Wh‐InterrogativesIn Ancient Greek Disentangling Focus‐ AndWh‐Movement*

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the problem of information structure in ancient Greek direct constituent questions from the perspective ofwh‐placement. It begins with the observation thatwh‐items are intrinsically focused and that typologically,wh‐placement is predictable based on the focusing properties in some languages, such as Indonesian (in situstrategy) and Basque or Hungarian (focus position strategy), but not in others, such as English (specificwh‐position strategy). Ancient Greek has multiple ways to express narrow focusing, e.g.,in situor in a preverbal devoted position. Puzzlingly, with respect towhPs, the former way is only marginally attested and there is no good evidence for the latter way. Instead, based on syntactic and prosodic tests, we show that ancient Greek offers a third strategy, in which a high position in the structure is available. Nevertheless, when this result is recast in the framework of Phase Theory, the tests ofwh‐duplication and stranding indicate thatwhPs must go through all three positions, receiving their argument functionin situ, checking their focus feature preverbally and verifying theirwh‐feature in the high position. The specificity of ‘why’ questions is addressed along the way.