Scope theory revisited : lessons from pied-piping in wh-questions

Abstract

It is widely assumed that both the movement-based theory of scope and the scope-based theory of intensionality fall short in the face of empirical challenges like 'exceptional' scope out of extraction islands and the possibility of transparent/de re construals for DPs inside extraction islands. The standard response to these challenges consists in assuming that grammar makes available in-situ methods of scope-taking in addition to movement- (e.g. pointwise composition (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002; Cable, 2010), choice functions (Reinhart, 1997, 1998)) and adopting a richer representation of intensionality (e.g. in-situ binding of world/situation-denoting pronouns (Percus, 2000)). This thesis argues that a closer study of pied-piping in wh-questions reveals the true power of already-existing tools in grammar. Building on the important insight that more complex scope-takers can be recursively built (Dayal, 1994; Charlow, 2017), I advance the idea that grammar makes crucial use of pied-piping to generate meanings that would otherwise be unavailable. I argue that with pied-piping in its toolbox, grammar may not need in-situ methods of scope-taking and in-situ methods of assigning DPs a transparent/de re construal.