Colloquium 9/24 – Hubert Truckenbrodt
Date: Friday, September 24, 2010
Time: 3:30-5:00PM
Place: 32-141
Speaker: Hubert Truckenbrodt (ZAS Berlin)
Title: Wh is F: prosody and semantics
Abstract:
Why do many languages show a natural class of focused phrases and wh-phrases, by way of movement to the same position or by marking of both by focus markers? In focus (Rooth 1992), a scope operator ~C induces the calculation of contextually relevant alternatives. The focus feature F marks the positions in which the alternatives vary. In questions, the scope operator Q induces the calculation of the question’s meaning as a set of answers. The feature wh marks the position in which the answers vary. I argue, extending suggestions of Beck 2006, that the feature Wh in questions is really the feature F. Its contribution in questions is thus not related to information structure, but part of the meaning of the interrogative. In the prosodic part of the talk, I argue with Japanese questions, English and German echo questions and multiple questions that this F in questions is really the stress-attracting feature F that we know from its use in information structure. However, the new extended use of F will also bring into view a systematic exception of its stress-attracting behavior, namely the presence of a checking-relation of a wh-word with the Q-marker. I suggest that ‘visibility’ of F within its scope (~C or Q) may either be satisfied by F carrying the strongest stress in its scope-domain, or by a checking-relation between F and the scope-marker.