This article investigates the structural properties of interrogative clauses in the Romance languages. Interrogative clauses are typically produced by the speaker in order to elicit information from the addressee; depending on the kind of information requested by the speaker, one can distinguish between two basic types of interrogatives: polar interrogatives and constituent interrogatives. In Romance main polar interrogatives, the interrogative interpretation of the utterance may be triggered only by prosodic means, through a final raising tone. While main polar interrogatives may employ different morpho-syntactic strategies, embedded polar interrogatives display a greater degree of uniformity and are invariably introduced by the interrogative complementizer. As for constituent interrogatives, across Romance we find languages employing different strategies: beside the ordinary fronting of the wh-item to the sentence initial position, we also find wh-clefting, in which the sentence initial wh-item is followed by an inflected copula and the complementizer; wh-in situ, with the wh-item appearing in sentence internal position; wh-doubling, with two wh-items appearing one in initial position and the other in sentence internal position; multiple wh-fronting, with both wh-items sitting in a left-peripheral position. In non-standard questions the wh-item is obligatorily fronted, even in the languages allowing for wh-in situ in standard questions.
Interrogatives in the Romance languages
Nicola Munaro
2022-01-01
Abstract
This article investigates the structural properties of interrogative clauses in the Romance languages. Interrogative clauses are typically produced by the speaker in order to elicit information from the addressee; depending on the kind of information requested by the speaker, one can distinguish between two basic types of interrogatives: polar interrogatives and constituent interrogatives. In Romance main polar interrogatives, the interrogative interpretation of the utterance may be triggered only by prosodic means, through a final raising tone. While main polar interrogatives may employ different morpho-syntactic strategies, embedded polar interrogatives display a greater degree of uniformity and are invariably introduced by the interrogative complementizer. As for constituent interrogatives, across Romance we find languages employing different strategies: beside the ordinary fronting of the wh-item to the sentence initial position, we also find wh-clefting, in which the sentence initial wh-item is followed by an inflected copula and the complementizer; wh-in situ, with the wh-item appearing in sentence internal position; wh-doubling, with two wh-items appearing one in initial position and the other in sentence internal position; multiple wh-fronting, with both wh-items sitting in a left-peripheral position. In non-standard questions the wh-item is obligatorily fronted, even in the languages allowing for wh-in situ in standard questions.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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