Does Wh-in-Situ License Parasitic Gaps?

Abstract

It has been assumed that wh-in-situ does not license parasitic gaps (PGs) (Engdahl 1983). Some researchers, such as Nissenbaum (1999) and Kim (2001), argue against this hypothesis and propose that wh-in-situ is potentially capable of licensing PGs. Kim specifically predicts that the wh-phrases in wh-in-situ languages can license PGs. But Kim also mention that this prediction is empirically difficult to test, since those languages known to lack syntactic wh-movement, such as Chinese and Japanese, permit ''empty resumptive pronouns in argument positions, and it is thus difficult to determine whether an empty category in an argument position is a PG or an empty pronominal (Kim 2001). In this squib, I argue that Kim's prediction does not hold. In particular, I will show that (a) wh-in-situ in Chinese does not license PGs, and (b) PGs are indeed attested in Chinese, and they must be licensed by syntactic wh-movement.