Quantifier Float and Wh-Movement in an Irish English James McCloskey TheEnglish of northwestern Ireland allows quantifier float of aprevi- ouslyundocumented kind in wh-questions.The quantifier all, though construedwith a fronted wh-pronoun,may appear in apositionconsid- erablyto the right of that pronoun. It is argued that all so stranded marksa positionthrough which a wh-phrasehas passed or in which a wh-phraseoriginates. The construction then provides visible evi- dencefor intermediate derivational stages. This evidence is used to developa newargument for successive cyclicity and to argue for overt objectshift in English and for an originsite for subjects strictly within VPandbelow the object shift position. Keywords: quantifierfloat, wh-movement,successive cyclicity, object shift,verb raising, VP-internal subjects 1ALocalEnglish Thisarticle examines part of thesyntactic system of alocalvariety of English —avarietyspoken inan areawest and east of theriver Foyle in the northwest of Ireland. The area includes at least Derry city,the Inishowen peninsula, southeast Donegal, and the westernmost parts of counties Tyroneand Derry. At therisk of sacrificingaccuracy for brevity,I willcall the English(es) spoken in this area WestUlster English. WestUlster English is close to the east Ulster variety (called BelfastEnglish )describedin theimportant body of workon dialectsyntax developed by Alison Henry.The twovarieties are, however, distinct in numerousways —phonological,morphological, andsyntactic. In particular, the phenomenon considered here does not occur, as far asI know, inBelfast English. 1 Iwouldlike to dedicate thisarticle tothe memory ofmy teacher Lee Baker,who, among many other things, was thefirst, I believe,to dotheoreticalwork on the syntax of anIrish variety of English(Baker 1968:66). Thanksto Sandy Chung, Norbert Hornstein, and Jason Merchant for comments onearlier versions.The research reportedon here grew outof conversations with Cathal Doherty. An early versionwas presentedat NELS26 (Harvard andMIT). Versions were alsopresented to audiences at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, the University of California,Berkeley, and Cornell University. I am especially gratefulto three reviewers for LI forproviding unusually thoughtfuland useful critiques of an earlier version.The article was preparedwith the help of research fundsfrom the Academic Senate oftheUniversity of California, Santa Cruz. 1 West Ulster Englishis, or was, mynative dialect. The observations presented here, however, derive from work with15 speakers inall (directlyor byproxy).I am particularlygrateful to Brian McCloskey, Martin McCloskey, Elizabeth McCloskey,Cathal Doherty, Frank McGuinness, Jonathan Allison, John Dunnion, Elaine Brotherton, Mary McLaughlin, BillyRobinson, Da ´ith´õ Sproule,Ciaran Tourish,and Paul McGill for their help. Thanks also to Karen Corriganand to AlisonHenry for their help in delineating the geographical range of thefeature. Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 31, Number 1,Winter 2000 57–84 q 2000 bythe Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology 57 58 JAMESMCCLOSKEY Workingon localvarieties of Englishis adifficultbusiness (see, e.g., Henry 1995:12 –15). Thestigmatization that nonstandard varieties are subjected to makes it even more difficult than itusually is to establish reliable data. Luckily, though, the syntactic features I willdiscuss here havenot, as far asI know,been noticed before— by linguists, by speakers, or bythe guardians ofpurity. Since the features have escaped notice, they have also escaped condemnation. Many speakers,in fact, express surprise when it issuggested to them that the features in question are nota partof ‘ ‘Standard’’ English.This fact has the happy consequence for thelinguist that at leastsome of thedifficulties that usually make working on nonstandard varieties so fraught do notapply in the present case. 2ThePhenomenon Thebasic observations can be quicklymade. Most varieties of English(although not all, it seems) allowquestions of thekind shown in (1). (1) a.What all did you get t for Christmas? b.Who all did you meet t whenyou were inDerry? c.Where all did they go t for theirholidays? Suchquestions differ from thosein (2) inimplicating that the answer is a pluralityand in insisting onan exhaustive, rather than a partial,listing of themembers of theanswer set. (2) a.What did you get t for Christmas? b.Who did you meet t whenyou were inDerry? c.Where did they go t for theirholidays? Inaddition to (1), though, West Ulster English allows (3). (3) a.What did you get all for Christmas? b.Who did you meet all when you were inDerry? c.Where did they go all for theirholidays? Thequantifier all in(3a– c) isconstruedwith the interrogative pronoun and not with the subject. Thatis, the examples in (3) aresynonymous (completely so, as far asI havebeen able to tell) withthose in (1). 