Pseudocleft constructions in Marshallese wh- questions

•Marshallese wh- questions are pseudoclefts.•These pseudoclefts have a headless relative clause subject and a wh- predicate.•Marshallese has predicate fronting similar to that in Malay and Indonesian.

This paper argues for an analysis of Marshallese wh- questions comparable to other Austronesian languages and claims that Marshallese questions with an initial wh- word do not involve wh- movement in the traditional sense. Rather, I argue that this type of question is a pseudocleft and consists of a headless relative clause subject and a wh- predicate that is base generated in the normal predicate position. The wh- predicate then moves to an initial functional projection within the left periphery. In support of this analysis, I discuss (i) the existence of non-identity effects, (ii) the absence of island effects, (iii) the existence of resumptive pronouns, (iv) the appearance of the relative clause complementizer, and (v) the word order of possessive phrases in wh- questions. Further, relevant diagnostics—which include the existence of headless relative clauses in argument positions, the possibility of dummy heads in the relative clause, and the absence of pied piping of non-locative prepositional phrases—also support the conclusion that these questions are pseudoclefts rather than clefts.