<i>WH</i>‐scope marking in Slavic

Abstract

This paper investigates ‘ wh ‐scope marking’ questions (cf. van Riemsdijk 1982) in two Slavic languages, Polish and Russian, from the syntactic and semantic viewpoints. On the basis of Slavic, we propose a syntactic analysis of wh ‐scope marking according to which the wh ‐scope marker (a wh ‐phrase in the matrix clause of a wh ‐scope marking question) forms a constituent with the clause containing the ‘true’ wh ‐phrase. The resulting logical form is shown to provide for a straightforward compositional analysis of wh ‐scope marking, in the framework of Hamblin (1973) augmented by Dayal's (1994ff) proposal that the clause containing the ‘real’ wh ‐phrase is a restriction on the existentially quantifying wh ‐scope marker. The present analysis supports the simplest view of the syntax‐semantics interface, while employing the minimum necessary technology (e.g., no resort to indices, D‐ and S‐structure as significant levels, or X‐bar theory, unlike in previous accounts) to ensure the continuum of the two computational components.