This article explores a phenomenon found in Berber whereby the extraction of dative arguments (of verbs, nouns and prepositions) gives rise to two occurrences of wh. One is a wh-word located in Spec,C and the other a wh-clitic in the dative form located in C (wh-clitic-doubling). Close examination reveals that the wh-word in Spec,C functions as an operator base-generated in its scope position and the dative wh-clitic in C provides it with a derivational link to the variable in the dative (...) position it binds (wh-Cliticisation). Wh-clitic-doubling and wh-Cliticisation amount to direct evidence for Cliticisation as a derivational interpretive mechanism of Grammar that obviates the need for indexing (Lebeaux 1983, Chomsky 1986, 1995). They also provide evidence for the conclusion in Kayne (1989) that Cliticisation is an instance of Head-Movement, more precisely, feature-based Head-Movement. (shrink)

Know -wh ascriptions are ubiquitous in many languages. One standard analysis of know -wh is this: someone knows-wh just in case she knows that p, where p is an answer to the question included in the wh-clause. Additional conditions have also been proposed, but virtually all analyses assume that propositional knowledge of an answer is at least a necessary condition for knowledge-wh. This paper challenges this assumption, by arguing that there are cases where we have knowledge-wh without knowledge- that of (...) an answer, for example in the cases familiar from arguments for the Extended Mind hypothesis. (shrink)

Do you know who you are? If the question seems unclear, it might owe to the notion of ‘knowing-wh’ (knowing-who, knowing-what, knowing-when, etc.). Such knowledge contrasts with ‘knowing-that’, the more familiar topic of epistemologists. But these days, knowing-wh is receiving more attention than ever, and here we will survey three current debates on the nature of knowing-wh. These debates concern, respectively, (1) whether all knowing-wh is reducible to knowing-that (‘generalized intellectualism’), (2) whether all knowing-wh is relativized to a contrast proposition (...) (‘contrastivism about knowing-wh’), and (3) whether the context-sensitivity of knowing-wh is a semantic or purely pragmatic phenomenon (‘contextualism vs. invariantism about knowing-wh’). (shrink)

This article presents a new criticisms of reductive approaches to knowledge-‘wh’ (i.e., those approaches on which whether one stands in the knowledge-‘wh’ relation to a question is determined by whether one stands in the knowledge-‘that’ relation to some answer(s) to the question). It argues in particular that the truth of a knowledge-‘wh’ attribution like ‘Janna knows where she can buy an Italian newspaper’ depends not only on what Janna knows about the availability of Italian newspapers, but on what she believes (...) about the matter. This dependence of Janna's knowledge-‘wh’ on her (possibly false) beliefs is incompatible with the reductive approach. (shrink)

This article uses a conversation analytic framework to describe a type of wh-question used to challenge a prior utterance, specifically to challenge the basis for or right to do an action done by the prior utterance. These wh-questions are able to do challenging because, rather than asking for new information, they are used to convey a strong epistemic stance of the questioner, a negative assertion. The utterances are designed as requests for an account for a prior claim or action, but (...) by conveying a negative assertion, they suggest that there is no adequate account available and, thus, that there are no grounds for the prior claim or action. The use of these questions in institutional settings can display participants' orientation to institutional goals, norms and roles, showing that institutional roles can thus be enacted, and goals accomplished, by means of practices of talk which are not, themselves, institutionally specific. (shrink)

In the framework of the minimalist program, the assumption that wh-in-situ move covertly to be assigned wide scope is infeasible. Rather, it is assumed that they must be interpretable in situ, and that syntactic conditions like ‘superiority’ are effects of economy, which restricts overt rather than covert movement of a wh-element. The remaining syntactic problem for this line of reasoning is the putative ECP effects of adverbial wh-adjuncts, which were the strongest evidence for covert movement. A serious semantic problem is (...) that the interpretative procedures which have been proposed for wh-in-situ – unselective binding or absorption – fail to capture correctly their interpretation. I will argue first that both problems are solved if the interpretation in situ employs choice functions, and it is the function variable, rather than an individual variable, which is long-distance bound by the question existential operator. Adverbial adjuncts, which cannot be interpreted via choice functions, cannot, therefore, be interpreted in situ. However, the concept of economy underlying the account of overt superiority effects requires both theoretical and empirical clarification (as it leaves some empirical problems unaddressed). I argue, following a proposal by Golan (1993), that in this case the economy considerations apply at the interface (‘interface economy’) and that they consider not only different derivations out of the same numeration, but also their semantic representation. (shrink)

