Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: THEORY: two questions

From:Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...>
Date:Monday, April 3, 2000, 17:24
>At 03:17 PM 4/1/2000 -0600, Matt Pearson wrote: >>My favourite example of a "decidedly non-functional" feature of grammar >>is the constraint which says that a wh-phrase may not move out of >>one half of a coordinate structure--i.e. the ungrammaticality of sentences >>such as "Who did you see and Bill?". There doesn't seem to be any >>obvious communicative reason for the coordinate structure constraint. >>Sentences like "Who did you see and Bill?" are not especially difficult >>to process (no more so than many other constructions which are judged >>grammatical). And yet, in every language that I'm aware of where this >>phenomenon has been tested, such sentences are judged ungrammatical, >>and are rarely if ever produced spontaneously. I find it hard to believe >>that the coordinate structure constraint is the product of functional >>parameters or darwinian selectional pressures. It just appears to be an >>arbitrary side-effect of language design. > >Does this constraint also apply to languages where wh-words aren't fronted?
Apparently so. I seem to remember reading that in Chinese, where wh-words remain in situ, the coordinate structure constraint is respected. In Chinese, wh-questions are systematically ambiguous in terms of their function. A question like "John visited who" can be interpreted *either* as a regular question, equivalent to a fronted-wh question in English ("Who did John visit?") *or* an echo question, equivalent to a non-fronted-wh question in English ("John visited WHO?!"). A question like "John visited who and Bill", however, cannot be interpreted as a regular question; it only sounds good as an echo question (i.e. "John visited WHO and Bill?"), suggesting that whatever principle blocks movement out of a coordinate structure in English is also operating in Chinese (perhaps as a constraint on 'covert movement', for those who believe in such things). Matt.