This article argues that overt multiple wh-fronting in languages like Bulgarian consists of moving a single wh-cluster to [Spec, CP]. The formation of wh-clusters is motivated by the assumption that wh-elements can act as landing sites for wh-movement due to morphological properties of wh-words. I further argue that languages such as Japanese constitute covert instances of this process of wh-cluster formation, accounting for intricate constraints on multiple wh-questions such as the so-called ''additional-wh effect.'' Another central claim of the article is that despite appearances, multiple wh-questions in German equally involve the formation of wh-clusters, which are shown to consist of one visible and one or more invisible wh-elements. This analysis provides a new account for the lack of ''short'' and the presence of ''long'' superiority effects in German.
In his paper “Data in generative grammar: the stick and the carrot”, Sam Featherston offers an interesting plea for a change in linguistic methodology. He criticizes the “inadequate praxis” of the majority of generative linguists to use their own intuitive judgments as evidence for their syntactic hypotheses. He claims that with this bad scientific practice, which has not changed in the thirty years after Greenbaum's (1977) harsh criticism of “dubious” empirical reasoning, generative linguists are producing unsatisfactory work and are thus undermining the reputation of syntax. On the basis of their introspective judgments, they have stated wrong empirical generalizations and, as a consequence, suggested inadequate theoretical accounts. As an alternative for the better he postulates “that theory building requires a better basis than this” and calls upon generative linguists to take more care with their data and to subject their theoretical claims to objective empirical tests such as acceptability rating experiments which are carried out with multiple informants, permit multiple degrees of well-formedness, and use multiple lexical variants of the structures to be checked. He illustrates the benefits of this empirical strategy with experiments on object-related anaphors in German as well as on that-trace and superiority effects in German, and thereby demonstrates how syntacticians have been led astray by their intuitive judgments.
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