Syncretism and functional expansion in Germanic wh-expressions

This paper investigates syncretism patterns in the inventory of wh-items across North Germanic (Scandinavian) in comparison with other Germanic varieties. Based on the empirical evidence it is argued that syncretism only arises across query types that are structurally adjacent. A “nanosyntactic” account of the data is developed whereby the query types are structured along two functional sequences, one for expressions in the nominal domain and the other for expressions in the clausal domain: the Superset Principle (Caha, 2009) in conjunction with a concept of best fit ensures that exponents of a question type can also spell out all other structurally embedded question types unless there exists a different exponent without the superfluous higher structure. Issues concerning directionality for expansion of spell-out ranges are also discussed.