Questions and Answers in Embedded Contexts

320 Pages·2002·23.407 MB·English

by  Utpal Lahiri

OXFORD
LINGUISTICS
Questions and Answers
in Embedded Contexts
UTPAL LAHIRI
■
fl
c
A
1
■ W⅜r -JL X * 'L ⅛ ‰⅛⅛ JL>3*W⅛feΛ⅞
OXFORD STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS

Questions and Answers
in Embedded Contexts
Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics
General editors
David Adger, University of York
Hagit Borer, University of Southern California
Advisory editors
Stephen Anderson, Yale University
Gennaro Chierchia, University of Milan
Rose-Marie Dechaine, University of British Columbia
Elan Dresher, University ofToronto
James Higginbotham, University of Southern California
Pat Keating, University of California, Los Angeles
Ruth Kempson, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
James McCloskey, University of California, Santa Cruz
Gillian Ramchand, University of Oxford
Maria-Luisa Zubizarreta, University of Southern California
This series provides a new forum for cutting-edge work in theoretical linguistics. Its
focus will be on the interfaces between the subcomponents of grammar and between
grammar and other components of the mind. The books will be accessible at post­
graduate level, and will be published simultaneously in hardback and paperback
editions.
PUBLISHED
i The Syntax of Silence:
Sluicing, Islands, and Identity in Ellipsis
by Jason Merchant
2 Questions and Answers in Embedded Contexts
by Utpal Lahiri
IN PREPARATION
The Ecology of English Noun-Noun Compounding
by Ray JackendofJ
Phonetics, Phonology, and Cognition
edited by Jacques Durand and Bernard Laks
Questions and Answers
in Embedded Contexts
U L
tpal ahiri
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
Dares Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi
Paris Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto
with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
By Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Utpal Lahiri 2002
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data applied for
ISBN 0-19-824133-x
ISBN 0-19-924652-1 (pbk.)
13579108642
Typeset in AGaramond
by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
T.J. International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
General Preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
List of Abbreviations ix
1 Introduction ι
2 A Brief Survey of Some Issues in the Semantics of Questions 4
2.1 Introduction 4
2.2 Questions and Answers 5
2.3 Embedded Interrogatives as Open Sentences 23
2.4 Interrogatives and Context 55
2.5 Summary 61
3 Quantificational Variability I: Adverbial Modification of
Embedded Interrogatives 62
3.1 Introduction 62
3.2 Quantificational Variability (QVE) in Embedded
Interrogatives 63
3.3 Pair-list Questions/Families ofQuestions/Higher-Order
Questions 119
3.4 Focus-Affected Readings and QVE 131
3.5 Embedded Interrogatives Whose Answer Sets Are Not PCAs 136
3.6 Strong, Weak, and Weaker Exhaustiveness 148
3.7 Groenendijk and Stokhof (1992; 1994): A Comparison 163
3.8 Summary 169
Appendix 1 170
Appendix 2 173
Appendix 3 176
Appendix 4 181
vi Contents
4 Embedded Interrogatives and Plurality 184
4.1 Introduction 184
4.2 Semidistributive Readings of Embedded Interrogatives 185
4.3 Why Semidistributive Readings are Interesting 191
4.4 Schwarzschild (1996) and Semidistributivity 195
4.5 Questions and Answers Revisited 198
4.6 Semidistributive Readings of (Plural) Embedded
Interrogatives and Declaratives 203
4.7 Some Problems and Open Questions About Plural
Embedded Interrogatives and Quantificational Variability:
Glimpses Beyond 215
4.8 Summary and Conclusions 220
5 Quantificational Variability II: Adverbial Modification of
Interrogative-Embedding Predicates 221
5.1 Introduction 221
5.2 Adverbial Modification of Interrogative-Embedding
Predicates 222
5.3 Adverbial Modification of Interrogative-Embedding
Predicates vs. Adverbial Modification of Embedded
Interrogatives 230
5.4 Summary 242
6 The Syntax of Embedded Interrogatives and the Lexical
Semantics of Interrogative-Embedding Predicates 243
6.1 Introduction 243
6.2 Selection of Interrogative Complements 244
6.3 Factivity and the Ability to Take Interrogative Complements 259
6.4 Spanish Interrogatives and Complement Selection 263
6.5 Embedded Interrogatives and Verb Classes 284
6.6 Conclusions 291
