized minimality, pair-list answers, superiority, single-pair answers, wh-movement

Published online: 24 July 2003
https://doi.org/10.1075/livy.1.03bos

Cited by

Cited by 10 other publications

No author info given

2021. In Romance Interrogative Syntax [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 266],

Dayal, Veneeta

2017. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, ► pp. 1 ff.

Foryś-Nogala, Małgorzata, Ewa Haman, Napoleon Katsos, Grzegorz Krajewski & Petra Schulz

2017. Syntactic, semantic and pragmatic correlates of the acquisition of exhaustivity inWh-questions: A study of Polish monolingual children. Language Acquisition 24:1 ► pp. 27 ff.

Gribanova, Vera

2009. Structural Adjacency and the Typology of Interrogative Interpretations. Linguistic Inquiry 40:1 ► pp. 133 ff.

Myung-Kwan Park

2011. The Syntax-Semantics Interface of Pair-list Interpretation in Wh-wh Constructions and Their Sluicing Counterparts. Studies in Generative Grammar 21:2 ► pp. 311 ff.

Myung-Kwan Park

2014. Toward a Unified Analysis of the Finiteness Restriction in Multiple Fragment Answer, Gapping, and Multiple Sluicing. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 14:3 ► pp. 503 ff.

Myung-Kwan Park & Chung, Wonil

2011. The Syntax-Semantics Interface of Pair-list Interpretation in Wh/Wh Constructions: A Syntactic and Experimental & Cognitive-neuroscientific Approach. Korean Journal of Linguistics 36:3 ► pp. 585 ff.

Schulz, Petra & Tom Roeper

2011. Acquisition of exhaustivity in wh-questions: A semantic dimension of SLI?. Lingua 121:3 ► pp. 383 ff.

Yang, Barry C.-Y., Ting-ting Christina Hsu & Kazunori Kikushima

2021. Rethinking Wh-island Effects in Chinese. Studies in Chinese Linguistics 42:2 ► pp. 161 ff.

Yeun-Jin Jung

2018. Coordinated Multiple Wh-questions in Wh-in-situ Languages: A Mono-Clausal Movement Analysis. Studies in Generative Grammar 28:1 ► pp. 91 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 05 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.