2 Therelationship between the wh-pronounand its associated quantifier is indicatedin (3) bymeans of underlining, a notationaldevice that I willadopt throughout. The effectoccurs in both matrix and embedded questions. (4) a.I don’t rememberwhat all I said. b.I don’t rememberwhat I saidall. Iwilloccasionally refer tothe construction exemplified in (3) and(4b) as wh-quantifierfloat. 2 Why all and how all are bothimpossible. I suspectthat this must ultimately reflect thespecial denotationalproperties of why and how. Szabolcsiand Zwarts (1993)argue that how is anelement thatranges over domains whose elements exhibita partialordering; who,what, where, and when rangeover individual domains. For why, see theirfootnote 14. When all seems tobe marginally possible. Q - F L O A T A N D W H -MOVEMENTINANIRISHENGLISH 59 Thepurpose of thepresentarticle is to usethis construction as a probeto investigateproperties of (long) wh-movementand to explore some aspects of clausal organization. 3 Basics Wh-quantifierfloat bears a clearfamily resemblance to quantifierfloat of themore familiar sort, illustratedin (5). (5) Thechildren must all have gone to bed. Themajor difference between (5) and(4b) is that in theformer theDPconstruedwith all occupies anA-position, whereas in the latter it occupies an A ¯ -position. Twoprincipal ways of understanding the syntax of quantifier float have emerged in recent years.One originates in workby Sportiche (1988) and was developedsubsequently by himand byothers(Giusti 1990, Shlonsky 1991, Sportiche 1996, Merchant 1996). It holds that (5) derives from arepresentationin which thechildren and all form aconstituent.The other takes all to be anadjoined adverbial element that has the special property that the constituent it adjoins to mustcontain a trace(Klein 1976, Williams 1980, Kayne 1984:chap. 4, Dowtyand Brodie 1984, Miyagawa1989, Doetjes 1992, Baltin 1995, Torrego 1996, Bobaljik 1995, 1998, Morzycki 1998). Iwilldevelop an approachof thefirst type here— atleast for wh-quantifierfloat —justifying itas the discussionproceeds. Whether this approach is also right for themore familiar A-movement casesis a differentquestion, which I willconsider (but only very briefly) in section 7. Saywe beginwith the assumption that who,what, where, and when arepronouns and that theinternal structure of, for instance, who all isanalogousto that of they all. FollowingPostal (1974:111)and Koopman (1999), we mightalso assume that as (6) illustrates,the order [pronoun quantifier]derives from astructurein which the quantifier precedes the pronoun. (6) a. DP b. DP DPj DPj D DP D DP they who all tj all tj Given(6), phraseslike who all havean internalstructure in which a certainambiguity of factoriza- tionwill hold in anypotential application of wh-movement.The lower DP ( who)of(6b)evidently bears a wh-feature.It should therefore be able to undergo wh-movement.But from thegrammati- calityof (1), we knowthat movement of the entire phrase who all alsoresults in successful checkingof the wh-feature.Let us for presentpurposes take the traditional view that this is possiblebecause the wh-featureis instantiated both on the specifier who andon the dominating DP (who all), as in (7). 60 JAMESMCCLOSKEY (7) DP [wh] DPj [wh] all tj who If otherconditions are met, then, both (1) and(3) shouldbe possible. Prominent among these ‘‘otherconditions’ ’ arethe locality requirements on movement. In the theory of localityof move- mentdeveloped in Chomsky 1995:311, 1998:38, a targetK maynot attract an element b if there isanelement a closerto Kthan b ,whichcould enter into a legitimatefeature-checking relation ifraisedto K.‘‘Closeness’’ isdefinedin termsof asymmetricc-command: a iscloserto K than b ifK c-commands a , a c-commands b , and b doesnot c-command a .Bythisdefinition, neither oneof thetwo wh-DPs of(7) iscloser to thetarget of wh-movementthan the other, since neither c-commandsthe other. Both should, then, be accessibleto C. 3 Viewedin this general light, (3) isa grammaticalviolation of Ross’ s (1967)Left Branch Constraint.The question arises why (3) isnotpossible in allvarieties of English.I willreturn to thisissue. Note, though, that the phenomenon now falls within the known range of syntactic variation,since we knowthat some languages permit extraction of a wh-specifier,stranding the head,and that some do not (Ross 1967, Bresnan 1976, Uriagereka 1988, Chomsky 1995:263, Aissen1996, Chung 1998:255 –257,308 –313,Kennedy and Merchant 1998). 4 Finally,I shouldpoint out that examples such as (3) havecertain very distinctive prosodic characteristics.The sequences get all in (3a), meet all in (3b), and go all in(3c) are prosodic unitswhose most prominent element is theverb.