Wh-in-situ

From Glottopedia
Revision as of 15:33, 10 June 2009 by Wohlgemuth (talk | contribs) (utrecht)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Wh-in-situ is a wh-element which has not been moved overtly. In some languages (Japanese for instance), all wh-elements appear in situ; in languages with overt movement of one wh-element (like English), the other wh-elements stay in situ.

Example

what in (i) cannot move because its landing site is taken by who.

(i)  I wonder who has bought what?

There is a debate as to what mechanism is responsible for the interpretation of wh-elements in situ. Maybe what in (i) is fronted and adjoined to the embedded clause at LF. This operation is called Wh-raising (in contradistinction to wh-movement, or QR (of non-wh operators)). Another approach is to interpret wh-in-situ without LF-movement, via choice functions. Cases of wh-in-situ are not to be confused with echo-questions like John bought WHAT?: here what's landing site has not been taken by another wh-element.

Links

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

  • Chomsky, N. 1986b. Barriers, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
  • Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht.
  • Lasnik, H. and M. Saito 1992. Move alpha: conditions on its application and output, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
  • May, Robert 1985. Logical form, MIT Press
  • Reinhart, T. 1993. Wh-in-situ in the framework of the Minimalist Program, OTS Working papers in linguistics, Utrecht University.
STUB
CAT This article needs proper categorization. You can help Glottopedia by categorizing it
Please do not remove this block until the problem is fixed.
FORMAT