- 324 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
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.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part 1: Why in a Gbe language
- Reason questions as a complementizer domain phenomenon: Evidence from Ewe
- Part 2: Towards a cartography of high and low reason adverbials
- On ‘why’ in situ in Northern Italian dialects: Evidence from Trevisan
- Why questions break the residual V2 restriction (in Basque and beyond)
- Is German warum so special after all?
- Why in Dutch? On why-stripping and high and low adverbials
- Part 3: Wh-in-Situ languages: Whys, hows, and whats
- On applicative Why-questions in Chinese
- What-as-Why sentences in Cantonese
- Part 4: Some syntactic aspects of how come
- How come questions and diary English
- Part 5: A special class of why rhetorical questions: Semantics and pragmatics
- Why rhetorical questions?
- Part 6: Why and the syntax-prosody interface
- On some special properties of why in syntax and prosody
- Index of subjects