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Kent Academic Repository Full Text Document (Pdf) Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Bailey, Laura Rudall (2013) The syntax of question particles. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, Newcastle University. DOI Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/80123/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html The Syntax of Question Particles Laura Rudall Bailey Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics/ Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences Newcastle University Examined: November 2012 Submitted: April 2013 Abstract Cross-linguistically, languages are largely head-initial or head-final. Most permit some disharmony, but Holmberg (2000) and Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts (2012), among others, have argued that the structure shown in (1) is ruled out, where YP is X’s complement and ZP is Y’s complement: (1) *[XP [YP Y ZP] X] In structures such as (1), a head-final phrase immediately dominates a head- initial phrase, violating the so-called ‘Final-Over-Final Constraint’ (FOFC). Descriptively however, final question particles are readily found in languages with VO order, resulting in a structure that appears to violate FOFC. (2) illustrates this violation in Tetun (an Austronesian language of East/West Timor), and (3) shows the structure, with a final question particle ká immediately dominating a head-initial TP: (2) Ó la bá sekola ká? 2S not go school or (Said to child playing:) ‘Didn't you go to school?’ (Van Klinken 1999: 212) (3) ii If ká constitutes the C head of CP, as is standardly assumed, the structure in (3) violates FOFC. I show, following Aldridge (2011), that these particles are best analysed as disjunctive elements, heading an elided clause: (4) [ConjP CP [Conj CP]] The particle is the head of the phrase, with the second CP as its complement and the first (pronounced) CP in Spec,ConjP. This solves the FOFC problem because the ‘particle’ is not final, and therefore the derivation does not include a head- final phrase dominating a head-initial phrase. Instead, the particle precedes its complement (which is not pronounced), and the clause that it follows (which is pronounced) is its specifier. I provide evidence for this position through typological investigation and theoretical analysis. In addition, the various proposals that have been put forward in the literature to avoid this FOFC-violation are considered, but are shown to be problematic in different respects. I discuss the idea that particles are not heads (Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2012). However, they cannot be specifiers and an adjunction analysis fails to explain their properties, so it is unclear what they could be if not heads. Julien (2001), Lee (2005, 2008) and Simpson & Wu (2002) argue that final particles are derived by TP-movement to a Topic or Focus position. This is a promising explanation, but fails to derive the difference between final particles and other types. If the particle is syncategorematic (Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2012), the fact that they appear in fixed positions is mysterious. Processing explanations of the data (Hawkins 2004, Philip 2012) go some way towards deriving the FOFC facts but do not, among other things, explain the high number of final particles in VO languages. The syntax of question particles is discussed in detail, and it is proposed that polar questions consist of two functional heads in combination: Force, giving a (main clause) question illocutionary force, and Polarity, giving a (neutral) iii question open polarity. A true polar question particle is therefore related to one or both of these heads: (5) With this background, the argument is defended in subsequent chapters that some particles cannot be true question elements in this sense and are instead instantiations of the disjunction. Cross-linguistic data demonstrate that final particles in VO languages differ from other types of question particle (initial particles, or final particles in OV languages) in very rarely marking embedded questions: they do so in only one language in the corpus. Homophony between the question particle and disjunction in many languages, combined with attested grammaticalisation paths, adds support to this claim. Furthermore, this analysis explains a number of properties of such particles in addition to their propensity to violate FOFC, including their frequent absence from negative questions, alternative questions and wh-questions. All of these are straightforward consequences of the particle being a disjunction. Finally, the analysis is applied to a particular language, Thai, as a case study, and it is compared with languages of the other types. It is shown that the disjunctive analysis is best able to explain the data and offer an elegant explanation of the FOFC facts. iv Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In addition, I received financial assistance from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, and the Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences. My deep gratitude is due to my main supervisor, Anders Holmberg. His guidance, humour and inspiration have been invaluable. My second supervisor, Geoff Poole, offered wisdom when it was needed most. I thank both of them sincerely. I was fortunate to be involved with the Newcastle-Cambridge project ‘Structure and linearization in disharmonic word orders’. Theresa Biberauer, Ian Roberts, Michelle Sheehan and Sten Vikner helped me to formulate my ideas in their early stages. Michelle has also been a mentor and a friend. Theresa Biberauer was also a wonderful external examiner, and has given me an enormous amount of help, advice and information over the last five years. I also thank my internal examiner, William van der Wurff, for his careful consideration of my work, his interest in it and his support. I thank Somphob Yaisomanang, Nami Kaneko, Olcay Sert and Caroline Cordier for providing data, and Leanne Stokoe for proofreading. Chapter 5 is based on collaboration with Anders Holmberg, Małgorzata Krzek, Michelle Sheehan and Mais Sulaiman. Paula Rudall and Richard Bateman kindly hosted me in London. I am grateful to all my friends, colleagues, and staff at Newcastle University. I have been supported and inspired from the first day I sat in a linguistics lecture. And finally, I thank my family. My parents, Gae and Chris, have given me financial support as well as the more intangible kind. My partner Tony has given me practical help, wrangling my references, but most of all has given me love and support throughout. I thank him for everything. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................ v Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Background .......................................................................................................................... 3 1.1.1. Minimalism .................................................................................................................. 3 1.1.2. The Split CP .................................................................................................................. 7 1.1.3. The Linear Correspondence Axiom ................................................................ 11 1.1.4. The Final-Over-Final Constraint ...................................................................... 15 1.2. Outline of the thesis ....................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2. A Word Order Generalisation ........................................................................... 18 2.1. Word order generalisations ....................................................................................... 18 2.1.1. Co-occurrence of language properties .......................................................... 21 2.2. Question particles in the world’s languages ....................................................... 26 2.3. Final question particles do not appear in embedded questions ................ 33 2.3.1. The question particle may mark embedded questions in OV languages, and in languages with initial question particles ................................ 37 2.3.2. Final question particles cannot mark embedded questions in VO languages ................................................................................................................................... 50 2.4. Conclusion .........................................................................................................................
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