Indirect scope marking again: a case for generalized question formation

Abstract

In this paper we describe and analyse a particular scope marking construction that has not received attention in the generative literature so far: scope marking into relative and noun-associate clauses, which we will refer to as adjunct scope marking. In this type of scope marking system, a wh-element in an embedded adjunct clause takes matrix scope when it occurs in a clause that syntactically and semantically modifies a wh-phrase in the matrix. These facts provide unambiguous evidence for the indirect dependency approach to wh-scope marking advocated by Dayal (1994, Natural Language Semantics, 2, 137–190; 2000, Scope Marking: Cross linguistic variation in direct dependency. In U. Lutz, G. Muller, & A. V. Stechow (Eds.), Scope Marking (pp. 157–193). Amsterdam: John Benjamins), where the embedded question provides a semantic restriction for the matrix wh-element. Dayal’s theory will be extended to provide a compositional analysis of these constructions. The extended approach argues for a generalization of the question-formation procedure to different clause types, as first advocated in Sternefeld (2001, Partial movement constructions, pied piping, and higher order choice functions. In C. Fery, & W. Sternefeld (Eds.), Audiatur Vox Sapientiae. A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow (pp. 473–486). Berlin: Akademieverlag).