Trouble on the left periphery1

Richard Hudson

University College London

dick@ling.ucl.ac.uk

Department of Phonetics and Linguistics,

University College London,

Gower Street,

London WC1E 6BT

1 This paper has been a long time gestating. It developed out of Hudson 1998b, and has

benefitted from the help provided by a wide range of colleagues (mostly anonymous) during

the intervening years.

1

Trouble on the left periphery

Abstract

Adjuncts may occur (by ‘adjunct preposing’) before a wh-interrogative

clause which is a main clause, but not before one which is subordinate; for

example:

(i) Tomorrow what shall we do?

(ii) I told you (*tomorrow) what we shall do.

Why should the possibility of adjunct preposing vary between main and

subordinate clauses? The pre-theoretical answer is obvious: the wh-word

has the extra function in a subordinate clause of signalling the start of a

subordinate clause, so like any other subordinator it must be the first

element in its clause. Less obvious is how to capture this insight in a

formal grammar, and the paper will show that this challenge favours

flexible word-based grammars over the more familiar kind which assign a

uniform clause structure. The paper considers and rejects a number of

examples of the latter approach, especially that of Rizzi 1997. The

proposed solution is based on enriched dependency structure (Word

Grammar) which makes head-hood ambiguous in certain constructions. In

particular, the head of a wh-interrogative may be its finite verb when it is

a main clause but must be the wh-element when it is subordinate.

Key words: Word Grammar, adjunct-preposing, wh-interrogative, head,

2

dependency grammar, English, left periphery, functional category

3

1. Overview of the problem and the solution

Why is adjunct preposing2 possible in an English main-clause wh-question,

but not in an embedded one? For example, tomorrow and in Scotland may

be preposed3 to the position before the wh-element in examples (1) and

2 I prefer the term adjunct preposing to the widely used adverb preposing because the

phenomenon concerned is not, in fact, restricted to adverbs. An even more accurate name

would be adjunct extraction (Hukari and Levine 1995, Pollard and Sag 1996:384), but the

mechanics of extraction are irrelevant to this paper, though we shall touch on them at one

point.

3 It is crucial to establish that adjunct preposing is indeed possible with wh-

interrogatives. Some people find such examples uncomfortable, and indeed Quirk et al

(1985:817) imply that they are ungrammatical when they say:

As a rule, .. the wh-element .. comes first in the sentence (apart from some conjuncts,

such as on the other hand).

Here are some attested examples from spoken corpora; no doubt similar examples

could also be found in writing. The preposed adjuncts are highlighted.

a In most developing countries, which would you expect to be bigger, GNP or

GDP? (Lecture)

b But on the way where do those people get the incomes from to purchase?

(Lecture)

c Oh well, if you inherit a university from bureaucrats what do you expect?

(LL12)

d but if you're typing it up now why can't [inaudible]? (LL21)

e Well therefore {?} OK in which case why couldn't the British have carried out

their commitment that the border was a temporary measure? (LL28A)

4

(2) but not in the corresponding embedded examples (3) and (4).

(1) a What shall we do tomorrow?

b Tomorrow what shall we do?

(2) a What do they eat in Scotland?

b In Scotland what do they eat?

(3) a I told you what we shall do tomorrow.

b *I told you tomorrow what we shall do.

(4) a You know what they eat in Scotland.

b *You know in Scotland what they eat.

This pattern is easy to explain informally, as we shall see in the next

paragraph, but the informal explanation is not theory-neutral. It is much

harder to express in terms of some theories of English clause structure

than in others.

The explanation involves the restrictions on the 'landing site' for

preposed adjuncts. One restriction applies when it cooccurs with a wh-

f Well, now that you can stand back and look at Ireland, Kevin, what do you

think of the mess over there? (LL28A)

g I mean all these war games they play, for instance whereby they they sort of

postulate the so-and-so's attacking the so-and-so's and then what would

you do? and this sort of thing. (LL23)

h Well now being in Wisconsin over a period of weeks, what's

your impression of of popular feeling about McCarthy? (LL21B)

i I asked him why since this if this was official medical

treatment you know why didn't he have a district nurse in? (LL2X2)

The lecture transcripts were supplied by Philip King; the remaining

examples are from the London Lund corpus (Svartvik and Quirk 1980).5

element (WH), in which case the preposed adjunct (PA) is just before WH.

This pattern is illustrated in the (b) examples above, and the impossibility

of the reverse order is illustrated by the following:

(5) a *What tomorrow shall we do?

b *I told you what tomorrow we shall do.

c *What in Scotland do they eat?

d *You know what in Scotland they eat.

As these examples show, the order WH<PA is just as bad in subordinate

clauses as in main clauses, so we can formulate the first restriction as

follows:

The PA<WH constraint

A preposed adjunct may precede WH, but must not follow it.

This is not entirely true as it stands, as can be seen from the following

examples:

(6) a In Scotland why do they eat haggis?

b ?Why in Scotland do they eat haggis?

(7) a Tomorrow how shall we arrange things?

b ?How tomorrow shall we arrange things?

(8) a In Scotland at what time of year do they eat haggis?

b ?At what time of year in Scotland do they eat haggis?

These examples suggest that when the WH phrase itself is an adjunct

either order may be possible, which in turn raises the possibility that the

PA<WH constraint may be a consequence of a different constraint which

affects the ordering of adjuncts and arguments. However we need not

explore this question as it is orthogonal to the main focus of the present

paper.

6

The other restriction also applies to non-WH subordinate clauses,

where we find that the landing site for PA must follow the complementizer:

(9) a He said that tomorrow it will rain.

b *He said tomorrow that it will rain.

(10) a I gather that in Scotland they eat haggis.

b *I gather in Scotland that they eat haggis.

(11) a I wonder whether in Scotland they eat haggis.

b *I wonder in Scotland whether they eat haggis.

However it is not just the traditional complementizers that show this

pattern. More generally the preposed adjunct has to follow any word which

marks the subordinate clause as subordinate, including the prepositions

that introduce adverbial clauses:

(12) a I'm cross because tomorrow it's going to rain.

b *I'm cross tomorrow because it's going to rain.

(13) a Most Brits eat cornflakes although in Scotland they eat haggis.

b *Most Brits eat cornflakes in Scotland although they eat

haggis.

(14) a I had scarcely got into the taxi when suddenly the driver

started the engine. (Quirk et al 1985:491)

b *I had scarcely got into the taxi suddenly when the driver

started the engine.

I shall use the term subordinator (Sub) to refer to all such words. These

observations lead to another informal principle:

The Sub-first Constraint

A clause's subordinator must precede everything else in the clause.

We now have an almost complete explanation for our problem data.

7

A Preposed Adjunct must not follow the WH, and must not precede the

Subordinator. The only missing link is the connection between WH and

Subordinator. Suppose a wh-interrogative clause is subordinate. What is

its subordinator? Clearly, the wh-phrase itself, because this is what is

selected by a higher verb; any context which allows a mere interrogative

complementizer such as whether or if will also allow a wh-phrase such as

what or which student, so these all qualify equally as subordinators. A

clause like what happened is therefore compatible with a different range

of higher verbs from one like that it happened, so the difference must be

due to the presence of what in one case and that in the other. So long as

we recognise an informal category of subordinators, it is hard to escape

the conclusion that WH phrases belong to it. However (and this is the

crucial point) this is only true so long as the clause concerned is

subordinate. A main clause has no subordinator, so a fortiori its WH

element is not its subordinator and Sub-first does not apply. In short, in a

subordinate clause a Preposed Adjunct cannot precede the WH because

this is also the Subordinator.

Here, then, is the informal explanation for the differences between

main and subordinate wh-interrogatives. In both cases PA<WH prevents

the preposed adjunct from following the WH phrase but in the subordinate

case the reverse order is also blocked by Sub-first. This is why adjunct

preposing is permitted in main clauses but not in subordinate clauses. The

crucial, and most interesting, element in this explanation is the claim that

the status of WH is different in subordinate and main clauses. We

expressed this claim above in terms of the traditional notion

`subordinator', but it can be put in more modern terms too: WH is the

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head of the subordinate clause, but not of the main clause. In a main

clause the presence of a WH element has no effect on the possibility of a

preposed adjunct, with or without long-distance extraction (though their

relative order is controlled by PA<WH):

(15) a Tomorrow I lecture on syntax.

b Tomorrow I know you're going to lecture on syntax.

(16) a Tomorrow are you lecturing on syntax?

b Tomorrow do you think I ought to lecture on syntax?

(17) a Tomorrow what should I lecture on?

b Tomorrow what do you think I ought to lecture on?

