On Multiple Wh-Fronting - University of Chicago

352 ZÏ E L J K O B O SÏ K O V I Ć(1) What did John give to who?(2) John gei-le shei shenme?John give-PERF who what‘What did John give to who?’(3) a. Qu’ a-t-il donné a‘ qui?what has-he given to whob. Il a donné quoi a‘ qui?he has given what to whoFrench is often assumed to be a simple mixture of the first two types. This view is mistaken. Ifit were correct, both the English and the Chinese strategies would always be possible in French;that is, the set of possibilities for questions in French would be the union of the sets of possibilitiesfor questions in English and Chinese. However, as shown in BosÏ ković 1998a, 2000, the in-situstrategy has a very limited distribution in French, indicating that the French wh-in-situ is differentfrom the Chinese wh-in-situ. Therefore, I assume that French is a separate type, not a simplemixture of English and Chinese. The relevant French data are given in (4). Wh-in-situ is allowedin matrix short-distance null-C questions (3b), but not in embedded, long-distance, or overt-Cquestions (4a,c,e). (See BosÏ ković 1998a, 2000, for explanation of the limited distribution of whin-situin French. The judgments are given for the true question reading. Note that overt-C questionsare possible only in some dialects.)(4) a. *Pierre a demandé tu as embrassé qui.Pierre has asked you have kissed whob. cf. Pierre a demandé qui tu as embrassé.c. *Jean et Marie croient que Pierre a embrassé qui?Jean and Marie believe that Pierre has kissed whod. cf. Qui Jean et Marie croient-ils que Pierre a embrassé?e. *Que tu as vu qui?C you have seen whof. Qui que tu as vu?The fourth type, multiple wh-fronting (MWF) languages, where all wh-phrases move, is illustratedin (5) from Bulgarian, where according to Rudin (1988) all wh-phrases move to Spec,CP overtly.(5) Na kogo kakvo dade Ivan?to who what gave Ivan‘What did Ivan give to who?’This article deals with MWF. In section 1 I argue that the MWF type should be eliminatedfrom the above typology, languages considered to belong to this type being scattered across thefirst three types. In section 2 I show that there are several classes of non-MWF questions in MWFlanguages. This is a surprising fact given the discussion in section 1, and it will lead me to posit