- Home
- Books
- Romance Linguistics 2008
- Chapter
Experimenting with wh-movement in Spanish
- Author(s): Grant Goodall
- Source: Romance Linguistics 2008 , pp 233-248
- Publication Date September 2010
This paper provides evidence for an analysis of subject inversion in wh-questions in Spanish and demonstrates that techniques of experimental syntax play an important role in developing such analyses. The techniques used show that there is gradience in judgments of wh-questions depending on the nature of the filler and of the intervening subject. The facts fall out from the interplay of straightforward properties of the syntax (e.g. wh-movement, preverbal or postverbal placement of the subject) with straightforward properties of the processor (a common pool of limited resources to process wh-dependencies and establish discourse referents). The analysis predicts a correlation between the Overt Pronoun Rate in any given variety and the ability of a wh-dependency to tolerate an intervening subject, and the difference between Caribbean and mainland Latin American Spanish confirms this.
-
From This Site
/content/books/9789027287878-cilt.313.22goodcterms_subject,pub_keyword-contentType:Journal105