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<DIV>A doctoral student here at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is
carrying out a crosslinguistic survey of multiple wh-questions. So far we have
not found much published material on the topic. If you are able to provide
either data or literature references, this would be much appreciated.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The following are the basic research questions.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1/ SELECTION OF MULTIPLE WH-WORDS</DIV>
<DIV> What wh-words can cooccur in a question? There are
clearly some constraints here; for example, in English, (some) wh-words that are
verb complements can cooccur but adjuncts resist the pattern; compare
"Who read what?" but "*Who read the book why?"</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2/ THE LINEAR ORDER OF MULTIPLE WH-WORDS RELATIVE TO THE REST OF THE
SENTENCE</DIV>
<DIV> Are multiple wh-words "in situ" or do they occupy some
other position?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>3/ THE LINEAR ORDER OF MULTIPLE WH-WORDS RELATIVE TO EACH OTHER</DIV>
<DIV> Do multiple wh-words that are not "in situ" have a preferred
or required order relative to each other?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>4/ DO MULTIPLE WH-QUESTIONS ALWAYS HAVE A DISTRIBUTIVE
INTERPRETATION?</DIV>
<DIV> For example, English "Who read what?" assumes more than one
subject and more than one things to read and asks about the distribution of the
reading materials over the set of subjects. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>5/ WHAT DOES IT DEPEND ON WHETHER A LANGUAGE DOES OR DOES NOT HAVE MULTIPLE
WH-QUESTIONS?</DIV>
<DIV> This is a question about typological implications linking
mutliple wh-questions to other properties of languages.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thank you.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Edith A. Moravcsik<BR>Professor of Linguistics<BR>Department of
Foreign<BR> Languages and Linguistics<BR>University of
Wisconsin-<BR> Milwaukee<BR>Milwaukee, WI
53201-0413<BR>E-mail: <A href="mailto:edith@uwm.edu">edith@uwm.edu</A><BR>Tel:
(414) 229-3068<BR>Fax: (414) 229-2741</DIV></BODY></HTML>