Japanese wh-phrases as operators with unspecified quantificational force

Japanese wh-expressions appear in various kinds of operator-variable structures, including wh-questions and sentences with universal and existential quantification. The nature of the operator-variable relation is determined by an associated particle, such as the question marker ka or the universal particle mo. Given this, it has been widely assumed since Kuroda (1965) that the wh-expressions are to be interpreted as variables bound by those quantificational particles. This paper argues against this prevailing view by proposing that these wh-expressions are operators with unspecified quantificational force. Building on an insight by Nishigauchi (1990), I argue that they must covertly move to positions that allow them to probe particles and to acquire specific quantificational forces from them. I demonstrate that this analysis captures the main properties of Japanese wh-expressions as well as the differences between them and their Chinese counterparts. Huang (1982) proposed a covert movement analysis for argument wh-phrases in Chinese, which was extended to Japanese, for example, in Lasnik & Saito (1984) and Richards (2001). But Tsai (1999) has convincingly shown that they are subject to unselective binding and are interpreted in situ as variables. If the analysis for Japanese in this paper is correct, it shows that Huang’s approach can be – and should be – maintained for wh-phrases in Japanese with some refinements.

The Bound Variable Hierarchy and Donkey Anaphora in Mandarin Chinese

Cheng and Huang (1996) argue that both unselective binding and E-type pronoun strategies are necessary for the interpretation of natural language sentences and claim that there exists a correspondence between two sentence types in Chinese and the two strategies, namely that the interpretation of the “wh … wh” construction (which they call “bare conditional”) employs the unselective binding strategy, while the ruguo ‘if’ and dou ‘all’ conditionals use the E-type pronoun strategy. They also suggest that there is a complementary distribution between bare conditionals and ruguo/dou conditionals in the sense that the latter allows all the NP forms, e.g. (empty) pronouns and definite NPs, except for wh-phrases in their consequent clauses, and can even have a consequent clause with no anaphoric NP in it, while the former permits only the same wh-phrase appearing in both the antecedent clause and the consequent clause. Although we agree with Cheng and Huang on the necessity of the two strategies in natural language interpretation, we see apparent exceptions to the correspondence between sentence types and interpretation strategies and the complementary distribution between wh-phrases and other NPs in bare conditionals and ruguo/dou conditionals. We think that the claimed correspondence and complementary distribution are the default or preferred patterns, or a special case of a more general picture, namely that (i) bare conditionals prefer the unselective binding strategy and the ruguo ‘if’ and dou ‘all’ conditionals, the E-type pronoun strategy; and (ii) wh-phrases are more suitable for being a bound variable, and pronouns are more suitable for being the E-type pronoun. This paper proposes a Bound Variable Hierarchy to help account for the distribution of wh-phrases and pronouns in Chinese conditionals and claims that any deviation from the preferred patterns will require additional contexts or accommodation.

Wh-in-Situ Does Not Correlate with Wh-Indefinites or Question Particles

Two theories, the Clausal Typing Hypothesis (Cheng 1991) and the unselective binding theory of wh-in-situ, have linked wh-in-situ to two other phenomena typologically: the use of a question particle, and the use of wh-words as indefinites. This article shows, through a typological survey and a detailed comparison of Passamaquoddy and Mandarin Chinese, that there is no connection between wh-in-situ and either property. Passamaquoddy uses wh-words as indefinites in all the contexts Chinese does, but it is a robust wh-movement language. Crosslinguistically, languages of all possible types are attested: most crucially, wh-in-situ languages without question particles exist, and wh-in-situ languages that do not use wh-words as indefinites also exist. In fact, most languages, regardless of whether they are wh-movement or wh-in-situ languages, have question particles, and most languages use wh-words as indefinites.

Wh-Conditionals in Vietnamese and Chinese: Against Unselective Binding

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Asymmetry of Locality

This paper deals with an old, but recurrent, topic of a certain asymmetry of in situ wh-words with respect to classical extraction domains. Huang's analysis (1982) of wh-word scope tak-ing cannot offer an empirically adequate account for this important asymmetry, apart from the conceptual problem that does not fit into the minimalist assumption of computation (Chomsky 1995). I suggest two ways of scope taking at LF: movement of way 'why' vs. unselective binding of indefi-nite wh-words by the question morpheme. I will show that scope taking of in situ wh-words along this way can nicely account for the observed asymmetry of in situ wh-words with respect to islands, conforming to the minimalist thesis of movement as a last resort.