Re: THEORY: two questions

Matt:
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> >> Does this constraint also apply to languages where wh-words aren't fronted?
> >
> >Surely not, because it doesn't apply to English:
> >
> >   I wonder who ate bread and what.
> >   According to modern chemistry, lead and which other element are dangerous
> >     when inhaled?
>
> I find the first of your example sentences ungrammatical.
I wonder why that is.

How about:
    We wondered who and Madonna would make a nice couple.

> The second one is good, though.  It's been noted that echo questions (a.k.a.
> surprise questions, quiz-show questions),
One of my bugbears is treating quizshows as echoes.

> in which the wh-phrase is not fronted, do not obey
> the same kinds of locality constraints as regular wh-questions, where the
> wh-phrase is fronted.  This suggests that things like the Coordinate
> Structure Constraint are constraints on movement per se, rather than, say,
> constraints on embedding/processing/whatever.
Quite so. My second sentence is Quizshow, and this would therefore
suggest that LF/covert movement is not, strictly speaking, movement, in
English at least.


BTW, I have thought about your point (that there is clear functional
motivation for violations of the CSC and hence the CSC has to be seen
as positively motivated by nonfunctional principles), and I cannot
muster any decent reasons for disagreeing with you...:)

Eric:
> At 10:23 PM 4/2/2000 +0100, And wrote:
> > > Does this constraint also apply to languages where wh-words
> aren't fronted?
> >
> >Surely not, because it doesn't apply to English:
> >
> >    I wonder who ate bread and what.
>
> I haven't been able to parse this yet. What's it supposed to mean?
Something close to "I wonder who ate bread together with what". I
agree it's not very good.

>
> >    According to modern chemistry, lead and which other element are dangerous
> >      when inhaled?
>
> I was thinking of this kind of example too, but this sounds somewhat
> informal to me, though I'm not sure why. I guess maybe it's because the
> word order isn't changed -- you could just as easily say "Lead and neon are
> dangerous when inhaled" (same word order, though I don't know if neon's
> really the answer :D )
Yes. I thought this is the sort of thing Tim was asking about: lgs where
the wh phrase remains "in situ" rather than being fronted.

--And.