About what about: the semantics and syntax of irregular wh -questions in English
Abstract: Although often used as diagnostic tools in discourse studies, irregular wh-questions in English, which take the form of what/how about …? and what/how if …? , have not received sufficient attention in terms of their semantic and syntactic properties. This article investigates irregular wh-questions from semantic and syntactic perspectives. Semantically, there is a topic-comment relationship between the wh-word and the rest of the sentence. Syntactically, an irregular wh-question neither displays an explicit matrix subject-predicate structure nor involves a fronted auxiliary. This article pursues three objectives. First, a descriptive overview of irregular wh-questions is provided, which shows that the complement of about in irregular wh-questions can belong to various syntactic categories. Second, the topic-comment structure of irregular wh-questions is compared with that of the topic-comment structure in declarative sentences, which reveals some semantic properties of irregular wh-questions. Third, a formal account of irregular wh-questions is formulated in the framework of Dynamic Syntax, which captures the interaction of the semantic and syntactic properties of the components of an irregular wh-question. Additionally, the present dynamic account of irregular wh-questions is contrasted with an existing dynamic account of the hanging topic construction in English, which highlights some merits of the current account.
- Location
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Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
- Extent
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Online-Ressource
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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About what about: the semantics and syntax of irregular wh -questions in English ; volume:61 ; number:1 ; year:2023 ; pages:159-195 ; extent:37
Linguistics ; 61, Heft 1 (2023), 159-195 (gesamt 37)
- Creator
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Li, Wenshan
Liu, Jiang
- DOI
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10.1515/ling-2020-0130
- URN
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urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023011413045706803358
- Rights
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Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
- Last update
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15.08.2025, 7:28 AM CEST
Data provider
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Associated
- Li, Wenshan
- Liu, Jiang
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