{"id":13032,"date":"2019-11-25T05:52:16","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T10:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=13032"},"modified":"2019-11-25T13:21:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T18:21:36","slug":"patrick-elliot-in-nantes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2019\/11\/25\/patrick-elliot-in-nantes\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Elliott in Nantes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Elliott\u00a0gave an invited talk, “Nesting habits of flightless wh-<\/em>expressions”, on Monday Nov 25 at a workshop in Nantes entitled “complex multiple wh-<\/em>constructions”.<\/p>\n

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Abstract:<\/p>\n

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In this talk, we focus on a construction involving what Heim (1994) dubs “nested which phrases”, as illustrated by the example in (1). In (1) the in-situ which-phrase “which Russian novel” appears to be itself contained within the complex which-phrase headed by “novel”, which overly moves to its scope position.<\/p>\n

1. Which Russian novels by which exiled authors did you read?<\/p>\n

Questions with nested which-phrases are puzzling in a number of respects. Sudo (2017) observes that nested which-phrases lack what he calls a “complete de re reading”. This is easiest to see when (1) is placed in an embedded context, as in (2). Suppose I reserve a part of my bookshelf for Russian novels, and Andy doesn\u0092t know what kind of books they are or who wrote them, but knows which ones I haven\u0092t opened (e.g., because they are clean). Sudo observes that (2) isfalse in such a context; when we replaced the nested which-phrase with an indefinite however, the sentence is true. I refer to this as Sudo’s puzzle.<\/p>\n

2. Andy knows which Russian novels by which exiled authors I’ve read.<\/p>\n

3. Andy knows which Russian novels by exiled authors I’ve read.<\/p>\n

Along similar lines, Elliott (2015) observes that nested which-phrases lack a pair-list interpretation. This is easiest to see by embedding a question with nested which-phrases under a predicate which biases a pair-list interpretation of a multiple question, such as “to reel off”. I refer to this as Elliott’s puzzle.<\/p>\n

4. Andy reeled off which Russian novel I read on which day of the week.<\/p>\n

5. # Andy reeled off which Russian novel by which exiled author I read.<\/p>\n

Both Sudo’s puzzle and Elliott’s puzzle, I argue, suggest that the in-situ wh-phrase can’t scope independently of the container. Otherwise, we’d expect nested which-phrases to pattern with other in-situ wh-phrases and give rise to (a) de re readings, and (b) pair list interpretations. In this talk, we argue that the scope of the nested which-phrase is trapped within the containing DP. This straightforwardly rules out a pair-list interpretation. In order to rule out the complete de re interpretation, we develop a generalised version of the scope theory of intensionality, where only expressions at the edge of a pied-piped constituent may be interpreted de re.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
Workshop website: https:\/\/anamariafalaus.org\/workshop\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick Elliott\u00a0gave an invited talk, “Nesting habits of flightless wh-expressions”, on Monday Nov 25 at a workshop in Nantes entitled “complex multiple wh-constructions”.   Abstract: In this talk, we focus on a construction involving what Heim (1994) dubs “nested which phrases”, as illustrated by the example in (1). In (1) the in-situ which-phrase “which Russian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13032"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13060,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13032\/revisions\/13060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}