Zipf, Jessica & Quaglia, Stefano: Asymmetries in Italian Matrix Wh-questions: Word Order and Information Structure

We develop an analysis that accounts for word order asymmetries found in Italian wh-questions. In particular, the different orderings of subject and verb in perché-questions as opposed to wh-questions involving other wh-items. In line with Butt (2014) and Mycock (2006, 2013), we see a strong interaction of information structural content and the structure of questions. We argue that the word order differences mirror the semantic divergence of perché in contrast to other wh-items such as chi, quando or dove, among others. We suggest that perché differs from the other wh-items with regard to the partition it introduces at i-structure. While all wh-items introduce a partition between FOCUS and BACKGROUND at i-structure, we argue for the BACKGROUND to be articulated with perché. We show that this correctly captures the fact that perché can scope over a focus operator, while all other wh-items are within the scope of a focus operator, as well as the word order asymmetries found in Italian matrix wh-clauses.

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January 17, 2018

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