Abstract
The mainstream literature on the Romance dialects of northern Italy has explained the morphosyntax of clause-internal wh-elements in answer-seeking interrogatives as either the result of interrogative movement into the lower portion of the high left periphery (Munaro et al. 2001, Poletto & Pollock 2015, a.o.), or as a canonical instance of scope construal (Manzini & Savoia 2005;2011). New empirical evidence from Romance suggests that there is more at stake in the computation of wh-interrogatives than we used to think, and that neither of the existing approaches to northern Italian ‘wh-in situ’ can be maintained. Here, I argue that northern Italian dialects and Asian languages are, at least in this respect, more similar than we originally thought, and then I offer a new, derivationally economic and cross-linguistically supported understanding of the morphosyntax of northern Italian wh-in situ: the theory of wh-to-foc. Accordingly, all cross-linguistic core properties of this phenomenon can be attributed to different combinations of the setting of universal micro-parameters related to the interrogative movement of wh-elements.
Highlights
Types of wh-in situIt is commonly assumed that, in answer-seeking interrogatives, the phenomenon of wh-in situ comprises two major types. The first type, usually referred to as ‘pure’
When parké is externally-merged in the embedded HLP and extracted into the matrix HLP, passage through SpecFin is present and subject-clitic inversion (SCLI) is triggered. Empirical evidence of this type suggests that overt interrogative movement through SpecFin is needed to have SCLI: in eastern Trevisan matrix wh-questions with a clause-internal wh-element, obligatory SCLI witnesses the presence of overt interrogative movement to the HLP, which can be understood as in (59)
Cross-linguistically, the low movement of both wh-elements and foci is a robust phenomenon that has been almost completely disregarded in the literature on Romance, with the notable exception of Kato’s (2013) analysis of Brazilian Portuguese and a few mentions of the role played by Foc in the derivation of interrogatives (Belletti 2006, Manzini 2012, Badan & Crocco 2021)
Summary
It is commonly assumed that, in answer-seeking interrogatives, the phenomenon of wh-in situ comprises two major types. The first type, usually referred to as ‘pure’. When the post-focal constituents are non-clitic right-dislocated, all binding relations requiring c-command are excluded In this respect, note that in eastern Trevisan, the unfelicitous IO>DO and ADV>DO orders in the declaratives in (7) and (8) become possible in case of contrastive focalisation of the first element of the pair. My claim that the movement in (25) is driven by [focus] followed the observation that in eastern Trevisan, contrastive foci surface clause-internally and naturally higher than their external-merge position, as in (26) and (27). Son dàa al ʧirko SABO, no jɛri am goneF to.the circus Saturday NEG yesterday Orders such as those in (26b) and (27b) suggest that contrastive foci target a focal projection right below the one targeted by the past participle in eastern Trevisan, i.e., in the LLP, on a par with wh-elements. What I call ‘focus’ here is a broad label that refers to distinct focal phenomena
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