Chinese Wh-in-Situ and Islands: A Formal Judgment Study

1 Introduction and Background

It has long been assumed that argument wh-in-situ in Chinese is not sensitive to islands, unlike adjunct wh-in-situ (Huang 1982a,b, Tsai 1994a,b, 1999, Cheng 2009).¹ On the basis of a formal acceptability-rating experiment (Sprouse 2007, Sprouse, Wagers, and Phillips 2012, Sprouse and Hornstein 2013), this squib shows that, contrary to this long-standing generalization, both argument and adjunct wh-in-situ are sensitive to complex NP islands (Ross 1967). We argue that our finding is most compatible with the theory of wh-in-situ whereby both argument and adjunct wh-phrases undergo a similar movement process, namely, phrasal movement.

Studies of wh-in-situ in Chinese have identified the following generalization, known as the argument-adjunct asymmetry: argument wh-in-situ (e.g., shenme 'what', shei 'who') is not sensitive to islands, but adjunct wh-in-situ (e.g., weishenme 'why', zenmeyang 'how') is severely constrained by islands (Huang 1982a,b, Xu 1990, Lasnik and Saito 1992, Tsai 1994a,b, 1999). For example, in (1a) and (1b), respectively, a wh-DP (shenme 'what') and a wh-adjunct (weishenme 'why') are embedded within a relative clause (the Complex NP Constraint; Ross 1967).² It has been reported that (1a) is more acceptable than (1b) (examples from Tsai 1999:42–43).³

(1)

a. Argument
Akiu kan-bu-qi      [_NP[_CP   e_i   zuo  shenme de]    ren_i]?
Akiu look-not-up  [_NP[_CP   e_i   do    what      rel]  person_i]
'What is the thing/job x such that Akiu despises [people
[who do x]]?'

b. Adjunct
*Akiu  xihuan [_NP[_CP   Luxun  weishenme xie     e_i   de]
  Akiu  like      [_NP[_CP   Luxun  why             write  e_i   rel]
shu_i]?
book_i]
'What is the reason x that Akiu likes [books [that Luxun wrote for x]]?'

Part of the syntactic and semantic research into Chinese wh-in-situ has thus been devoted to explaining the argument-adjunct asymmetry shown in (1). Let us look at some of the dominant approaches to Chinese wh-in-situ.

One approach attributes the contrast in (1) to the Empty Category Principle (ECP) (Chomsky 1981, 1986, Huang 1982b, Lasnik and Saito 1984, 1992, Cheng 2009). It has been suggested that the Subjacency Condition (Chomsky 1977, 1981, 1986) is an S-Structure condition (or a constraint on overt phrasal movement), whereas the ECP is an LF condition (or a constraint on covert movement) (Lasnik and Saito 1984, 1992). Since Chinese wh-in-situ does not undergo overt wh-movement, the Subjacency Condition should not be in effect. However, Chinese wh-in-situ should be sensitive to the ECP if it undergoes movement in LF. Under the ECP-based explanation, the trace left by an adjunct wh-element is not properly governed (specifically, an intermediate trace is not antecedent-governed; see Chomsky 1981, 1986, Lasnik and Saito 1992) and thus violates the ECP (Huang 1982a,b, Lasnik and Saito 1984, 1992). Following this argument, we would expect adjunct but not argument wh-in-situ to be sensitive to islands.⁴

More recent studies have suggested that argument wh-in-situ does not undergo movement and is therefore immune from island effects, whereas adjunct wh-in-situ undergoes covert movement and is thus sensitive to islands (Aoun and Li 1993, Chomsky 1995, Tsai 1999, Stepanov and Tsai 2008). Tsai (1999), for example, argues that wh-DPs are subject to unselective binding whereas wh-PPs are not. Thus, wh-DPs can create operator-variable pairs by means of unselective binding without resorting to wh-movement. Wh-PPs, on the other hand, cannot create operator-variable pairs by means of unselective binding and must undergo movement to do so. Stepanov and Tsai (2008) further propose a distinction between two interpretations of the Chinese wh-element weishenme ('purpose why'/'for what' and 'reason why'/ 'why') and claim that unselective binding is available for 'for what' but not for 'why'. Therefore, a certain interpretation of weishenme prompts movement of the wh-element, to which island constraints should apply.

Other...