The irrelevance of what suggests that what is not the head of the main

clause. (At this point we can leave the identity of the head open, but I

shall argue below that the head is the finite verb.) The main point is that

the distribution of preposed adjuncts is easy to explain if we allow the

head of the WH-interrogative clause to vary according to whether or not

the clause is subordinate.

The main interest of these ideas is that, for all their simplicity, it is

not obvious how they can be reconciled with some theories of sentence

structure. However before we turn to theory we should recognise that the

facts are not the same across languages. In particular, some languages do

allow a PA before the subordinator, as can be seen in the following

examples4. Consider first the following data from Italian:

(18) a *Credo, presto, che loro lo apprezzeranno molto.

I-think, soon, that they it will-appreciate much

4 The Italian data were supplied by Vieri Samek-Lodovic and the Greek data by Villi Rouchota and Eleni Gregoromichelaki.

9

‘I think that they will soon appreciate it a lot.’

b Mi domando, domani, a chi potrebbero dare il premio Nobel.

me I-ask, tomorrow, to whom they-could give the prize Nobel

‘I wonder who they could give theNobel prize to tomorrow.’

c Mi domando, in queste vigne, che vino si produca.

Me I-ask, in those vineyards, which wine one produces

‘I wonder what wine they produce in those vineyards.’

As the first example shows, Italian seems to have the same Sub-first

restriction as English, so the complementizer che, ‘that’, cannot follow an

adverbial from the clause that it introduces. However it is possible for PA

to precede a wh-phrase such as a chi and che vino in the other two

examples, whereas we have seen that similar examples are impossible in

English. Modern Greek is even more liberal:

(19) a Mu-ipe avrio (? o ianis) oti tha dhoso to vivlio sti Maria.

to-me-he-said tomorrow (John) that will I-give the book to-the

Mary

`He (John) told me that I will give the book to Mary tomorrow.'

b Mu-ipe avrio (? o ianis) se pjon tha dhoso to vivlio.

to-me-he-said tomorrow (John) to whom will I-give the book

`He (John) told me who I will give the book to tomorrow.'

In this case we see that the PA avrio, ‘tomorrow’, may precede either a

bare complementizer or a wh-phrase. Moreover, to the extent that o ianis,

‘John’, is possible in the position shown, it seems that the PA is free to

move around among the constituents of the matrix clause, which suggests

that it may be structurally raised out of the lower structure and into the

higher one.

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It seems likely, then, that Greek lacks the Sub-first constraint

entirely and Italian restricts it to bare subordinators, in contrast with

English where it applies to all subordinators. The other constraint, PA<WH,

is no more universal, as can be seen from the following Italian examples in

which PA follows WH:

(20) a Mi domando a chi, domani, potrebbero dare il premio Nobel.

me I-ask to whom, tomorrow, they-could give the prize Nobel

‘I wonder who they could give the Nobel prize to tomorrow.’

b Mi domando che vino, in queste vigne, si produca.

me I-ask which wine, in those vineyards, one produces

‘I wonder what wine they produce in those vineyards.’

The theoretical challenge, therefore, is to explain why English has the

PA<WH and Sub-first Constraints, but why some other languages seem to

be able to escape their effects. In section 2 we shall consider, and reject, a

number of solutions which assume a standard phrase-structure analysis

with rigid clause structure. This approach will be contrasted with one

which focusses instead on the word-based patterns allowed by

dependency structure, and in particular the rich dependency structures of

Word Grammar. Section 3 outlines the relevant claims of this theory, and

section 4 introduces the notion `dependency competition', whereby

dependencies compete for a place in `surface structure'. Section 5

explains how WH-interrogatives are analysed, and how dependency

competition means that the head of a subordinate wh-interrogative is its

WH word, while that of a main wh-interrogative is its verb. Section 6

returns to the problem of Adjunct-preposing and explains how this

difference accounts for the differences between main and subordinate

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clauses that we have reviewed in this section. It also suggests tentative

analyses of Italian and Greek which explain the differences noted above.

2. Possible phrase-structure explanations

2.1 Some preliminary remarks on phrase structure

The standard mode of explanation for syntactic patterns uses structural

templates which define fixed `positions' within the structure of some

larger unit. The building blocks for these templates are X-bar structures

which define local dominance and order relationships, so the total

template provides a rigid framework within which sentence structures

may be explored. During the last two decades a remarkable consensus

has developed about the outlines of a template for clause structure,

though (as we shall see) there is a great deal of disagreement about the

details. A structure along the lines of the one shown in Figure 1 is now

taken as an uncontroversial base-line from which innovative explorations

start. When problems of word order arise their solution is sought in the

template. The template predicts the orders which are permitted, so in an

ideal world, once the template has been perfected, it will accommodate all

the observed patterns and will help to explain at least some unobserved

ones. Meanwhile, the template is still under development so minor

tinkering is permitted, and indeed encouraged, but of course the

template's value lies precisely in its general rigidity.

Figure 1

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These remarks may seem obvious and even trite, but later sections

will offer a very different way of thinking about sentence structure.

Meanwhile we shall explore in this section various ways in which the

template approach could be manipulated in the hope of explaining the

facts about Adjunct preposing. The basic question which divides these

analyses is the position to which preposed adjuncts are assigned.

2.2 Preposed adjuncts are adjoined to IP

Most template analyses that consider preposing in subordinate clauses

assume that preposing involves adjunction to IP within CP (Baltin 1982,

Lasnik and Saito 1992, Culicover nd). This easily explains the Sub-first

Constraint in non-wh clauses, since the subordinator is the

complementizer, which automatically precedes the IP:

(21) a [CP C .. [IP PA [IP ...]]]

b I know [CP that [IP tomorrow [IP it will rain]]]

c *I know [IP tomorrow [CP that [IP it will rain]]] *Sub-first

However it fails on wh-interrogatives. On the standard assumption that

the WH-phrase is moved into spec of C the predicted order is WH < PA, as

in (b) below. According to this analysis the sentence should be good, but

in fact it conflicts with the PA<WH Constraint and is just as bad as the (c)

example.

(22) a [CP [WH] C .. [IP PA [IP ...]]]

b *I know [CP [what] C [IP tomorrow [IP we shall do]]] *PA<WH

c *I know [IP tomorrow [CP [what] C [IP we shall do]]] *

It can be seen that the problem with this analysis is quite

fundamental. There is no way to fine-tune it so that the relative positions

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of WH phrases, complementizers and preposed adjuncts can be

reconciled. In main clauses PA < WH; by assumption WH < C; and in

subordinate clauses C < PA. The `precedes' relation (<) is transitive, so

the three orders PA < WH, WH < C, and C < PA simply cannot be

reconciled.

There is an interesting variant of this approach which is more

successful. Pesetsky (1989) suggests that matrix clauses are bare IP’s, in

contrast with subordinate clauses, which are CP’s. In this view, what is

spec of I in a matrix clause, but spec of C in a subordinate clause; so if

tomorrow is adjunct of IP in both cases, it follows that it may precede what

in a matrix clause but not in a subordinate clause:

(23) a [IP Tomorrow [IP what [I shall [we do?]]]]

b I know [CP what [IP we [I shall [do]]]

c *I know [IP tomorrow [CP what [IP we [I shall [do]]]]

As Pesetsky notes, this analysis predicts that the order of a preposed

element5 and WH in a matrix clause should be reversed in a subordinate

clause because WH moves across the preposed element into the spec of

the new C node. Pesetsky believes that this prediction is correct, citing

examples like the following:

(24) a ?[IP A book like this, [IP why should I buy?]]

b *[IP Why [? a book like this [? should I buy?]]]

c ?I wonder [CP why [IP a book like this [IP I should buy]]]

d *I wonder [CP a book like this [CP why I should buy]]

These examples do indeed confirm Pesetsky’s analysis, because the two

5 Pesetsky’s discussion is actually limited to topics, and his examples are specifically

topicalized objects, but it seems to generalise to all front-shifted elements.

14

best examples (a, c) show the reverse order of a book like this and why in

the main and subordinate clause.

However the results are different when we change to preposed

adjuncts:

(25) a [IP On a nice day like this, [IP why are we worrying so much]]?

b [IP Why [? on a nice day like this [I are we worrying so much?]]]

c Tomorrow I won’t be able to remember[CP why [IP on a nice day

like this [IP we are worrying so much]]].

d *Tomorrow I won’t be able to remember [CP on a nice day like

this [CP why we are worrying so much]].

