{"id":17407,"date":"2025-09-15T06:08:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=17407"},"modified":"2025-09-15T06:08:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:08:00","slug":"syntax-square-9-16-elise-newman-mit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2025\/09\/15\/syntax-square-9-16-elise-newman-mit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Syntax Square 9\/16 - Elise Newman (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Speaker: <\/strong> Elise Newman (MIT)<br class=\"\"><strong>Title: <\/strong>Some thoughts on clefts and wh-fronting<br class=\"\"><strong>Time: <\/strong>Tuesday, September 16th, 1pm - 2pm<br class=\"\"><strong>Location: <\/strong>32-D461<br class=\"\"><br class=\"\"><strong>Abstract: <\/strong>To kick off the new semester of syntax square, I want to explore a question: why do some languages primarily use clefts for question-formation when wh-fronting should be a possibility? I don\u0092t know the answer, but I\u0092m hoping that by making the question more concrete, we can start to see a path towards an eventual solution. I\u0092ll explore questions in two languages, Tagalog and Passamaquoddy, which both have the following in common: they use different strategies for DP-questions than non-DP questions. Tagalog uses a pseudo-cleft strategy for DP questions but a regular fronting strategy for non-DP questions; Passamaquoddy uses different clause type for each one. I\u0092ll revisit some properties of clefts and relatives clauses in each case and show that while the behavior of and restrictions on non-DP wh-phrases are fairly straightforward to understand, the behavior of DPs is less obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)Title: Some thoughts on clefts and wh-frontingTime: Tuesday, September 16th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: To kick off the new semester of syntax square, I want to explore a question: why do some languages primarily use clefts for question-formation when wh-fronting should be a possibility? I don\u0092t know the answer, but I\u0092m hoping [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407","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\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}