Why is ‘Why’ Unique?
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Edited by:
Gabriela Soare
About this book
Why is ‘Why’ Unique? Its Syntactic and Semantic Properties 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.
Author / Editor information
Topics
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Gabriela Soare Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Part 1: Why in a Gbe language
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Leston Chandler Buell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Part 2: Towards a cartography of high and low reason adverbials
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Caterina Bonan and Ur Shlonsky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Aritz Irurtzun Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Nicholas Catasso Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
115 |
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Norbert Corver Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Part 3: Wh-in-Situ languages: Whys, hows, and whats
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Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Part 4: Some syntactic aspects of how come
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Yoshio Endo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Part 5: A special class of why rhetorical questions: Semantics and pragmatics
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Lavi Wolf and Edit Doron Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
273 |
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Part 6: Why and the syntax-prosody interface
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Giuliano Bocci, Silvio Cruschina and Luigi Rizzi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
293 |
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Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
317 |
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Manufacturer information:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com