In the discussion of the PA<WH constraint, we noted that if WH is itself an

adjunct, either order is possible in main clauses, a possibility illustrated by

the first two of these examples. Pesetsky’s analysis is confirmed by the

goodness of examples (a) and (c), where the order of on a nice day like

this and why is reversed, and by the badness of (d), but (b) is problematic

because the PA seems to be adjoined to I, not IP. The problems increase

when we change to an object WH:

(26) a [IP On a nice day like this, [IP what are you worrying about?]]

b ??[IP What [? on a nice day like this [I are you worrying

about?]]

c ??Tomorrow I won’t be able to remember [CP what [IP on a nice

day like this [IP I was worrying about]]]

d *Tomorrow I won’t be able to remember [CP on a nice day like

this [CP what [IP I was worrying about]]]

If why on a nice day like this ... is permitted in (25b), why is what on a nice

day like this so much worse? In formal terms, if adjunction to I is possible

15

in (25 b), it should be equally good in (26b); and if it is possible to move

WH across an adjunct in (25c), the same should be possible in (26c). The

correct generalisation seems to be that the order WH<PA is possible in a

subordinate clause only if it is also possible in the corresponding main

clause; but Pesetsky’s analysis excludes a generalisation such as this by

giving main and subordinate clauses radically different structures.

It is important to ask whether there is any fundamental reason why

this analysis fails. One possible answer is that it is because dominance is

expressed as precedence. The function ‘subordinator’ is identified by a

position in the X-bar schema which defines not only its dominance over

the rest of the clause, but also its position in relation to the rest of the

clause. Consequently the only way in which WH can assume the role of

subordinator is to change linear position in the schema, but this changes

its linear relationship to PA rather than simply blocking PA.

2.3 Preposed adjuncts are adjoined to CP

Suppose instead that preposed adjuncts are adjoined toCP. The pros and

cons of this analysis are by and large simply the reverse of those of the

previous analysis. Main wh-interrogatives with a preposed adjunct are no

problem, since adjunction to CP automatically puts PA before WH.

(27) a [CP PA [CP WH C [IP ...]]]

b [CP Tomorrow [CP what shallC [IP we do t?]]]

c *[CP What [CP tomorrow shallC [IP we do t?]]]

d *[CP What shallC [CP tomorrow [IP we do t?]]]

It could even be argued that the analysis predicts the impossibility of

adjunct preposing in embedded wh-interrogatives, on the grounds that it

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is excluded by Chomsky's (1986:6) ban on all adjunction to a complement.

Consider the next example.

(28) *He predicted tomorrow what we would do.

It would be reasonable to assume, first, that the subordinate clause is the

complement of predicted, and, secondly, that tomorrow is adjoined to the

CP what we would do. Given these two assumptions, Chomsky's principle

would certainly explain why this example is so bad.

The trouble with this explanation is that the principle focuses on the

wrong characteristic of the example (Hudson 1995:52)6. If the badness is

due to the subordinate clause's function as complement, it should

disappear if we use the same clause in other positions in the sentence -

but it does not:

(29) a *Tomorrow what we would need was unclear.

b *It was unclear tomorrow what we would need.

c *We were considering the question tomorrow what we would

need.

d *We needed no money today tomorrow whatever we might

need.

The WH clause is not complement (of anything) in any of these examples,

and yet the same ban on PA<WH applies throughout. Every single position

which is available for a subordinate interrogative clause gives the same

6 One reader suggests that Chomsky's principle could be revised so

that it bans adjunction not only to complements but to all theta-marked

positions. It is true that this revision explains the badness of (29a,b), but it

does not help with (29c,d). In neither of these two examples is there any

reason to believe that the wh-clause is theta-marked.17

result, so the grammatical function cannot be relevant. Chomsky's ban on

adjunction to a complement does not explain the interaction of

subordination with adjunct preposing and wh-movement. It seems, then,

that we cannot after all invoke this ban to explain why adjunct-preposing

is impossible in embedded wh-interrogatives.

The analysis of PA as adjunct of CP faces another fundamental

problem. It correctly forbids the order WH < PA, as in (5a) and (27c)

(*What tomorrow ...), but it also rules out the grammatical order C < PA as

in (9a) and (21b) (... that tomorrow ...), which was the main motivation for

the previous analysis in which PA was adjunct of IP. The contradiction is

even more fundamental than in the previous analysis, because we have a

direct conflict between PA < C and C < PA. The order PA < C is required if

PA is adjunct of CP, but the reverse order is needed to explain ... that

tomorrow .... In this case the conflict is independent of the assumption

that WH is in the specifier of C, and it is hard to imagine any way to solve

it.

The reason why this analysis fails is the same as for the first

analysis: the rigid link in X-bar theory between dominance and

precedence. Once again the similarity between WH and that in a

subordinate clause is expressed as a position both at the top and at the

left-hand edge of the schema, but PA requires conflicting positions for WH

and for that (before WH and after that).

2.4 Preposed adjuncts are adjoined toTopic-P

The most serious discussion of preposing is to be found in Rizzi (1997)

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which suggests a new analysis of `the complementizer system' - the area

of sentence structure before (and above) the IP - though there is

unfortunately no discussion of preposed adjuncts as such. This is a major

revision of the standard X-bar sentence template. Instead of the single

functional category C, Rizzi argues for four distinct categories:

(30) a Force: the category which is sensitive to the sentence's

sentential or pragmatic environment as a declarative, interrogative etc.

b Finiteness: the category which is sensitive to the finiteness of

IP.

c Topic: this provides a position (in its specifier) for phrases

carrying old information.

d Focus: like Topic, except that the phrases concerned carry new

information.

These categories occur in a fixed order, in which Topic appears twice so as

to allow multiple topics in Italian (ibid:297):

(31) [.. Force [.. Topic [.. Focus [.. Topic [.. Finiteness [IP ...

We shall see that this analysis seems to work well for Italian, and in

particular that it allows a reasonable explanation for the possible orders of

PA and WH in main and subordinate clauses, but that it faces problems

when transferred to English.

In this system, PA is adjoined to a TopicP (ibid:300) and a plain

complementizer such as che is Force, so it is easy to explain why PA can

follow che but not vice versa.

(32) a Credo [cheForce [Top domani [IP daranno il premio a Gianni]]].

I-think that tomorrow they-will-give the prize to John

`I think that tomorrow they will give John the prize.’

19

b *Credo [Top domani [cheForce [IP daranno il premio a Gianni]]].

The analysis also predicts correctly that a focussed element can be

sandwiched between two topics, as in the following (Rizzi’s (46)):

(33) [Top Domani, [Foc QUESTO [Top a Gianni [IP gli dovreste dire]]]].

tomorrow THIS to John to-him you-should say

‘This is what you should say to John tomorrow.’

We should notice in this example that the topic a Gianni intervenes

between the focus and its source IP, which shows that an intervening topic

does not prevent movement; this will be important in the later discussion.

However it is also directly relevant to WH interrogatives because Rizzi

argues that in a main interrogative clause WH is spec of Focus (ibid:298).

This explains not only why it cannot combine with any other focussed

element, but also why it may follow a PA; again the examples are Rizzi’s.

(34) a *[Foc IL PREMIO NOBEL [Foc a chi dovrebbero dare]]?

the prize Nobel to whom they-should give

‘Who should they give THE NOBEL PRIZE to?’

b [Top Domani, [Foc che cosa gli dovremmo dire]]?

tomorrow, what thing to-him we-should say

‘What should we tell him tomorrow?’

The analysis even predicts correctly that it should be possible for WH to

be followed by AP, as in the following:

(35) [Foc Che vino,[Top in queste vigne, si produce]]?

what wine, in these vineyards, one produces

‘What wine do they produce in these vineyards?’

Once again we should notice that an intervening topic does not prevent

WH from raising into the Focus phrase.

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All these examples of WH interrogatives involve main clauses, but

the analysis can perhaps be extended to embedded interrogatives. The

main challenge, of course, is the non-English pattern which was illustrated

in (18b, c) repeated below, in which PA stands before WH:

(36) a Mi domando, [Top domani, [Foc a chi potrebbero dare il premio

Nobel]].

me I-ask, tomorrow, to whom they-could give the prize Nobel

‘I wonder who they could give theNobel prize to tomorrow.’

b Mi domando, [Top in queste vigne, [Foc che vino si produca]].

Me I-ask, in those vineyards, which wine one produces

‘I wonder what wine they produce in those vineyards.’

How can domandare select a subordinate clause like this if its highest

head is a Topic-P, when what it is looking for is a CP with an interrogative

feature, such as could be projected from either WH or si, ‘if, whether’?