References 293
Index 303
Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics
General Preface
The theoretical focus of this series is on the interfaces between subcomponents
of the human grammatical system and the closely related area of the interfaces
between the different subdisciplines of linguistics. The notion of‘interface’ has
become central in grammatical theory (for instance, in Chomsky’s recent
Minimalist Program) and in linguistic practice: work on the interfaces between
syntax and semantics, syntax and morphology, phonology and phonetics, etc.
has led to a deeper understanding of particular linguistic phenomena and of
the architecture of the linguistic component of the mind/brain.
The series will cover interfaces between core components of grammar,
including syntax/morphology, syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology, syntax/
pragmatics, morphology/phonology, phonology/phonetics, phonetics/speech
processing, semantics/pragmatics, intonation/discourse structure as well as
issues in the way that the systems of grammar involving these interface areas are
acquired and deployed in use (including language acquisition, language dys­
function, and language processing). It will demonstrate, we hope, that proper
understandings of particular linguistic phenomena, languages, language
groups, or inter-language variations all require reference to interfaces.
The series is open to work by linguists of all theoretical persuasions and
schools of thought. A main requirement is that authors should write so as to be
understood by colleagues in related subfields of linguistics and by scholars in
cognate disciplines.
We are pleased to present the second volume in the the series. Utpal Lahiri
addresses the question of the structure of the interface between syntax and
semantics, focusing on the ways in which embedded questions are interpreted
by the semantic component of the grammar, and the ramifications that this has
for the configuration of the relationships between syntactic representations
and semantic interpretation.
David Adger
Hagit Borer
Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received from various individ­
uals whose help has been crucial to the development of the ideas presented
here, as well as those who have commented on or presented (sometimes diffi­
cult) challenges to the claims made in this work: Irene Heim, James Higgin­
botham, David Pesetsky, Barry Schein, Veneeta Dayal, Diana Cresti, Anna
Szabolcsi, Sigrid Beck, Yael Sharvit, Roger Schwarzschild, Gennaro Chierchia,
Alexander Williams, Tim Stowell, Friederike Moltmann and Arnim von
Stechow. Parts of this book grew out of my MIT doctoral dissertation, and I
thank my committee members Irene Heim, James Higginbotham, and David
Pesetsky for the help they rendered in that process. Special thanks must also go
to Barry Schein for encouragement as well as for asking difficult questions
about the work presented here. I wish I could have heeded all his suggestions
and answered all his questions: it would have been a much better work if I had.
An earlier version of parts of Chapter 3 of the book appeared as an article in
Linguistics and Philosophy, and I thank Kluwer Academic Publishers for per­
mission to have that material included in this book. I thank Linguistics and
Philosophy editors Polly Jacobson, Anna Szabolcsi, and two anonymous review­
ers for very illuminating and important commentary. In fact, it was the com­
ments of one of the reviewers that led me to look at the interpretation of plural
interrogatives in the context of plural expressions more generally, in much
greater depth than I had done earlier, a process that directly led to Chapter 4.
Most of this work was completed at the University of California-Irvine,
beginning with a sabbatical in the Fall of 1995. I wish to thank in particular,
James Huang, Naoki Fukui, Lisa Cheng, Bernard Tranel, Moira Yip and
Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria for being great colleagues and for making my life
easier. Last but not least, I must acknowledge the help I have received in
ways too numerous to mention from someone who is not a linguist at all but a
colleague at UCI and a dear friend without whom this book could not have
seen the light of day: John Dinardo.
I dedicate this book to my parents, with love.