On the Structure of Why-VP Questions in English
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The aim of this paper is to examine the syntactic structure of why-VP questions in English like Why get vaccinated? Why-VP has been reported to exhibit unique properties: (i) There is no overt subject nor tense marking, (ii) it cannot be embedded, and (iii) it can be used not only as a genuine information-seeking question but also as a rhetorical question. To capture these properties, Zaitsu (2020) recently suggests that why-VP is a projection of why, but it is shown that her analysis of why as a selecting head is not unproblematic. While adopting Zaitsu’s view that why-VP can be ambiguously used, this paper suggests that there is a speech act layer above FP, a projection of F, not of why. With the proposed structure, it is argued that there are two possible positions for why to occur depending on the type of interpretation. When used as a genuine information-seeking question, why is directly merged in IntP, functioning as a question operator (Rizzi, 1997, 2001; Ko, 2005); by contrast, when used as a rhetorical question, it is adjoined to the speech act layer, modifying a speech act. It is then shown that the current analysis can readily explain why why-VP cannot be embedded, how an implicit subject can serve as a local binder, and how the interpretive type of why-VP correlates with the person feature of an implicit subject.
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine the syntactic structure of why-VP questions in English like Why get vaccinated? Why-VP has been reported to exhibit unique properties: (i) There is no overt subject nor tense marking, (ii) it cannot be embedded, and (iii) it can be used not only as a genuine information-seeking question but also as a rhetorical question. To capture these properties, Zaitsu (2020) recently suggests that why-VP is a projection of why, but it is shown that her analysis of why as a selecting head is not unproblematic. While adopting Zaitsu’s view that why-VP can be ambiguously used, this paper suggests that there is a speech act layer above FP, a projection of F, not of why. With the proposed structure, it is argued that there are two possible positions for why to occur depending on the type of interpretation. When used as a genuine information-seeking question, why is directly merged in IntP, functioning as a question operator (Rizzi, 1997, 2001; Ko, 2005); by contrast, when used as a rhetorical question, it is adjoined to the speech act layer, modifying a speech act. It is then shown that the current analysis can readily explain why why-VP cannot be embedded, how an implicit subject can serve as a local binder, and how the interpretive type of why-VP correlates with the person feature of an implicit subject.
참고문헌 (27)
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