On wh-movement in Spanish Echo Questions

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This paper examines Spanish echo questions, an understudied phenomenon even in extensively described languages such as English. In particular, it focuses on a very particular type of echo questions, such as those made in response to a previous yes/no question (e.g. -Did you buy { mumble }?; -Did I buy WHAT?) and makes a detailed description, on the one hand, of inherent echo features, common across most languages, and, on the other, those language-specific. In particular, I argue that wh-in-situ is not the only possible option in Spanish EQs in order to get a proper, echo interpretation. In addition, I offer some evidence from Spanish data in favour of a particular syntactic structure underlying this sort of questions (Sobin 2010).Keywords. wh-movement; wh-in-situ; echo questions; discourse RESUMEN. En este artículo se examinan las preguntas de eco en español, que constituyen un fenómeno poco estudiado incluso en aquellos idiomas que han sido extensivamente descritos (por ejemplo, inglés). Este artículo, además, presta especial atención a un tipo de preguntas de eco muy particular, como aquellas que se producen en respuesta a una interrogativa polar (p.ej, -¿Has comprado { xxx }? -¿Que si he comprado QUÉ?). En el estudio se ofrece una detallada descripción, por un lado, de las características generales de las preguntas de eco, comunes entre diferentes lenguas, y, por otro lado, características propias de las preguntas de eco en español. En concreto, se argumenta que la opción con el pronombre qu-in situ no es la única en las preguntas de eco en español, sino que este también puede desplazarse a diferentes posiciones dentro de la oración. Adicionalmente, se demuestra que español ofrece un interesante argumento a favor de una estructura sintáctica particular que caracteriza este tipo de oraciones interrogativas (Sobin 2010).Palabras clave. movimiento qu-; qu-in situ; preguntas de eco; discurso IntroductionEcho wh-questions (hereafter wh-EQs) are generally used in immediate response to an utterance to request for repetition or to express speaker's surprise or amazement at some aspect of the utterance's content. This type of questions is traditionally considered as a counterpoint to standard assumptions about interrogative syntax. The few existent syntactic and pragmatic studies on EQs have argued that they do not exhibit overt wh-movement (see Noh 1998;Iwata 2003; den Dikken 2003;Fiengo 2007;Sobin 2010; a.o.). In effect, it has been observed for English that EQs seem to be immune to the obligatory wh-movement and the consequent T-to-C verb raising, as illustrated in (1a). EQs can also apparently violate Superiority effects when containing more than one wh-word, as shown in (1b) (hereafter the echo-introduced wh-phrases appear in small caps):

The Preposition Stranding in IRAQI Arabic Sluicing Conditions and Generalization

“…Stjepanović conducted a research in 2008 on whether it is possible in Serbo-Croatian, a non-prepositive language. She reached the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to contradict Ross' original claim (Chernova, 2017). She found however that in Croatian serbo-sluicing a preposition might be either lost or removed from a sentence.…”

“…In conventional English language, many sources find it reasonable. The major literature filled with the so-called final prepositions from Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, and King James interpretations of the Bible (Chernova, 2017). Mignon Fogarty says that almost all grammarists confident that, at least in certain cases, it is fine to end a sentence with such as prepositions (Duguine & Irurtzun, 2014).…”

French and Spanish wh-interrogatives with and without wh

“…is much less restricted in this regard (for French and Spanish, cf. Chang, 1997;Cheng and Rooryck, 2000;Mathieu, 2004;Myers, 2007;Boucher, 2010;Hamlaoui, 2011;Kaiser and Quaglia, 2015;Chernova, 2017;Biezma, 2018;Rosemeyer, 2018b;Larrivée, 2019;Garassino, 2022). In Spanish, the use of in-situ-wh-interrogatives is typically infelicitous in "New Topic information requests" (Rosemeyer, 2018b;, which serve to establish a new topic in a conversation (5a).…”

Intonation correlates of canonical and non-canonical wh-in-situ questions in Spanish

“…Although non-canonical echo questions have been considered a non-syntactic phenomenon (Adger 2003, Carnie 2007, recent work argues for syntactic analyses to account for the properties of echo questions in English and Spanish (including the COMP FREEZING EFFECT) (Sobin 2010, Chernova 2013, 2017. Focusing on Spanish, Chernova (2013) and Reglero & Ticio (2013) show that non-canonical in-situ questions differ semantically, pragmatically, and syntactically from canonical questions (see Section 1).…”

“…[8] For other potential positions of wh-phrases in non-canonical questions in Spanish (with different degrees of acceptability), see the discussion in Contreras (1999), Chernova (2017), and Section 2.2. Cross-linguistically, surprise echo wh-phrases can also appear sentence-initially, as discussed in Pagotto for bare wh-phrases (Munaro & Obenauer 1999, Obenauer 2004, 2006.…”