Phonological Suppression of Anaphoric Wh-expressions in English and Korean

PACLIC 28 !57 Phonological Suppression of Anaphoric Wh-expressions in English and Korean Park, Myung-Kwan Department of English Linguistics, Interpretation and Translation Dongguk University Seoul, Korea 100-715 parkmk@dgu.edu Abstract This paper follows the lead of Chung (2013), examining the phonological suppression of the wh-expression in English and Korean. We argue that the wh-expression itself cannot undergo ellipsis/deletion/dropping, as it carries information focus. However, it can do so, when in anaphoricity with the preceding token of wh-expression, it changes into an E-type or sloppy-identity pronoun. This vehicle change from the wh- expression to a pronoun accompanies the loss of the wh-feature inherent in the wh-expression. In a certain structural context such as a quiz question, the interrogative [+wh] complementizer does not require the presence of a wh- expression, thus the expression being optionally dropped. 1. Introduction As Chung (2013) notes, the interrogative expression in Korean corresponding to the wh- expression in English cannot be phonologically suppressed1, as follows: (1) A: na-nun chelswu-ka ecey mwues-ul I-Top Chelswu-Nom yesterday what-Acc sass-nunci molu-keyss-ta. 1 We occasionally use the theory-neutral notion 'phonological(ly) suppress(ion)' to refer to such terms as (phonological) dropping, copy trace deletion, ellipsis/deletion, etc. bought-Interr don't know 'I don't know what Chelswu bought yesterday.' B: na-to yenghuy-ka ecey *(mwues-ul) I-also Yenghuy-Nom yesterday what-Acc sass-nunci molukeyssta. bought-Interr don't know 'I don't know what Yenghuy bought yesterday.' In the conversation between speakers A and B, speaker B's sentence is required to bear the interrogative expression mwues 'what', despite the fact that another token of the same expression is mentioned in the previous sentence spoken by speaker A. Apparently, the same distribution of the wh- expression is found in English, as follows: (2)A: I don't know what John bought yesterday. B: *I don't know Bill did (buy what yesterday), either. B': I don't know *(what) Bill did (buy t yesterday), either. As in (2B), the wh-expression what cannot be included in the portion deleted by VP ellipsis. Nor is it phonologically suppressed after it is moved to the embedded [Spec,CP] position, as in (2B'). Chung (2013) attempts to account for the impossibility of phonologically suppressing the interrogative expression in Korean by adopting the pro hypothesis for the null argument. More specifically, Chung follows the line of analysis advanced by Ahn and Cho (2012), who propose that the null argument as pro always substitutes for NP, but not for the next higher QP projected by the functional element Q such as a quantity word or a wh-feature, as schematized below: Copyright 2014 by Myung-Kwan Park 28th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation pages 57–64 PACLIC 28 !58 (3) [QP [NP pro ] Q ] Chung's analysis works fine for Korean, but his analysis squarely faces a problem when it is extended to examples like (2B) and (2B') in English, where the empty pro is known not to be available in grammar. We examine this issue of why the interrogative or wh- expression is not phonologically suppressed. We argue that the interrogative or wh- expression in its …

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