Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
936270 Lingua 2007 25 Pages PDF
Abstract

In this paper, I present a sideward movement approach to the syntactic derivations of Conjoined Question Words Constructions, such as What and when does John normally eat? and Interwoven Dependency Constructions, such as Which nurse and which hostess did Fred date and Bob marry respectively? Both constructions exhibit dependencies between one coordinate complex and two syntactic gaps, with each conjunct of the complex associated with one of the gaps. I argue for a paired movement analysis for these constructions. I propose that the two conjuncts of the left coordinate complex in both constructions first undergo sideward movement from the gap positions independently, and form a coordinate complex with a conjunction, and later the newly built coordinate complex is integrated into the (complex) clause. This analysis shows how the landing site freedom gained from sideward movement makes the syntactic derivations of the two paired dependency constructions possible, while avoiding problems of alternative approaches.

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Social Sciences and Humanities Arts and Humanities Language and Linguistics