Romance Interrogative Syntax

Bonan, Caterina

doi:10.1075/la.266

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 135 publications

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“…In Bonan (2021;2021b), I argued that the surface position of clause-internal wh-elements such as the one in (3b), repeated here in (6), is an internal-merge one. Accordingly, the marked order IO>DO is derived by moving the wh-element to a clause-medial position.…”

Section: Low Movement Of Wh-elements and The Focus/wh-parallelmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In Bonan (2021), I claimed that instances of eastern Trevisan 'wh-in situ' such as that in (3b) involve the presence of a silent Q-particle that adjoins to the whelement, and are best characterised as a consequence of focus-movement of the whelement into Belletti's (2004) Foc, in the LLP. Belletti indeed posited the existence of a periphery above vP composed of a focal projection surrounded by two topic projections, along the lines of the diagram in (5).…”

Section: Main Characters and Central Claimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cable's (2010) monograph had non-negligible consequences not only for the theory of wh-in situ, but also for the theory of interrogative wh-movement in general. In Bonan (2021), I argued in favour of an implementation of Q-particles in Romance, and analysed the clause-internal wh-elements of eastern Trevisan as linked to the Q-particle through a structural configuration of adjunction.…”

Section: From the Grammar Of Q To The Theory Of Wh-to-focmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Optional wh-in situ is a widespread phenomenon in Romance that includes languages in which the option of fronting the wh-element into the HLP co-exists rather peacefully with the possibility of stranding it clause-internally. Languages of this type comprise French (Baunaz 2005, Mathieu 2009, Shlonsky 2012, Faure & Palasis 2021, Brazilian (Kato 2013, Figueiredo Silva & Grolla 2016, Rosemeyer 2019 and European Portuguese (Cheng & Rooryck 2000, Kaiser & Quaglia 2015, Spanish (Uribe-Etxebarria 2002, Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2005, Reglero 2015, Biezma 2018, and NIDs (Munaro 1999, Poletto 2000, Manzini & Savoia 2005, Manzini 2014, Bonan 2021. An example of alternation between total fronting into the HLP and real wh-in situ is given in (2):…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Bonan (2021), I claimed that instances of low movement such as the one in (3b) are driven by a syntactically active [focus]-feature in the LLP. From this low movement, it follows that the phenomenon of 'wh-in situ' in the answer-seeking interrogatives of NIDs can be neither movement into the low portion of the HLP, nor a mere instance of interrogative movement delayed until LF.…”

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confidence: 99%

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From northern Italian to Asian wh-in situ: A theory of low focus movement

Bonan

2021

isogloss

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The mainstream literature on the Romance dialects of northern Italy has explained the morphosyntax of clause-internal wh-elements in answer-seeking interrogatives as either the result of interrogative movement into the lower portion of the high left periphery (Munaro et al. 2001, Poletto & Pollock 2015, a.o.), or as a canonical instance of scope construal (Manzini & Savoia 2005;2011). New empirical evidence from Romance suggests that there is more at stake in the computation of wh-interrogatives than we used to think, and that neither of the existing approaches to northern Italian 'wh-in situ' can be maintained. Here, I argue that northern Italian dialects and Asian languages are, at least in this respect, more similar than we originally thought, and then I offer a new, derivationally economic and cross-linguistically supported understanding of the morphosyntax of northern Italian wh-in situ: the theory of WH-TO-FOC. Accordingly, all cross-linguistic core properties of this phenomenon can be attributed to different combinations of the setting of universal micro-parameters related to the interrogative movement of wh-elements.

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Section: Low Movement Of Wh-elements and The Focus/wh-parallelmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Main Characters and Central Claimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: From the Grammar Of Q To The Theory Of Wh-to-focmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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From northern Italian to Asian wh-in situ: A theory of low focus movement

Bonan

2021

isogloss

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A contrastive perspective on French and Italian wh-in situ questions

Garassino

2022

FOL

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This paper offers a qualitative and quantitative analysis of French and Italian wh-in situ questions based on spontaneous spoken data. A pragmatic analysis relying on two parameters, propositional activation and pragmatic functions, reveals that the licensing conditions and the use of this structure largely differ in the two languages. While French wh-in situ do not require an activated proposition and can introduce a discourse-new topic, Italian wh-in situ mostly require an activated proposition and, at least in the analyzed corpus data, do not introduce discourse-new topics. An examination of the context also reveals that the different licensing conditions influence the interactional uses of these questions. All in all, both French and Italian wh-in situ require a pragmatic condition, which is their ‘anchoring’ to given, or at least inferable, information in the linguistic context (as is typical of Italian) or to predictable situations in the extralinguistic context (such as expected discourse moves in social interactions, as is the case for French).

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Wh‐InterrogativesIn Ancient Greek Disentangling Focus‐ AndWh‐Movement^*

Bertrand

Faure

2022

Studia Linguistica

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This article explores the problem of information structure in ancient Greek direct constituent questions from the perspective of wh‐placement. It begins with the observation that wh‐items are intrinsically focused and that typologically, wh‐placement is predictable based on the focusing properties in some languages, such as Indonesian (in situ strategy) and Basque or Hungarian (focus position strategy), but not in others, such as English (specific wh‐position strategy). Ancient Greek has multiple ways to express narrow focusing, e.g., in situ or in a preverbal devoted position. Puzzlingly, with respect to whPs, the former way is only marginally attested and there is no good evidence for the latter way. Instead, based on syntactic and prosodic tests, we show that ancient Greek offers a third strategy, in which a high position in the structure is available. Nevertheless, when this result is recast in the framework of Phase Theory, the tests of wh‐duplication and stranding indicate that whPs must go through all three positions, receiving their argument function in situ, checking their focus feature preverbally and verifying their wh‐feature in the high position. The specificity of ‘why’ questions is addressed along the way.

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Romance Interrogative Syntax

Cited by 7 publications

References 135 publications

From northern Italian to Asian wh-in situ: A theory of low focus movement

From northern Italian to Asian wh-in situ: A theory of low focus movement

A contrastive perspective on French and Italian wh-in situ questions

Wh‐InterrogativesIn Ancient Greek Disentangling Focus‐ AndWh‐Movement^*

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Romance Interrogative Syntax

Cited by 7 publications

References 135 publications

From northern Italian to Asian wh-in situ: A theory of low focus movement

From northern Italian to Asian wh-in situ: A theory of low focus movement

A contrastive perspective on French and Italian wh-in situ questions

Wh‐InterrogativesIn Ancient Greek Disentangling Focus‐ AndWh‐Movement*

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Wh‐InterrogativesIn Ancient Greek Disentangling Focus‐ AndWh‐Movement^*