Syntax, Semantics and Acquisition of Multiple Interrogatives

Who wants what?

Lydia Grebenyova | Baylor University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027255785 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027273369 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

Multiple interrogatives, questions with multiple wh-phrases (e.g. Who bought what?), have long presented analytical challenges for linguistic theory. This monograph presents a new theoretical and experimental study of this construction. The theoretical findings concern the interaction between superiority effects, subject-auxiliary inversion, and the distribution of pair-list and single-pair readings cross-linguistically. The author examines multiple interrogatives under sluicing (i.e. clausal ellipsis), presenting new arguments for the deletion analysis of sluicing. The author also reports the results of several experimental studies on how children acquire the language-specific properties of multiple interrogatives in English, Russian, and Malayalam. The results suggest a correlation between the acquisition of multiple interrogatives and the acquisition of contrastive focus, which has been independently motivated in the syntactic literature. The monograph will be of interest to linguists concerned with syntax, semantics, and language acquisition, as well as readers who are interested in a comprehensive theory of language in general.

[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 195] 2012. xviii, 191 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 28 September 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.195

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations | pp. xi–xii

Preface | pp. xiii–xiv

Introduction | pp. xv–xviii

Chapter 1. Superiority – Syntactic and interpretive | pp. 1–20

Chapter 2. Semantics of multiple interrogatives | pp. 21–56

Chapter 3. Multiple interrogatives and ellipsis | pp. 57–80

Chapter 4. Multiple left-branch extraction | pp. 81–106

Chapter 5. Acquisition of multiple interrogatives | pp. 107–144

Chapter 6. Acquiring contrastive focus and multiple interrogatives | pp. 145–164

Chapter 7. Concluding remarks | pp. 165–168

References | pp. 169–178

Appendix A: Test items in experiments on multiple interrogatives | pp. 179–180

Appendix B: Script for experimental stories on multiple interrogatives | pp. 181–184

Appendix C: Test items and script for experiments on contrastive focus | pp. 185–188

Index | pp. 189–192

“This book presents an insightful investigation of multiple interrogation, and gives a sophisticated Minimalist account of the cross-linguistic variation found with single-pair and pair-list answers to multiple wh-questions, as well as new arguments that sluicing involves unpronounced clausal structure, and important new data on the acquisition of such structures. It represents the fruitful intersection of theoretical questions with close empirical investigation of both adults' and children's grammars.”

Jason Merchant, University of Chicago

“An illuminating account of the fascinating interactions between the syntactic and semantic properties of the multiple interrogative construction in a variety of languages, supported by meticulous investigation of its acquisition.”

Howard Lasnik, University of Maryland at College Park

“An important merit of this book is that a holistic view of a single linguistic construction –multiple interrogatives – is provided. That is to say, the construction is examined from the perspectives: syntax, semantics and acquisition. This is rarely done in a single study. It also makes this book an excellent resource for scholars who are simply looking for specialized discussions of Multiple Interrogatives.”

Chang Qizhong, National University of Singapore, on Linguist List 2013

Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Bondarenko, Tatiana & Colin Davis

2023. Concealed pied‐piping in Russian: On left‐branch extraction, parasitic gaps, and the nature of discontinuous nominal phrases. Syntax 26:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

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