One solution is obvious: a zero complementizer (which we can call Q)

whose function is to carry the interrogative feature. Provided it is

technically possible to generate the structure7, all is well. Under this

7 7 It is not immediately obvious how a structure containing the empty complementizer

Q could be generated, given that it can only occur when followed by WH, which may be

separated from it by the Topic-phrase. This link between Q and WH cannot be selection

because selection is blocked by an intervening Topic-phrase; Rizzi invokes this restriction

explicitly in explaining the badness of English examples like (i).

*I think [Top tomorrow T [Force that it will rain.]]

As Rizzi says, there is a simple explanation for this restriction: `The higher verb

selects the specification of Force, not the TopP: verbs select for declaratives or questions, not

for clauses with or without topic (or focus)' (ibid:301). A more natural explanation for the

21

analysis, then, each of the subordinate clauses would have the following

structure:

(37) [CP Q [Top AP [Focus WH ...]]]

Since WH remains in the Focus-phrase, it is in the same position as in a

main clause and can follow AP.

However successful this analysis may be when applied to Italian, it

does not apply easily to English because it overgenerates. The fact is that,

as we saw in section 1, English is stricter than Italian: AP cannot follow a

non-adjunct WH, and cannot precede WH in subordinate clauses. Both the

following examples are ungrammatical, but Rizzi’s analysis accommodates

them easily:

(38) a *I wonder [Force Q [Focus what [Top tomorrow [IP we can do]]]]

b *I wonder [Force Q [Top tomorrow [Focus what [IP we can do]]]]

It is easy to imagine how to rule out the first of these patterns, with AP

after WH, because the same restriction applies in main clauses:

(39) *What tomorrow shall we do?

The solution lies in eliminating the post-focus Topic-phrase altogether by

means of whatever mechanism it is that generates these functional

categories in the first place8.

link between Q and WH would be an analysis in which the interrogative feature moves from

WH to Q, but this would raise the further question of why the whole WH phrase cannot move

into spec of Q, as it (presumably) does in English. It remains an open question whether or not

this problem can be solved.

8 8 As in the previous note, I do not know how, or even whether, it is possible to restrict

the order of functional categories in a system like Rizzi’s which recognises a long chain of

22

The second pattern in (38) is more problematic because it involves

the restriction around which this whole paper revolves: how to prevent

adjunct preposing in subordinate clauses while allowing it in main clauses.

One solution would be to demonstrate that in English (unlike Italian) WH

has to raise to Force in a subordinate clause. This would immediately

explain why WH cannot follow AP as a consequence of the obligatory order

of Force and Topic:

(40) *I wonder [Top tomorrow [Force what Q [Focus [IP we can do]]]]

However, the question would then arise why this movement did not

simply reverse the order of WH and AP, giving the ungrammatical order

WH < AP:

(41) *I wonder [Force what Q [Top tomorrow [Focus [IP we can do]]]]

It is tempting to invoke the blocking effect of the intervening Topic, but we

have already seen that an intervening Topic does not in fact block

movement in Rizzi’s analysis. We saw this in the analyses of (33) and (35),

repeated here:

(42) a [Top Domani, [Foc QUESTO [Top a Gianni [IP gli dovreste dire]]]].

tomorrow THIS to John to-him you-should say

‘This is what you should say to John tomorrow.’

b [Foc Che vino,[Top in queste vigne, si produce]]?

mutually dependent categories C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 . The problem is that restrictive links are

between non-adjacent categories: C1 , C2 and C5, Force, Focus and Finiteness. Force and

Finiteness are restricted by overt subordinators such as that or whether, and Focus and

Finiteness by WH phrases. The intervening Topic elements block selection restrictions for the

reasons given in note 7, but it is possible that the restrictions concerned can be expressed in

terms of feature raising.

23

what wine, in these vineyards, one produces

‘What wine do they produce in these vineyards?’

Rizzi’s analysis may in fact allow more viable explanations than these9, but

it is at least clear that the analysis as presented does not in itself explain

the facts of English.

As with the first two analyses, the failure stems from the link

between dominance and precedence. PA is positioned before WH in main

clauses by receiving a fixed position above it in the X-bar schema, but

when WH is in turn promoted to the subordinator position (ForceP) in

subordinate clauses, this should automatically changes its linear

relationship to WH. But this is not in fact how English works: the change is

not in their linear relationship, but in whether PA can occur at all.

2.5 Summary of template-based analyses

9 A reader suggests that the difference between English and Italian

might be parameterized so that verbs would select indirect questions in

different ways. In English, a verb such as wonder would select for

whatever feature triggers wh-movement (say [+WH]), regardless of where

this was found, whereas Italian verbs like domandare select for a Force

node carrying the feature Q. In other words, an indirect question is a

ForceP in Italian but in English it is either a FocusP (for WH phrases) or a

ForceP (for if and whether). This is a promising suggestion, but it

undermines the main point of Rizzi's analysis, which is the strong link

between semantic and syntactic categories. Force is the syntactic node

designated for carrying semantic 'force', of which 'interrogative' is a prime

example. 24

I have considered various ways in which our problem data might be

accommodated in terms of a template of X-bar `positions' in `sentence

structure'. The data do not appear to be compatible with a conservative

template which contains just C and I above the VP, but the problems are

not solved by fragmenting C. None of the analyses considered works. One

possible conclusion is that we just haven't tried hard enough: one more

tweak, and we may be there. For example, we might explore the

possibilities offered by the rich system of functional categories for

adverbials in Cinque (1989). Another is that there is something

fundamentally wrong with the view of sentence structure that underlies all

these analyses.

The crucial characteristic of the X-bar approach to sentence

structure is that it ties headedness to word order. In most cases this is

harmless, indeed exactly right; for example, the head of a subordinate

structure such as a subordinate clause is typically its first element (in a

head-initial language), and in general a phrase’s head is the word from

which the rest of the phrase takes its position. What is controversial is the

assumption that word order and head-hood are inseparable; for example,

the assumption that front-shifting must change dominance, and in

particular the assumption that a front-shifted element must depend (as

specifier) on some kind of abstract complementizer, which means

recognising a new head for each fronted item. Making the minimum of

assumptions in this system, the following sentences all have different

heads because of their different word orders:

(43) a The topic is phonology tomorrow. head: is

25

b What Comp1 is the topic tomorrow? head: Comp1

c Tomorrow Comp2 what Comp1 is the topic? head: Comp2

It is not self-evidently true that word-order should be tied to headedness

in this way - especially since it requires a further assumption about null

heads whose reality can legitimately be questioned (Hudson 1995).

The interaction of adjunct preposing, wh-movement and

subordination is important precisely because it challenges this

assumption, which predicts that both wh-movement and adjunct

preposing affect head-hood in both main and subordinate clauses. Wh-

movement does involve both movement and head-hood as predicted, but

only in subordinate clauses where WH acts as subordinator. In main

clauses there is no evidence that wh-movement has any effect on head-

hood, and in fact it seems likely that is has none because the possibilities

of adjunct preposing are the same in main wh-interrogatives as in any

other kind of main clause. And neither main nor subordinate clauses

provide any evidence that adjunct preposing affects head-hood. In short,

there is good evidence (to be reviewed below) that what is the head of

what happened in the first example below, but that it is not the head in

the second example.

(44) a I wonder what happened then. head: what

b After the party what happened? head: happened

Given the richness of X-bar schemas it ought to be easy for heads to

change by movement, but as we have just seen, movement upwards also

means movement sideways, with implications for word order which can be

tested.

The analysis which follows shares the basic X-bar assumption that

26

head-hood is crucial, but there are two critical assumptions which

distinguish the underlying theory from X-bar theory. Firstly, head-hood is

primitive, not defined structurally, so it can be separated from word order.

And secondly, head-hood is defined in terms of relations between pairs of

words, rather than in terms of position in a larger structure, which means

that mutual dependency is a possibility. This will turn out to be crucial in

the analysis of AP and WH in subordinate and main clauses.

3. A Word Grammar analysis

3.1 Simple structures in Word Grammar

Word Grammar (WG - see Hudson 1984, 1990, 1994a, 1998a, 1999, 2000)

is a version of dependency grammar, which means that the basic unit of

syntactic analysis is not the phrase, but the word. With the exception of

coordination, a sentence's internal structure is exhausted by the

dependencies between its individual words. Any facts which phrase-

structure analyses treat as facts about phrases are translated into facts

about single words. For example, the fact that the phrase people in

Scotland eat haggis is a clause translates into the fact that eat is a verb

plus the fact that people and haggis depend on it. As in phrase-structure

analysis, phrases such as people in Scotland are recognised, but they are

merely implicit in the dependency analysis (for each word W we can

recognise a phrase consisting of W plus the phrase of every word that

depends on W), and play no part in the grammar.

