Volume 30, Issue 4

This paper provides a unified analysis of wh-constructions in both the Spanish clausal and nominal domains. The analysis builds on recent typological research findings (cf. Cable 2010) and analyzes Spanish as a language that possesses two different Q-particles in its lexicon: a Q-particle that must agree with the wh-phrase and triggers its movement, and a Q-particle that does not agree with the wh-phrase and enters the derivation in the relevant Force (C) position. The analysis captures the distribution and locality properties of interrogative sentences in Spanish, which reveal that only wh-in-situ can appear in islands, survive blocking effects, and appear in subextraction constructions. Crucially, the only requirement for wh-in-situ in the clausal and the nominal domains (the Sentence Final Requirement) can be straightforwardly derived by the interaction of a phonological constraint, the nuclear stress assignment, and the deletion of copies of non-trivial chains created through syntactic movement at the PHON interface. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the general approach of banning optionality from the grammar.

This paper argues that să -subjunctives arise and spread in Early Modern Romanian (EMR) because of two properties: (i) să values the complementizer head (C) as unambiguously irrealis ; and (ii) the subjunctive clause is systematically phasal. The emergence of să is kept distinct from the emergence of the subjunctive in the Balkan Sprachbund, and is situated, instead, in the context of a more generalized shift in the list of EMR complementizers. The investigation resorts to cartography and addresses the issue of cross-linguistic variation in the mapping of modality at the left periphery of subjunctive clauses, which is finer-grained in EMR compared to other Romance (Balkan) languages.

Starting with the observation that focus phrases can be dichotomized on the basis of whether they are exhaustive or not, this paper shows that exhaustive focus triggers intervention effects for wh -in-situ argument questions, while non-exhaustive focus does not. Empirical data from typologically unrelated languages are cited to support this generalization; exceptional cases are argued to arise on independent grounds. No existing analysis of intervention effects takes into consideration the distinguished behaviors of exhaustive and non-exhaustive focus in terms of triggering intervention effects for wh -in-situ argument questions. I argue that with some modifications, the semantic approach which draws on the interpretation similarity between focus phrases and wh -phrases constitutes the most promising analysis. Intervention effects arise when the focus operator associated with exhaustive focus phrases unselectively evaluates both the focus semantic value and exhaustivity of the in-situ argument wh -phrase in its scope.