An Anti-contiguity Approach to Nupe Interrogative Distribution
An Anti-contiguity Approach to Nupe Interrogative Distribution
This chapter furnishes additional support for the Anti-contiguity theory of wh- prosody by demonstrating that it derives two surprising and mysterious asymmetries of Nupe wh- syntax. The first asymmetry concerns the fact that in embedded clauses the structurally lowest wh- item in a multiple wh- question may not appear in-situ. The second asymmetry concerns the availability of embedded non-interrogative focus and the impossibility of embedded interrogative focus. Both of these asymmetries are argued to be explainable in terms of the Anti-contiguity ban on contiguous wh- phrasing with overt C at the Intonational Phrase level, given that overt embedded C does not introduce an Intonational Phrase boundary in Nupe, as in Wasa and Asante Twi. As a consequence, no Intonational Phrase boundary insulates focused embedded wh- items from overt embedding complementizers, therefore running afoul of the Anti-contiguity prohibition.
Keywords: wh- in-situ, multiple wh- question, partial wh- movement, embedded question, wh- prosody, anti-contiguity, syntax-phonology interface, Nupe
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
