Composing Questions

Grano T., Lasnik H.

A bound pronoun in the subject position of a finite embedded clause renders the clause boundary relatively transparent to relations ordinarily confined to monoclausal, control, and raising configurations. For example, too/ enough-movement structures involving a finite clause boundary are degraded in sentences like * This book is too long [for John to claim [that Bill read ___ in a day]] but improved when the finite clause has a bound pronominal subject as in ? This book is too long [for John1 to claim [that he1 read ___ in a day]]. This bound pronoun effect holds across a wide range of phenomena including too/ enough-movement, tough-movement, gapping, comparative deletion, antecedent-contained deletion, quantifier scope interaction, multiple questions, pseudogapping, reciprocal binding, and multiple sluicing; we confirm the effect via a sentence acceptability experiment targeting some of these phenomena. Our account has two crucial ingredients: (a) bound pronouns optionally enter the derivation with unvalued ϕ-features and (b) phases are defined in part by convergence, so that under certain conditions, unvalued features void the phasal status of CP and extend the locality domain for syntactic operations.

Dayal V.

Beck S., Kim S.

Alternative questions exhibit intervention effects, in that the disjunctive phrase may not be c-commanded by a focusing or quantificational element. This seems to hold crosslinguistically. We provide an analysis of this phenomenon that combines a focus semantic explanation of intervention effects in questions with an analysis of alternative questions in which the disjunctive phrase makes available appropriate alternatives in a way similar to a wh-phrase. We point out consequences for the analysis of intervention as well as for the analysis of alternative questions. We also note interesting further issues pertaining to the semantic contribution of dis- junction.

Beck S.

The paper provides a semantic analysis of intervention effects in wh-questions. The interpretation component of the grammar derives uninterpretability, hence ungrammaticality, of the intervention data. In the system of compositional interpretation that I suggest, wh-phrases play the same role as focused phrases, introducing alternatives into the computation. Unlike focus, wh-phrases make no ordinary semantic contribution. An intervention effect occurs whenever a focus-sensitive operator other than the question operator tries to evaluate a constituent containing a wh-phrase. It is argued that this approach can capture the universal as well as the crosslinguistically variable aspects of intervention effects, in a way that is superior to previous approaches. Further consequences concern other focus-related constructions: multiple focus data, NPI licensing, and alternative questions.

Pesetsky D.

Karttunen L.