Various notations are used to show dependency structures, but in

WG I have opted for labelled arrows which point at the dependent named

27

by the label; for example, an arrow labelled `s' points at the subject.

These labelled arrows thus combine information about head-hood

(dependency) with information about grammatical functions. Figure 2

illustrates a very simple example using, first, WG arrows and secondly, the

more traditional `stemma' notation of Tesnière (1959/1966). The vertical

arrow will be explained shortly. One of the reasons for preferring arrows to

the more traditional `stemma' notation is that it allows dependency

analyses to be richer, with more than one dependency per word. As we

shall see below, we can even allow mutual dependency, with two words

depending on each other; this will turn out to be crucial in our explanation

for the facts about adjunct preposing. The labels beneath the words

indicate word-classes and inflections, so V:r means `full verb, present

tense', and n and N mean `pronoun' and `common noun'. Fuller accounts

of the analyses and notations can be found in Hudson (2001).

Figure 2

As in other modern theories, any structure presupposes a grammar

which generates (licenses) it. Explicit rules and principles define the

possible dependencies, so a sentence is grammatical provided that all its

individual dependencies are permitted by the grammar. All aspects of

dependencies are controlled in this way - the word classes of the two

words concerned, the classification of the dependency itself (as subject,

object, and so on), the order of the words and the semantic structures

onto which they are mapped.

Various notations may also be used for expressing the rules,

including a network notation of just the same kind as is used for

28

expressing the sentence structures themselves. The grammar may be

thought of as a network of word-specifications, each of which is a mini-

network for the word concerned. Each of these mini-networks generates

(permits) a word which has the characteristics concerned, and a sentence

is grammatical if all its mini-networks can be combined into a single

sentence-network. Figure 3 is a greatly simplified network which

generates the sentence They eat haggis. The small triangle indicates an

‘isa’ relation. The diagram shows, for example, that they is a token of the

word THEY, which is a pronoun and a noun; so (by default inheritance)

they isa pronoun and noun as well. The vertical arrow above THEY is a

potential dependency, showing that this word depends on some other

word; and the left and right arrows based on EAT show that it needs a

subject and an object. Since each of these ‘isa’ noun, and they and haggis

are both nouns, these words can provide the dependents of EAT, which in

return can provide the word that they each need to depend on. Thus each

of the dependencies in They eat haggis is compatible with the grammar,

and the sentence is permitted.

Figure 3

An alternative way to formalise the grammar and analysis is by

means of plain unambiguous prose. For example, the following is

equivalent to the network in Figure 3. First, we have some rules which

classify the words:

(45) a They isa pronoun.

b Eat isa verb

c Haggis isa common noun.

29

d A pronoun isa noun.

e A common noun isa noun.

These rules generate the entire class-description of the words, including

the super-class Noun which will be mentioned in later rules. The isa

relationship allows default inheritance of characteristics. The remaining

rules generate the dependencies:

(46) a EAT has a subject.

b EAT has an object.

c The subject of EAT isa noun.

d The object of EAT isa noun.

e The subject of EAT precedes it.

f The object of EAT follows it.

Thus each of the dependencies is fully licensed and the sentence is

generated. (Needless to say, most of the rules in this tiny example are

pitched at the wrong level of generality; a proper grammar would inherit

most of them from much more general rules.)

The notion of 'dependency' deserves some explanation because of

its central role in this approach to syntax, but it is already available in all

but name in X-bar syntax because of the importance this gives to head-

hood. All the parts of a phrase 'depend' on its head. Thus a phrase's

complement, specifier and adjuncts are all dependents of its head word.

The only peculiarity of WG, from the point of view of X-bar syntax, is its

rejection of non-terminal nodes, so the head of one phrase is connected

directly (by dependency) to the heads of other phrases. For example, in

the phrase people in Scotland, the words Scotland, in and people are

connected directly rather than via phrasal nodes such as PP and NP. As in

30

X-bar syntax, dependencies can carry a range of relations between the

dependent and its 'parent' (the head of the larger phrase):

￢ meaning (e.g. the parent may theta-mark the dependent)

￢ selection (e.g. the parent may govern a particular case on the

dependent)

￢ word order (e.g. the parent and dependent may be required to occur

in a particular order)

￢ status (e.g. the parent may determine whether the dependent is

obligatory, optional or impossible)

Moreover, as in X-bar theory, some dependencies combine all these kinds

of relations, while others carry just one or two. For example,

￢ the object dependency between eat and haggis (in They eat haggis)

combines:

￢ meaning (the haggis is the patient)

￢ selection (the object must be a noun)

￢ word order (the object follows the verb)

￢ status (the object is optional)

￢ the subject dependency between it and rains (in It rains) carries no

meaning, just as in X-bar syntax, but it does carry other relations:

￢ selection (rains selects it)

￢ word order (it precedes rains)

￢ status (it is obligatory)

In short any non-head position in an X-bar template corresponds to a

31

dependency in WG, and the range of information implied by WG

dependencies are similar to the range implied by an X-bar position.

The two theories are thus very similar in terms of the theory of

dependency. Where they differ is in the kinds of node that they recognise.

Specifically, WG recognises only concrete words. It does not recognise

non-phrasal nodes, nor does it recognise abstract functional categories, so

there is no equivalent in WG to the abstract structural templates reviewed

above.

3.2 Ensuring continuity in surface structure

As in any other theory, the rules of a grammar are interpreted in the light

of a small number of very general principles. Of particular relevance here

is the principle which requires phrases to be continuous. In the tradition of

dependency grammar this is generally called `projectivity' (Heringer et al

1980:182, Fraser 1994), and requires each word in a stemma to be able to

`project' up to its node by a straight vertical line which does not intersect

any other lines, as in Figure 2. If every word's projective line is straight

and vertical, they cannot tangle with each other. In WG, however, the

richer structures require a somewhat more sophisticated principle which

was once the `Adjacency Principle' of Hudson (1990:114-20), but currently

(since Hudson 1994b and Rosta 1994) it is the No-tangling Principle:

The No-tangling Principle

Dependency arrows must not tangle.

This is accompanied by the `No-dangling' Principle, which requires every

word to have a `parent' - some other word, or potential word, on which it

depends.

32

The No-dangling Principle

Every word must have one parent, which may be virtual.

The `virtual word' alternative applies to the root word which has no actual

parent, but (generally) could have one; this possibility is shown by the

vertical arrow in Figure 2. The two principles interact to reject any

sentence which has ungrammatical tangling such as the (b) examples in

the following pairs whose structures are shown in Figure 4. (This diagram

and subsequent ones omit word-class and grammatical-function labels

when they are irrelevant.)

(47) a He lives on green peas.

b *He lives green on peas.

(48) a Drink red wine!

b *Red drink wine!

These two principles embody the same strong claim as phrase-structure

grammar: that in every language phrases must be continuous, subject to

a limited number of exceptions10.

Figure 4

10 For example, in many languages prepositional phrases may be discontinuous because the preposition follows the first word of its complement phrase, as in Latin magnā cum laude, ‘great with praise’, i.e. ‘with great praise’. However this kind of discontinuity is very easy to accommodate without abandoning the general ban on discontinuity, because it clearly involves cliticization: Latin prepositions such as cum can be enclitics 'leaning' on the first word of the complement phrase. Similarly, non-configurational languages can generally be analysed in such a way as to avoid discontinuous phrases by allowing quite free raising from noun-phrase to clause structure. For discussion see Hudson (1990:115, 325).

33

One of the main reasons why sentence structure is complicated is

that words often have more complicated dependency relationships than

we have illustrated so far. One possibility is multiple dependency, in

which one word has more than one parent. For example, all the usual

arguments show that a raised subject depends on both the verbs

involved, so in It was raining the pronoun it is the subject of was but is

also the subject of raining. Multiple dependencies are a challenge for any

theory because they define conflicting phrases: in our example, the

phrase rooted in was is It was raining, while the one rooted in raining is

it ... raining. The question, then, is how to show that it belongs to the

phrase headed by raining as well as to the one headed by was.

