Subjects and wh-questions. Some new generalizations

This paper addresses the long-standing question of the restricted distribution of subjects in wh-questions in languages like Italian: *Chi Gianni ha invitato?, *Chi ha Gianni invitato?, Chi ha invitato, Gianni? “whom Gianni has invited?”. It is commonly assumed that this restriction is a direct consequence of the special syntax attributed to the subject in Null Subject languages (NSLs). I will show that this is incorrect. The following generalizations regarding the occurrence of subjects in wh-questions seem to hold: - the restriction against subjects occurring between a wh-phrase and the verb is very specific and only concerns the highest subjects in the syntactic tree (DPs and strong pronouns); - the restricted distribution of these subjects in wh-questions does not correlate with pro-drop, since it is also found in non-NSLs; - the restriction, instead, seems to correlate with verb movement: although in Italian the verb raises higher in interrogatives than in declaratives, it does not reach the C layer; in other words, no T-to-C occurs; - the postverbal subject occurring in wh-questions is marginalized, i. e. destressed in situ. In this paper, I will concentrate on questions in main clauses.