The central and paradigmatic cases of knowledge discussed in philosophy involve the possession of truth. Is there in addition a distinct type of practical knowledge, which does not aim at the truth? This question is often approached through asking whether states attributed by “know-how” locutions are distinct from states attributed by “know-that”. This paper argues that the question of practical knowledge can be raised not only about some cases of “know-how” attributions, but also about some cases of so-called “know-wh” attributions; (...) and that certain features of this practical knowledge-wh put pressure on the standard analysis of know-wh. (shrink)

Much of the debate on the nature of knowing how has been concerned with whether it is to be conceived of as an ability or as the possession of propositional knowledge, perhaps in a practical form. Comparatively little has been written about knowing wh constructions and the ways in which they do or do not fit into this debate. Do such debates have any bearing on the practical concerns of the educators of professionals? This paper considers the case of Knowing (...) Wh constructions and their epistemic status with reference to their use in professional contexts. The argument to be developed is that KT and KH are distinct but closely related epistemic abilities and that in assessing professional capacity we often find them together as part of an overall professional competence. The use of KWh constructions in professional settings supports this contention, as they can occur as cases of both KT and KH, depending on context. The claim is illustrated by examining and interpreting KWh constructions in professional qualifications and interpreting them in the context of what is required to make sense of them as elements of qualifications. (shrink)

This contribution presents an outline of the current scholarly discussion of reconstruction with wh-movement, focussing on the Lebeaux Effect and wider aspects of reconstruction with wh-movement. It presents empirical problems for both the proposals based on the LE and the novel account of movement and reconstruction based on the notion of Minimal Copy. It points out that particular copies may differ not only in size but also in content. It refers to an analysis, where copies left by movement are levelled (...) with copies left by ellipsis and subject to the mechanism of Vehicle Change. An account of reconstruction including multiple copies and Vehicle Change predicts that the structural complexity of the wh-phrase and its distance from the offending c-commanding pronoun should contribute to an amelioration of Condition C in addition to the LE. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of wh-complements in Montague Grammar. We will be concerned primarily with semantics, though some remarks on syntax are made in Section 4. Questions and wh-comple ments in Montague Grammar have been studied in Hamblin (1976), Bennett (1979), Karttunen (1977) and Hauser (1978) among others. These proposals will not be discussed explicitly, but some differences with Karttunen's analysis will be pointed out along the way.

Various authors have attempted to understand knowledge-wh—or knowledge ascriptions that include an interrogative complement. I present and explain some of the analyses offered so far and argue that each view faces some problems. I then present and explain a newanalysis of knowledge-wh that avoids these problems and that offers several other advantages. Finally I raise some problems for invariantism about knowledge-wh and I argue thatcontextualism about knowledge-wh fits nicely with a very natural understanding of the nature of questions.

In most cases, a wh-question calls for an answer that names an entity in the set denoted by the extension of the wh-complement. However, evidence from questions with necessity modals and questions with collective predicates argues that sometimes a wh-question must be interpreted with a higher-order reading, in which this question calls for an answer that names a generalized quantifier. This paper investigates the distribution and compositional derivation of higher-order readings of wh-questions. First, I argue that the generalized quantifiers that (...) can serve as semantic answers to wh-questions must be homogeneously positive. Next, on the distribution of higher-order readings, I observe that questions in which the wh-complement is singular-marked or numeral-modified can be answered by elided disjunctions but not by conjunctions. I further present two ways to account for this disjunction–conjunction asymmetry. In the uniform account, these questions admit disjunctions because disjunctions may satisfy the atomicity requirement of singular-marking and the cardinality requirement of numeral modification. In the reconstruction account, the wh-complement is syntactically reconstructed, which gives rise to local uniqueness and yields a contradiction for conjunctive answers. (shrink)

On Friday the 1st and Saturday the 2nd of December 1995, the Sonderforschungsbereich 340 held a workshop entitled Syntax and Semantics of Partial Wh-Movement. This volume contains most of the papers presented there.1 One of the leading ideas underlying the workshop was that detailed investigation of the partial wh-movement construction provides an excellent test ground for checking assumptions about the syntax/semantics interface.