Abstract
In this article we re-assess the recent analysis of interrogative Slifting (e.g., Who is a Martian, do you think?) proposed in Haddican et al. (2014). In this analysis, the two component clauses have an indirect syntactic relation to each other, and the semantic and pragmatic relationship between the “slift” question and the main clause is conceived around the notion of evidentiality. We advance an alternative proposal whereby interrogative Slifting can be construed more on a par with wh-scope marking questions attested in languages like German or Hindi. Placing interrogative Slifting alongside wh-scope marking, a more familiar and better-studied construction type, avoids certain empirical difficulties of the original analysis and paves a way toward a uniform treatment of its syntactic, semantic and interface properties.
Highlights
Slifting has for a long time remained a somewhat marginal phenomenon in the syntactic and semantic literature because it involves a parenthetical or parenthetical-like component
There is currently a steadily growing amount of literature on declarative Slifting, but much less focus is devoted on interrogative Slifting
The analysis in HHTT entails a rather loose and mediated relationship between the slift and the main clause, and in this, we believe, it retains a residue of the “parenthetical” structure
Summary
HHTT reject approaches to interrogative Slifting that involve clausal movement and/or pied-piping, including the wh-scope marking approach In their own analysis, the two clauses in interrogative Slifting sentences stand in a mutually non-c-commanding syntactic relation and “communicate” with each other via notions that were previously argued to be relevant for parentheticals, such as mood and evidentiality, supplemented by some auxiliary pragmatic principles. This is not to suggest that evidentiality plays no role in interrogative Slifting constructions It does, just like it does in the corresponding long-distance wh-questions where matrix clauses like do you believe express the speaker’s attitude towards the embedded clausal complement. Instead, that there is a tighter semantic relationship between the two clauses in interrogative Slifting, that resembles one in the wh-scope marking structure In preparation for this argument, we review a number of empirical parallels between Slifting and wh-scope marking questions that will be relevant for our alternative proposal
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