There appear to be only two strategies for solving this problem. One

is to recognise an abstract trace which is coindexed to it, but this is

theoretically objectionable in the absence of independent evidence for

traces (Sag and Fodor 1994). The other is to recognise structure

sharing, whereby it is shared by both structures (Pollard and Sag 1994:2,

Bresnan 1982:374). In this case the theoretical objection is the

discontinuity of the lower phrase. After all, we have just seen that some

phrases are ungrammatical because of discontinuity, so how can we reject

some discontinuities while allowing others? The question, then, is how to

make a principled distinction between legal and illegal discontinuity. This

can be done surprisingly easily by pointing out that legal structure sharing

always involves at least one phrase which is continuous. In short,

discontinuous phrases are always parasitic on continuous phrases.

In WG terms, this means that instead of banning all tangling, we can

allow some dependencies to tangle just so long as there are some that

34

don't. To make this more precise, we can require each sentence to have a

substructure of dependencies that is tangle-free as well as complete

(`dangle-free'). We can call this substructure the sentence's `surface

structure', controlled by the Surface-structure Principle:

The Surface-structure Principle

A sentence's total dependencies (its `surface structure') must

include a sub-set which jointly satisfy word-order constraints

(including the No-tangling Principle) and the No-dangling principle;

dependencies not included in the surface structure need not satisfy

these constraints.

We can modify our diagrams to pick out the surface dependencies

by drawing these, and only these, on the `surface' of the words (i.e. above

them), with any additional dependencies drawn below. The result is an

analysis in which the arrows above the words are tangle-free and

equivalent to a single bracketing, but in which extra arrows may be added

below the words to show further dependencies. The analysis of It was

raining is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5

As in other theories, every individual dependency must be permitted

by the grammar. A bad sentence such as *He lives green on peas cannot

be saved simply by giving the offending word an extra dependency,

because there is nothing in the grammar to license such a dependency. In

contrast, the grammar sanctions all the individual dependencies in It was

raining, so the discontinuity is allowed. In general, therefore, discontinuity

35

always involves a word which depends on several other words at the same

time; one of these dependencies is in the surface structure and defines a

continuous phrase, but the others may define discontinuous phrases.

Discontinuity is therefore closely linked to multiple dependency, and is

handled quite easily by supplying additional dependencies such as the

extra subject dependency between it and was which permits it ... raining

to be discontinuous.

Similarly for front-shifting, alias extraction, where we recognise an

‘extractee’ (labelled ‘x<‘) dependency between the extracted item and

the first verb, whereby the former exceptionally precedes the latter.

(49) This wine I think I like.

The challenge here is to explain why this wine ... I like can be

discontinuous, and the solution is the extractee dependency between this

(the head of this wine) and think. The extractee dependency provides the

'landing site' (interpreted metaphorically in the absence of movement) for

the extracted item, and as in other analyses, the same relation is passed

recursively down the intervening structure to the 'extraction site'. In (49),

therefore, this (the head of this wine) is the extactee of the first finite verb

think and also of the latter's dependent like, which is the extraction site by

virtue of the non-extraction dependency 'object'. Further details of the WG

treatment of extraction are in Hudson (1990:chapter 13). The result is the

structure shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

The complexity which can be generated in this way is as high as in

other theories of grammar, but it is all packed into a single structure with

36

just one node per word; Figure 711 illustrates the complex dependencies

which result from recursive subject raising and extraction, but the

complexity lies entirely in the dependency arrows.

Figure 7

We can again contrast this word-based approach to grammatical

analysis with the standard template approach based on sentences. What

the grammar generates is not sentences, but words; sentences are just an

epiphenomenon (word-strings with internal dependencies but no external

ones). A word is well-formed if it has all the characteristics that the

grammar requires it to have, but since some of these characteristics are

syntactic, it follows that sentence structure is generated as a by-product

of generating individual words. The syntactic characteristics of a word

include all the facts about its relationships to other words which are

controlled by the grammar - whether it needs complements and a parent

word, and whatever restrictions the grammar imposes on the

complements and parent. Thus most of the syntax is concerned strictly

with the local relationships between a word and the words to which it is

directly related by a dependency. The only `global' parts of sytax are the

very general principles such as No-tangling. If there is a relationship

between two elements, it must, by definition, be carried by a dependency,

and must, by definition, be local.

One particularly important syntactic question about a word is which

other word it depends on in the surface structure. If it has only one parent,

11 In this diagram dotted and solid lines have the same theoretical status; the only reason for distinguishing them is to improve readability.

37

there is no choice, but as we have just seen multiple dependency means

that it may have more than one. In such cases a choice must be made,

but the choice may vary from one syntactic context to another. This

variation is the basis for my proposed solution to the problem of adjunct

preposing in subordinate wh-interrogatives.

3.3 Adjunct preposing

With this background in mind, we can now explain the WG treatment of

our problem data, starting with adjunct preposing itself. Consider the

following examples:

(50) a We need help now.

b Now we need help.

c We now need help.

It is probably obvious that the adverb depends on the verb whether it is in

its normal post-verbal position or preposed; indeed in a dependency

analysis there is no alternative12. In example (b) there are good reasons for

labelling it `x<, >a', meaning "an adjunct which would normally be to the

12 10. ‘Sentence adverbs’ may appear to be a problem for a pure dependency-based

analysis, since there is no ‘sentence’ node to which they can be attached; for instance, in (i)

obviously must depend on the verb missed in just the same way as narrowly does.

(i) He obviously narrowly missed the bus.

The problem is illusory, however, because the relevant differences are semantic, not

syntactic, and can easily be shown in the semantic structure by means of ‘semantic phrasing’

(Hudson 1990:146); i.e. the scope of obviously is the whole of ‘He narrowly missed the bus’,

even though the word itself is attached directly to the verb. Such examples are much easier to

explain in terms of flat dependency analysis than in terms of phrase structure.

38

right of its parent (`>a') but which in this case is also an extractee (`x<')".

In this way we can distinguish between pre-subject adjuncts as in Now we

need, which are in the extractee position, and post-subject adjuncts as in

We now need. The latter are labelled `a<' for `pre-adjunct'. The three

possibilities are shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8

The proposed analysis for preposed adjuncts thus takes them to be

an example of extraction, so tomorrow in the next example is extracted

out of the embedded clause that he would call in:

(51) Tomorrow I think John said that he would call in.

The main point to note for present purposes is the 'surface' dependency

between the preposed adjunct and the first verb which guarantees that

the adjunct takes its place among the dependents that precede the verb.

Figure 9 shows the structures not only for sentence (51), but also for an

embedded sentence with a preposed adjunct (52).

(52) I told you that tomorrow I think John said that he would call in.

Figure 9

We now have the first part of our explanation. We have an analysis

of preposed adjuncts:

Preposed adjuncts

A preposed adjunct depends directly on the following verb.

Crucially, this analysis applies to all preposed adjuncts, including those

found in subordinate clauses. In that clauses the result is straightforwardly

the same as for main clauses (that tomorrow I think ...), but wh-

39

interrogatives block adjunct preposing for reasons that will emerge from

the following discussion.

3.4 Dependency competition

The Surface-structure Principle requires a sentence to have a surface

structure which contains some of the dependencies but not necessarily all

of them; but how do we know which dependencies belong in the surface

structure? The point of the following discussion will be to show that it is

settled by brute competition: a word can only have a single surface

parent, but in principle any dependency which follows the word-order

rules will do. In almost every case this competition yields just one

successful candidate, but the next section will show that wh-

interrogatives, exceptionally, yield two. This will give us the rest of our

explanation for the adjunct-preposing facts, but first we must establish the

principle of dependency competition.

Could competition be based on dependency labels - for example,

could we classify every grammatical function as either surface or non-

surface? This possibility can be excluded immediately just by looking at

the examples analysed so far. In our first example, It was raining, one

subject dependency was in the surface structure, and the other was not.

Moreover, the one which is not in the surface in this example - the one

between it and raining - would have been in the surface in simpler

examples such as It rained. Similarly for all the other examples, where we

find that not only subjects, but also extractees and objects, sometimes are

in the surface structure and sometimes are not. In short, whether or not a

40

grammatical relationship is part of surface structure (in the WG sense) is

determined by the sentential environment, not by its own inherent

character.

The effect of this free-for-all can easily be seen in It was raining.

There are two candidates for the surface parent of it. The link to was

produces no tangling in the surface structure, but the one to raining must

tangle with the vertical arrow above was (which must be in the surface

structure because was has no other parent link). Therefore the only way to

satisfy the Surface-structure Principle is to select the link to was. The

same kind of reasoning produces a single outcome for most other

examples which contain multiple dependencies.

