Syntactic conditions on special inflection: Evidence from Hausa and Coptic Egyptian

• We compare special inflection in Hausa and Coptic wh-interrogative and focus clauses.
• Special inflection occurs in relative, wh-interrogative and declarative focus clauses.
• In Hausa, it occurs with focus/wh-fronting; in Coptic it occurs with focus/wh-in situ.
• Special inflection is governed by syntactic rather than functional conditions.
• A configurational account provides an explanatory analysis.

This comparative study examines the morphosyntactic parameters governing the distribution of ‘special inflection’ in constituent interrogatives and focus constructions in Hausa and Coptic Egyptian. In these languages, ‘relative’ tense-aspect-mood (TAM) markers occur in relative clauses, constituent interrogatives and declarative focus constructions. However, special inflection is not a clause-typing device but is governed by syntactic conditions, since both languages also have focus/wh-constructions lacking relative TAMs: both languages allow in situ and ex situ focus/wh-constructions, but while Hausa special inflection occurs in ex situ constructions, Coptic special inflection occurs in in situ constructions. A transformational copy theory analysis reduces the parametric differences between Hausa and Coptic to different pronunciation sites of the displaced focus/wh-phrase: either the ‘top copy’ in its displaced position in the specifier of Focus Phrase (FP), or the ‘lower copy’ in its thematic position. An additional parameter reminiscent of the Doubly-filled Comp Filter is set for Hausa to allow both specifier and head of FP to be spelt out (pronounced) at once, resulting in the coincidence of fronting and special inflection, while the same parameter in Coptic is set to prohibit both the head and the specifier of FP spelling out at once, ruling out the coincidence of special inflection and fronting.