Interrogative Possessors and the Problem with Pied-piping in Chol

Abstract

In this squib, I present new data from possessive phrases in Chol (Mayan) and discuss the problem they present for standard analyses of pied-piping (see Heck 2004 and references cited therein). I argue that a theory of pied-piping in which features of a wh-word ‘‘percolate’’ up to a higher maximal projection is unable to straightforwardly account for the ordering facts found in interrogative possessive constructions in Chol (also described for Tzotzil (Aissen 1996) and San Dionicio Zapotec (Broadwell 2001)). I will show that in certain derivations, feature percolation would have to both occur and not occur from the same wh-word at different stages in a single derivation. A derivation in which percolation happens consistently at each step results in ungrammaticality.