In short, surface structure is a free selection from the available

dependencies, subject only to the Surface-structure Principle13. In most

cases these restrictions leave only one candidate (or no candidate at all in

the case of an ungrammatical sentence), but as mentioned earlier there

are a few constructions where the choice is genuinely free, one of which is

our wh-interrogative pattern. We now turn, therefore, to the analysis of

wh-interrogatives.

13 13 There may be at least one other general principle that limits the range of options in

choosing surface structure, and which may be called the Raising Principle: words may be

‘raised’ but not ‘lowered’. More formally:

If W depends on A and B, and B is subordinate to A, then W cannot depend on

B in surface structure.

This principle is needed for various reasons; for example, without it we could have a

post-verbal subject in *Kept John talking? simply by excluding the dependency between kept

and John from the surface structure.

41

3.5 Wh-interrogatives

What is the dependency relationship between an initial interrogative

pronoun and the root verb of the interrogative clause - for example,

between who and came in Who came? The outcome of the following

discussion will be that each depends on the other. The discussion largely

follows Hudson (1990:361-82).

First we can be sure that who depends on came, because who is the

subject of came and a verb's subject is one of its dependents. The

conclusion does not, however, rest on the pronoun being the verb's

subject; it would have been the same even if it had been some kind of

front-shifted object or a long-distance extractee. To avoid the

complications of intervening auxiliary verbs consider an example like How

are you?, where how is just as clearly a dependent of are as you is. After

all, how is some kind of complement of are (like well in I am well), and

takes its position immediately in front of are. So long as subjects and

complements are dependents, interrogative pronouns are dependents

whether they are preposed or not. These dependencies are shown in

Figure 10 (where ‘r’ stands for ‘sharer’, the current WG name for this kind

of complement which in other theories are called predicatives or xcomps).

Figure 10

On the other hand, there is also evidence that the verb depends on

the pronoun. The arguments are familiar from the standard literature

because this analysis is generally accepted.

42

￢ The pronoun can occur without the verb, giving the construction

called `sluicing' (Ross 1969).

(53) a Pat: I know he's invited a friend. Jo: Oh, who [has he invited]?

b I know he's invited a friend, but I'm not sure who [he's

invited].

￢ Taking the verb as the pronoun's complement allows us to explain

this pattern as an example of the more general anaphoric

reconstruction of optional complements illustrated in the following:

(54) a I may not be able to do it, but I want to [do it].

b I wanted to see her, and I tried [to see her], but I failed [to see

her].

c This book is bigger than that [book].

d Here are two apples. Which [apple] do you prefer?

￢ The verb must depend on the pronoun in a subordinate clause

because the pronoun is what is selected by the higher verb (e.g.

wonder):

(55) a I wonder *(who) came.

b I'm not sure *(what) happened.

￢ The pronoun selects the verb's characteristics - its finiteness

(tensed, infinitive with or without to) and whether or not it is

inverted. The characteristics selected vary lexically from pronoun to

pronoun, as one would expect if the verb was the pronoun's

complement. It is interesting to contrast why with how come and

other pronouns.

(56) a Why/when are you glum?

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b Why/*when be glum?

(57) a Why are you so glum?

b *Why you are so glum?

c *How come are you so glum?

d How come you are so glum?

(58) I'm not sure what/who/when/*why to visit.

All these well-known facts are easy to explain if the next verb is a

complement of the pronoun: this would allow the usual range of lexical

restrictions to be placed on the complement, and would allow the pronoun

itself to be selected by a superordinate word such as a reporting verb. The

dependencies to which these facts point are shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11

In template-based syntax all these facts are taken as evidence that

the wh-pronoun occupies at least two distinct positions:

￢ one showing that it depends on the verb - e.g. within VP or IP

￢ one showing that the verb depends on it - e.g. within CP

But our conclusion, as promised, is that the pronoun and the verb depend

on each other. I should make it clear that this mutual dependence involves

two distinct dependencies, and not a single dependency which goes both

ways - that would contradict the inherent asymmetry of dependency

relationships. The pronoun is subject, object or extractee of the verb,

while the verb is complement of the pronoun.

If who and came depend on each other, there are three different

ways of satisfying all the principles given so far. They are shown in Figure

44

12.

Figure 12

All the individual dependencies in Figure 12 are correctly licensed by the

following rules, supplemented by the ordinary rules for subjects:

(59) a An interrogative pronoun has an optional complement.

b The complement of an interrogative pronoun is a tensed verb

(or to).

c An interrogative pronoun is the subject (or extractee) of its

complement.

There is no reason to rule out any of the three analyses, though

admittedly (a) looks rather strange. In particular, either the pronoun is the

surface head of a main wh-interrogative (analysis b) or the finite verb is

(analysis c). In this particular dependency competition, unusually, either

dependency may win.

3.6 Adjunct preposing again

We now have all the essential ingredients for an explanation of our

original data. To recapitulate, we have established the following general

principles (which presumably express linguistic universals):

a The No-tangling Principle

Dependency arrows must not tangle.

b The No-dangling Principle

Every word must have one parent, which may be virtual.

c The Surface-structure Principle

45

A sentence's total dependencies (its `surface structure') must

include a sub-set which jointly satisfy word-order constraints

(including the No-tangling Principle) and the No-dangling principle;

dependencies not included in the surface structure need not satisfy

these constraints.

We have also established these interpretations of English syntax:

a Preposed adjuncts

A preposed adjunct depends directly on the following verb.

b Wh-interrogatives

• An interrogative pronoun and the verb following it depend on

each other (as subject/extractee and as complement respectively).

• An interrogative pronoun follows any (other) extractee of its

complement - i.e. PA < WH.

Why, then, are main and subordinate wh-interrogatives different in

relation to adjunct preposing? We start with ordinary adjunct preposing:

(60) a They eat haggis in Scotland.

b In Scotland they eat haggis.

As pointed out earlier, the most important fact is that in (Scotland)

depends on eat in both these sentences; as explained earlier, I assume it

involves extraction14. For more details see Hudson (1990:chapter 13). The

14 14 I assume that adjunct preposing is an example of extraction, which is handled in

WG by means of an extra dependency which is added to the `basic' one and whose word-

order demands override the default ones. For example, in both (i) and (ii) yesterday is post-

adjunct of rained:

(i) It rained yesterday.

(ii) Yesterday it rained.

46

structures for these two sentences are shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13

This one claim explains immediately why adjunct preposing is

possible in subordinate that clauses, and why the preposed adjunct must

follow that (as required by Sub-first):

(61) a I know that in Scotland they eat haggis.

b *I know in Scotland that they eat haggis.

Given that in depends on eat, it can occur with eat wherever the latter

occurs, whether in a main clause or in a subordinate one. Just like the

subject of eat, it can occur between that and eat without problem, but the

position before that is impossible because of the tangling shown in Figure

14.

Figure 14

We can now apply this treatment of preposed adjuncts to wh-

interrogatives, starting with main clauses:

(62) a In Scotland what do they eat?

By default, a word precedes its post-adjunct as in (i); but in (ii) yesterday is also the

extractee of rained. There is a special word order rule for extractees which requires the

reverse of the default order, hence the order in (ii). The rules concerned are as follows:

[1] A word precedes its dependent.

[2] A word follows its extractee.

[3] A word may be the extractee of a finite verb.

[4] A verb's extractee may be its post-adjunct.

47

b *What in Scotland do they eat?

As in the declaratives we must assume that the preposed adjunct depends

on the finite verb. This is possible because one of the analyses of main

wh-interrogatives that we considered above has the verb as its head, so

the adjunct is a co-dependent of what and tangling is avoided. The

addition of a preposed adjunct in (a) thus eliminates the other analysis in

which the pronoun is the head, because this analysis produces the

tangling shown in (b) in Figure 15. As for the ungrammatical example (b),

the order WH < PA is eliminated by a general stipulation which requires

adjunct extractees to precede argument extractees - i.e. whatever

stipulation distinguishes English from Italian (which, as (42) shows, lacks

this particular restriction).

Figure 15

Now for subordinate wh-interrogatives. The challenge is to explain

why the order which is good in main clauses is bad in subordinates:

(63) *I know in Scotland what they eat.

The only way to avoid tangling in the sequence in Scotland what they eat

is to make in depend on eat, as in the main clause; but what is the

clause's subordinator so it also has to depend on know. Inevitably the

dependency from in to eat tangles with the one from know to what, and

the structure fails as shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16

3.7 Other languages

The impossibility of adjunct-preposing from subordinate wh-interrogatives

48

is a by-product of a number of other processes and patterns, so it is

‘natural’ in any language which has these processes. The claim, then, is

that (in this respect) the English pattern is normal. However, it does

slightly restrict what can be said, so it would not be surprising if the

speakers of some languages had found a way round the restriction. This

seems, indeed, to be the case with both Italian and Greek, though the

solutions found are different in the two cases. In both cases the grammars

allow patterns that would not be permitted in English, so learners have

positive evidence for the extra provisions made by these grammars and

learnability is not an issue.

