The current study used headmounted eyetracking to examine the time course and nature of processing filler-gap relations in WH-questions, and the role of verb argument frame information. Subjects listened to a short narrative while viewing pictures of entities mentioned in the story. At the end of the story, they were required to answer an auditorily presented question; eye movements in response...

This study examined the processing of Japanese wh-questions with preposed (scrambled) vs. in-situ (canonical SOV word order) wh-objects, and of yes/no-questions with scrambled vs. in-situ demonstrative objects. Questions with scrambled objects elicited bilateral slow anterior negative potentials between filler and gap. Scrambled demonstratives elicited P600 effects following the filler and (L)A...

This paper is a phonetic study of prosody of wh-words in whquestions, yes/no-questions and echo questions in Standard Chinese. The production data from 4 speakers show that there is a prosodic difference of wh-words and the corresponding VPs between different question types. Wh-words in whquestions are the focus of sentence, whereas in yes/noquestions, VPs are the focus. The focused constituent...

In this paper, we present a new approach to the syntax and semantics of wh-questions. On the basis of an appropriate type hierarchy whose members model contributions of lexical items to sentence mood, we introduce a head-interrogative schema that licences wh-sentences syntactically and contributes the semantic interrogative operator. This syntactic basis allows the compositional construction of...

Despite the a priori desiratum of assimilating the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions in Japanese to that in English, empirical evidence shows that overt displacement of wh-phrases in Japanese is not the same as overt wh-movement in English. The syntax of wh-phrases in Japanese is essentially the same as that of non-wh-phrases. Failure of scope reconstruction in certain cases is not ...

The present paper reports an analysis of correct wh-question production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors in one child's early wh-question data (age 2;3.4 to 4;10.23). It is argued that two current movement rule accounts (DeVilliers, 1991; Valian, Lasser & Mandelbaum, 1992) cannot explain the patterning of early wh-questions. However, the data can be explained in terms of the child's knowl...

Abstract The aim of this study was to examine the acquisition and processing multiple who - which -questions in Romanian that display ordering constraints involve exhaustivity. Toward aim, typically developing children (mean age 8.3) adults participated a self-paced listening experiment simultaneously investigated online offline comprehension wh-questions. manipulated type wh-phrase ( / ) order...