Complementation and the Scope of Wh in Bengali

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is first to give an outline of Bengali clause structure and clausal complementation in particular, and then to relate the findings of that investigation to the theory of operator movement that has been developed in the previous chapters.1 Bengali is a strict head final language, but it has one type of finite complement that can only appear in extraposed position. On the other hand, Bengali is a language which, like many head final languages, does not exhibit overt Wh-movement. As such it is similar to Chinese, Japanese and Korean all of which have received much attention in generative linguistics in recent years. Bengali is interesting in its own right, however, because it does not have, in the normal case, a scope marker that indicates the scope of the Wh-element; furthermore it can make use of other strategies for question formation which do look like scope marking and overt movement. Since Bengali allows for clausal complements to appear on either side of the verb, it can serve as an interesting testing ground for our theory. Assuming that a Wh-phrase unmoved in the syntax has to undergo movement to a scope position at the level of LF, our theory predicts that extraposed clausal complements only allow narrow scope readings, while complements in canonically selected position allow wide scope readings as well. Evidence that supports this prediction does not only come from Bengali, but also from various related Indo-Aryan languages. Crucially, we will show that the scope of the Wh-operator is constrained by the orientation of the verb that selects the complement containing the Wh-phrase. This will provide additional and hitherto unexplored evidence in favor of LF as a genuinely syntactic level of representation. The pattern found in Bengali will be shown to be very similar to the one found in German.