We have already considered the following examples from Italian:

(64) a *Credo, presto, che loro lo apprezzeranno molto.

I-think, soon, that they it will-appreciate much

‘I think that they will soon appreciate it a lot.’

b Mi domando, domani, a chi potrebbero dare il premio Nobel.

me I-ask, tomorrow, to whom they-could give the prize Nobel

‘I wonder who they could give theNobel prize to tomorrow.’

c Mi domando, in queste vigne, che vino si produca.

Me I-ask, in those vineyards, which wine one produces

The badness of (a) shows that Italian sometimes respects the Sub-first

constraint just as English does, but (b) and (c) go beyond what English

allows. What precisely is it in Italian grammar that allows such sentences?

As we saw in the review of Rizzi’s proposal, his system allows an answer in

which WH is not, in fact, the subordinator - the surface signal of a

subordinate clause - as it is in English. I shall now present a WG analysis

which develops the same idea, but without postulating an abstract

49

complementizer.

Wh-pronouns such as chi are syntactically complex because they

combine the function of a simple subordinator such as che with that of a

simple pronoun like lui. In English, the wh-pronoun combines these two

functions directly, giving the mutual dependency discussed above which

blocks adjunct preposing, but Italian allows a different strategy: the wh-

pronoun’s subordinator function is transferred onto the subordinate verb

itself, so the wh-pronoun is not a barrier to adjunct preposing. Thus in (c),

che (the head of che vino) transfers its subordinator function onto the

verb produca, thereby permitting the latter to function as complement of

domando. This transfer is permitted by a relationship called ‘verb-proxy’

which will be explained below. The structure that I envisage for (c) is

shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17

If it can be justified, this structure explains why adjunct preposing is

possible: the subordinate clause’s structure is just the same as it would

have been if it had been a main clause, so adjunct preposing is just as

possible here as in a main clause. So can it be justified? First, we must see

how the ‘verb-proxy’ relationship works. The term ‘proxy’ (due to Rosta

1997) is intended to suggest that the verb acts as a proxy for che, taking

over its function as the signal of a subordinate interrogative clause. More

formally, instead of saying that the complement of domandare may be an

interrogative pronoun, the grammar contains the following rules:

(65) a The complement of domandare is the verb-proxy of an

50

interrogative pronoun15.

b The verb-proxy of an interrogative pronoun isa tensed verb.

c An interrogative pronoun is extractee of its verb-proxy.

In short, a front-shifted interrogative pronoun defines the verb on which it

depends as its verb-proxy. This has no effect in main clauses, but in

subordinate clauses it permits the verb itself, rather than the pronoun, to

be the complement of a higher verb that takes an interrogative

complement.

Are there any precedents for the verb-proxy relationship? Yes, a very

similar relationship is needed for prepositional pied-piping (Hudson

1990:373, Rosta:1997). Consider a sentence like the following.

(66) With whom did you arrive?

Any theory needs to be able to show that the prepositional phrase with

whom acts as though it were headed by an interrogative pronoun,

although its head is really a preposition. In most theories this is done by

some form of feature-passing whereby the interrogative feature of whom

is copied up to with, but in WG the mechanism is a proxy relationship

which permits a preposition to act on behalf of its interrogative

15 The grammar can easily be generalised to include pure

complementizers like si. Suppose that interrogative pronouns and si are

classified as interrogative words. Verbs such as domandare then select the

verb-proxy of an interrogative word. The term verb-proxy of an

interrogative pronoun is the nearest finite verb, but that of si is si itself -

i.e. the relationship is reflexive. The same is found in other kinds of ‘proxy’

discussed by Rosta (1997); for example, English verbs like think select the

proxy of a tensed verb, which is either the tensed verb itself, or that. 51

complement. Wh-movement thus applies, not to interrogative pronouns as

such, but to proxies of interrogative pronouns - i.e. either to the

interrogative pronoun itself, or to a preposition on which the pronoun

depends.

The point of the comparison with prepositional pied-piping is that

this construction shows very clearly and uncontroversially that a wh-

pronoun can transfer its wh-ness onto a word on which it depends. This is

exactly what I am suggesting for Italian interrogative clauses: that the wh-

pronoun transfers its wh-ness onto the clause’s verb, thereby permitting

this to depend directly on a higher verb. Once this possibility is accepted,

the possibility of adjunct preposing follows automatically.

Modern Greek shows a different pattern of possibilities, illustrated in

the following examples quoted earlier.

(67) a Mu-ipe avrio (? o ianis) oti tha dhoso to vivlio sti Maria.

to-me-he-said tomorrow (John) that will I-give the book to-the

Mary

`He (John) told me that I will give the book to Mary tomorrow.'

b Mu-ipe avrio (? o ianis) se pjon tha dhoso to vivlio.

to-me-he-said tomorrow (John) to whom will I-give the book

`He (John) told me who he will give the book to tomorrow.'

Unlike Italian, Greek allows adjunct preposing across a pure subordinator,

oti. This possibility excludes an analysis in terms of verb-proxies because

oti is not a dependent of the subordinate verb. The only word on which it

could possibly depend is the higher verb, ipe ‘said’, so its dependency

status must be just the same as that of English complementizers such as

that. This being so, the preposed adjunct cannot depend in surface

52

structure on the lower verb, because this dependency would tangle with

the one between ipe and oti as shown by the dotted arrow in Figure 18.

Figure 18

Another difference between Greek and both English and Italian is

that it is at least marginally possible to separate the preposed adjunct

from the rest of the subordinate clause by some element of the main

clause such as its subject (o ianis in these examples). To the extent that

this is possible, it suggests that the preposed adjunct is raised out of the

lower clause entirely, like the subject of a raising verb. This is the analysis

assumed in Figure 18, where the dependency labelled ‘?’ links the

preposed adjunct avrio (tomorrow) to the higher verb, ipe (said). This is its

surface link, which determines its position in word order, in contrast with

the non-surface dependency on the lower verb dhoso (give), which

determines its semantics. I assume that the same possibility also exists

for topicalised objects like the following (Tsimpli 1990).

(68) a Mu-ipe to vivlio oti edhose sti Maria.

to-me-he-said the book that he-gave to-the Mary

`He said that he gave the book to Mary.'

b Mu-ipe to vivlio se pjon edhose.

to-me-he-said the book to whom he-gave

`He said who he gave the book to.'

This suggestion is particularly tentative and needs further work (Tzanidaki

1986 is a detailed WG analysis of related patterns), but whatever the

correct analysis for Greek may turn out to be, we can at least be sure that

it will be different from Italian as well as from English.

53

4. Conclusion

This discussion has been concerned with a minor corner of English

grammar, the intersection of three different patterns: interrogative

pronouns (WH), preposed adjuncts (PA) and subordination. The question is

why the order PA < WH is good in main clauses but bad in subordinate

clauses, and the natural explanation turns on the assumption that WH is

the head of a subordinate clause but not of a main clause. How should this

simple idea be expressed in terms of formal sentence structures? The

discussion contrasted two general theories of sentence structure.

On the one hand are theories based on X-bar templates, in which

head-hood is linked to linear position in a fixed framework of abstract

positions each of which is defined in terms of both dominance and

precedence. There are many possible positions for both PA and WH, but

we considered the three most plausible analyses in which PA is adjoined to

IP, to CP or to TopicP. Each of these analyses failed (for English) for the

same reason: because the position in the X-bar schema which identifies an

element as head of the subordinate clause also defines its linear relations

to other elements of the clause. Consequently, if PA is possible after that it

should also be possible after WH; and conversely, if PA is possible before

WH, it should be possible before that. Neither of these predictions is

correct.

The other theory considered was Word Grammar, in which sentence

structure is defined in terms of dependencies between pairs of words

rather than in terms of a general ‘sentence-structure’ template. Unlike X-

54

bar theory, dominance (dependency) and precedence are separate, so (for

example) mutual dependency is possible although mutual precedence is

not. Mutual dependency allows WH and the following verb to compete as

surface head of an interrogative clause, so one can be head in a main

clause and the other in a subordinate clause. It is this alternation of

headedness that allows PA before WH in a main clause but not in a

subordinate clause. The analysis can be extended, with small

modifications, to accommodate different possibilities found in at least

some other languages.

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