Abstract
In this paper I argue for a restriction on certain types of LF movement, which I call ‘wh-related LF movement’. Evidence comes from a number of wh-in-situ constructions in German, such as the scope-marking construction and multiple questions. For semantic reasons, the in situ element in those constructions has to move at LF to either a position reserved for wh-phrases, or even higher up in the structure. The restriction (the Minimal Quantified Structure Constraint, MQSC) is that an intervening quantified expression blocks this movement. In the case of every, the MQSC leads to an unambiguously distributive interpretation of the question. In the case of all other intervening operators, including negation, it leads to ungrammaticality.
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This paper is largely based on Beck 1993, which in turn is a largely unchanged version of my M.A. thesis (May 1993, Universität Tübingen). I would like to thank Marga Reis and Arnim von Stechow, who supervised the original paper. I am also grateful to Steve Abney, Franz d'Avis, Daniel Büring, Miriam Butt, Thilo Götz, Tilman N. Höhle, Shin-Sook Kim, Uli Lutz, Gereon Müller, Renate Musan, Jürgen Pafel, Susanne Riehemann, Bernhard Schwarz, Susanne Trissler, and Hubert Truckenbrodt, as well as to audiences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and MIT. Special thanks to two anonymous NALS reviewers and to Irene Heim for extensive and important comments on the prefinal version.
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Beck, S. Quantified structures as barriers for LF movement. Nat Lang Seman 4, 1–56 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00263536
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00263536