Wh-less degree questions

WH-questions without WH-words

Such WH-less WH-Questions (let us call them WLWQs) are very often used as questions in written tests or uttered by quizmasters in quizzes, though not often in daily conversations. 2 I assume that, despite their restriction in the range of registers, WLWQs are also constrained by the knowledge of human language. To my knowledge, there has been no previous research on WLWQs in the field. This pap...

Focus in Greek wh-questions

We present an analysis of multiple focus sentences in Greek. On an empirical level, we show that the current generalisation in the Greek literature that multiple focus is unavailable in Greek is too strong as it stands. What is unavailable is multiple maximal foci in sentences where one focused item has moved to the left periphery. We view the unavailability of multiple foci in such sentences a...

Branching Quantifiers, Functional WH and List Answers of WH-Questions

Wh-questions are answered with a list of pairs when quantified expressions such as "every professor" interact with wh-phrases. The theory of branching quantification is extended to wh-quantifier interactions to account for the question reading associated with list answers. It is also shown that there are several phenomena which would be better explained when functional variables are incorporate...

The intonation of echo wh-questions

The acoustic characteristics of German echo questions are explored in a production study. It is shown that there are prosodic differences (F0, duration, intensity) between echo questions signalling a high level of emotional arousal, echo questions signalling that the speaker did not understand the previous utterance, and questions requesting completely new information. The findings are largely ...

ADVERBS IN MANDARIN WH - QUESTIONS Xin - xian