33.310, Books: Why is ‘Why’ Unique?: Soare (ed.)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-310. Wed Jan 26 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.310, Books: Why is ‘Why’ Unique?: Soare (ed.)

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Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 08:59:59
From: Birgit Sievert [Birgit.Sievert at degruyter.com]
Subject: Why is ‘Why’ Unique?: Soare (ed.)

 


Title: Why is ‘Why’ Unique? 
Subtitle: Its Syntactic and Semantic Properties 
Series Title: Studies in Generative Grammar  

Publication Year: 2021 
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
	   https://cloud.newsletter.degruyter.com/mouton
	

Book URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110675160/html 


Editor: Gabriela Soare

Electronic: ISBN:  9783110675160 Pages: 324 Price: U.S. $ 137.99
Hardback: ISBN:  9783110675115 Pages: 324 Price: U.S. $ 137.99


Abstract:

The book considers the behaviour of this peculiar wh-element across many
different languages, including Ewe, Trevisan, Italian, Basque, German, Dutch,
Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Hebrew. In ten original chapters, the authors
explore various aspects of why-questions, such as the way why interacts with
V2 constructions in Basque, with a subject clitic in Trevisan or how its
morpho-syntactic make-up determines its merge position in Ewe, to mention but
a few. Furthermore, a clear-cut distinction is established between high and
low reason adverbials which are subsequently examined in why-stripping
environments in Dutch.

Beyond why proper, the book explores a special class of wh-expressions in some
in-situ languages which give rise to unexpected why-construals with a touch of
whining force. The objective is to explain the unusual syntactic position of
these wh-expressions as well as their association with peculiar pragmatics.
The questions are addressed for Cantonese: are what-initial sentences genuine
questions? To what extent are Cantonese what-initial sentences similar to
how-initial sentences in Mandarin? Beside these what-as-why questions, a
special class of rhetorical questions, the doubly-marked interrogatives in
Hebrew, come under scrutiny.

Why is ‘why’ unique also concerns the interface with prosody and several
experimental studies investigate precisely this aspect.
 



Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Semantics
                     Syntax


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=157173




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