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Licensing long-distance wh-in-situ in Malayalam

Author(s)
Aravind, Athulya
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Abstract
It is generally thought that wh-in-situ, like overt movement, is potentially unbounded. At the same time, certain languages have been argued to disallow long-distance wh-in-situ. This paper argues that even in languages that show apparent clause-boundedness effects, wh-in-situ, like wh-movement, can in principle cross an arbitrary number of clauses. Failure to license a wh-phrase across a clause boundary, when it occurs, can be shown to result from the interaction between wh-agreement and independent operations affecting embedded clauses. Evidence will be drawn primarily from Malayalam (Dravidian), which has been argued to disallow long-distance wh-in-situ with finite embedded clauses. I will show that the relevant factor for wh-licensing is not finiteness, but Ā-movement of embedded clauses, an operation that is common with finite CPs. The core of the problem lies in the fact that interrogative C is a generalized [Ā]-probe that can interact with a number of featurally more specific goals, including the [Ā]-features on the head of the moving clause. It will be shown that this approach can account for a number of facts about Malayalam wh-question formation, including selective transparency of certain finite clauses for long-distance wh-licensing.
Date issued
2017-07
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113876
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Journal
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Citation
Aravind, Athulya. “Licensing Long-Distance Wh-in-Situ in Malayalam.” Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, vol. 36, no. 1, Feb. 2018, pp. 1–43.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0167-806X
1573-0859

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