11.1305, Qs: Thetic/Categorical Sentences, Wh-Interrogatives

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-1305. Sat Jun 10 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.1305, Qs: Thetic/Categorical Sentences, Wh-Interrogatives

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1)
Date:  Fri, 09 Jun 2000 11:37:31 +0200
From:  Johannes Reese <reesej at uni-muenster.de>
Subject:  Argument for keeping apart thetic and categorial utterance

2)
Date:  Fri, 9 Jun 2000 11:02:55 +0200
From:  "Carsten Breul" <carsten.breul at ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject:  Rizzi's account of wh-interrogatives

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 09 Jun 2000 11:37:31 +0200
From:  Johannes Reese <reesej at uni-muenster.de>
Subject:  Argument for keeping apart thetic and categorial utterance

Hi, is there anyone who can give arguments for differentiating between
thetic and categorial sentences besides their word order in languages
other than English? The distinction has been so intuitively clear to me
that I never thought of it; but now I am teaching people who don't
"feel" the difference.

Regards,

Johannes Reese


-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 9 Jun 2000 11:02:55 +0200
From:  "Carsten Breul" <carsten.breul at ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject:  Rizzi's account of wh-interrogatives

Dear all

Rizzi (1996: 69) accounts for the ungrammaticality of
sentences like

(1) *Who Mary loves?

in the following way: In the underlying structure (2)

(2) Who C [Mary Infl loves t]

C and I are contra-indexed so that there is no chain
relation between C, I and the inflected verb. Consequently,
the [+wh] feature on _loves_  is not chain-connected to C,
and the wh-criterion, which requires a spec-head relation
between _who_ and a chain having [+wh], cannot be
satisfied.

I assume that the existence of sentences parallel to (1) in
colloquial French, .e.g.

(3) Qui tu as rencontré? (see Haegeman & Guéron 1999: 173)

does not provide a counter argument to Rizzi's suggestion.
The principal line of reasoning could be that it is
generally assumed that in French, in contrast to English,
the inflected verb is in Infl before Spell-out/at S-
structure, and that the relation between the inflected verb
in Infl and C is sufficiently local to satisfy the wh-
criterion.

Rizzi's theory can be tested, it is empirically
falsifiable. And precisely this is my question.
Do you know of any languages which are like English (and
different from French) in that checking of the Infl
features happens after Spell-out/S-structure (i.e.
covertly), but which nevertheless have interrogatives with
an initial wh-phrase preceding a subject?

I.e.: 'Subject-Aux order' should be replaced by 'preceding
a subject'.

According to Barber (1993: 252), Indian English allows for
sentences like

(4) Who you have come to see?

This may be a case in point if Indian English is like
Standard British/American English with respect to the
location of its inflected verbs at Spell-out/S-structure.
Can anyone say more about this?

References

Barber, Charles. 1993. The English language: a historical
introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haegeman, Liliane & Guéron, Jacqueline. 1999. English
Grammar: A Generative Perspective. Oxford & Malden (MA):
Blackwell.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1996. "Residual Verb Second and the Wh-
Criterion". In: Belletti, Adriana & Rizzi, Luigi (eds.).
Parameters and Functional Heads: Essays in Comparative
Syntax. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. 63-90.

Best regards,
Carsten Breul


Dr. Carsten Breul
Universitaet Duisburg
FB 3; Anglistik
47048 Duisburg
Germany
c.breul at uni-duisburg.de
or
carsten.breul at ruhr-uni-bochum.de

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