Exclusivity! Wh-fronting is not optional wh-movement in Colloquial French

This article revisits the long-standing issue of the alternation betweenwh-in-situandwh-ex-situquestions in French in the light of diglossia and cross-linguistic data. A careful preliminary examination of the numerouswh-structures in Metropolitan French leads us to focus on Colloquial French, which undoubtedly displays bothwh-in-situandwh-ex-situquestions. Within this dataset,wh-ex-situquestions without theest-ce que‘is it that’ marker are more permissive thanin-situregarding weak-islandhood and superiority. In a Relativized Minimality framework, we suggest thatwh-ex-situitems bear an additional feature, which permits them to bypass these constraints. Colloquial French is thus awh-in-situlanguage that allows forwh-ex-situunder specific conditions, like otherwh-in-situlanguages. Hence we argue against free variation and claim thatwh-fronting is not driven by awh-feature, but by another feature. Exploring the contexts wherewh-ex-situis licensed, we highlight a type of non-exhaustive contrast specific to questions, namely Exclusivity, and provide a formalization. The article therefore also contributes to the larger debate on information structure in questions.