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Focus intervention effects in Mandarin multiple wh-questions

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate focus intervention effects in Mandarin multiple wh-questions, showing that such effects arise only if a focus particle and its focus associate intervene between the interrogative complementizer C[Q] and one or more in-situ wh-phrases. We further show that focus intervention effects are not observed when a focus particle takes all the in-situ wh-phrases in its c-command domain as its focus associates. Adopting Pesetsky and Torrego’s (in: Karimi et al. (eds.) Phrasal and clausal architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretation, in honor of Joseph E. Emonds, 2007) feature-sharing view of Agree, we propose that the dependency between C[Q] and an in-situ wh-phrase can be reduced to an Agree relation. In addition, adopting Rizzi’s (in: Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures, 2004) refined version of Relativized Minimality, we propose that focus intervention effects are induced by the presence of a Focus Phrase that prohibits C[Q] from establishing proper dependencies with the in-situ wh-phrases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

    Haoze Li

  2. Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Candice Chi-Hang Cheung

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  1. Haoze Li
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  2. Candice Chi-Hang Cheung
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Correspondence to Candice Chi-Hang Cheung.

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Li, H., Cheung, C.CH. Focus intervention effects in Mandarin multiple wh-questions. J East Asian Linguist 24, 361–382 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-015-9134-1

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