Speaker: Ekaterina Chernova (Universitat de Girona)
Title: On the typology of (multiple) wh-fronting from a Q-based perspective
Venue: Lipsius/235b
Time: 15:15-16:30
Abstract
In this talk, I will try to account on the nature of multiple wh-fronting (MWF) in Slavic languages, where all wh-items overtly move to the edge of a clause. However, although superficially very similar, MWF languages behave differently in numerous ways regarding wh-movement: while Bulgarian shows Superiority effects and forces the intervening material to be placed after the whole set of fronted wh-items, Russian behaves just the other way round. Thus, Russian has been claimed to be in its core a wh-in-situ language where wh-fronting is [focus]-driven, while Bulgarian has been argued to exhibit true [wh]-driven movement (see Stepanov 1998; Bošković 2002). However, I will try to show that there is an alternative way to explain this complex set of data withoutappealing to the weak focus- vs. wh-movement distinction. Following Cable (2010), I argue that what has been analyzed as wh-/focus-movement is in fact a secondary effect of Q-movement, when a Q-particle merged with a wh-item first takes it as its complement projecting a QP; then attraction of Q’s features into CP triggers movement of the whole QP, no wh-feature-percolation being necessary. I will propose some minimal, yet significant, additions to the original Cable’s Q-theory arguing that it cannot capture the MWF phenomenon in its current formulation.
In the second part of the talk, I will try to present a more general picture of Q-movement patterns observed in multiple wh-questions across languages. I will briefly consider Spanish, which apparently contradicts Cable’s generalization on a correlation between Superiority and Intervention effects, since it can violate both, and propose a syntactic account. Finally, a tentative parametrical hierarchy of crosslinguistic variation with respect to Q-movement will be offered.