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This paper considers phenomena related to embedded interrogatives that do not fit the canonical profile of subordinate clauses. It focuses on restrictions on such noncanonical cases of subordination, here referred to as quasi-subordination, and makes the following claims. There are three points in the interrogative left periphery for building question meaning. The lowest point is CP, where interrogatives are differentiated semantically from declaratives. All embedding verbs that can take interrogative complements, can take CP+WH. The highest point is SAP. When its head is specified SAASK, the question denoted by the interrogative becomes a request for information by the speaker, directed towards the addressee. This is the structure we find in matrix questions (and quotations). In between these two levels is what I call PerspectiveP. Its head PerspCQ introduces PRO, an individual for whom the interrogative CP+WH is a potentially active question. That is, PRO is the perspectival center, the one from whose point of view the interrogative can be a request for information (signaled by the specification CQ for centered question). When PRO is bound by the speaker argument in the Speech Act Phrase, we get a matrix question; when PRO is bound by the subject of a matrix predicate we get quasi-subordination. Quasi-subordination is a hybrid between true subordination (with respect to pronominal interpretation, for example) and nonsubordination (with respect to intonation, for example). Restrictions on quasi-subordination are claimed to be regulated, in addition to standard selectional restrictions, by semantic compatibility between the implied ignorance of the individual who is the perspectival center of the question and the meaning of the embedding clause. Empirical support for this view of the interrogative left periphery comes from a range of phenomena from unrelated languages. While the idea of an articulated left periphery goes back to Rizzi (1997), the details of the present proposal are new. The paper discusses several implications of this view of the interrogative left periphery, connecting the specific claims to similar proposals about other clause types and to developments in our understanding of how complement selection works.

Jenks (2018) argues that Mandarin bare NPs cannot be classified as definites simpliciter. Adopting the distinction between weak- and strong-article definites in Schwarz 2009, he proposes that Mandarin makes a lexical distinction between the two types of definites: bare nouns are weak definites, demonstratives are strong definites. He further proposes that their distribution is regulated by a principle called Index!. In this article, we first point out some problems with the empirical generalizations presented in Jenks’s description of Mandarin and then sketch an alternative approach to the distinction between Mandarin demonstratives and bare nouns. We end with some comments about the kind of further empirical work that needs to be done before definitive claims can be made about the competition between demonstratives and other types of definites.

Across many languages, multiple sluicing obeys a clausemate constraint. This can be understood on the empirically well-supported assumption that covert phrasal wh-movement is clause-bounded and subject to Superiority. We provide independent evidence for syntactic structure at the ellipsis site and for locality constraints on movement operations within the ellipsis site. The fact that the distribution of multiple sluicing is substantially narrower than that of multiple wh-questions, on their single-pair as well as their pair-list reading, entails that there must be mechanisms for scoping in-situ wh-phrases that do not rely on covert phrasal wh-movement. We adopt the choice-functional account for single-pair readings. For pair-list readings, we develop a novel functional analysis, argue for the functional basis of pair-list readings, and present a new perspective on pair-list readings of questions with quantifiers.

Manetta (2010) argues that Hindi-Urdu has feature-driven overt wh-movement to Spec,vP, a position from which wh-expressions can take clausal scope. This is argued to provide a unified account of the following aspects of question formation in the language: the tendency of wh-expressions to occur in preverbal position, the possibility of overt long wh-movement, and the use of scope marking to question out of finite complements. Here, I first probe some hidden assumptions in Manetta’s account, revealing crucial gaps in the argumentation. I then discuss new facts, as well as some old ones, that challenge central components of the proposal. As a whole, the discussion establishes that the move to capture question formation in Hindi-Urdu through wh-movement to Spec,vP does not deliver the promised results.

Mahajan (1997) and Simpson and Bhattacharya (2003) analyze Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi-Urdu and Bangla as SVO. We argue against this position, drawing on rightward scrambling in Hindi-Urdu to make this point. We propose an account of the phenomenon in terms of rightward remnant-VP movement. This account differs from proposals that posit rightward movement of individual arguments as well as from the antisymmetric proposals mentioned above, which treat rightward scrambling as argument stranding. Our rightward remnant movement analysis better captures two empirical properties of rightward scrambling that remain elusive in the other accounts: the correlation between linear order and scope, and restricted scope for rightward- scrambled wh-expressions.

It is a well-accepted generalization that wh-in-situ can take unbounded scope. This squibe examines the diagnostic of paired answers on which this generalization is based and argues that a more refined understanding of the diagnostic leads to a reassessment of the claims about in-situ and scope