Scope assignment: From <i>wh</i>- to QR

ing away from the presence of Agr nodes, this structure shows dedicated scope positions for different types of QPs. Scope for a particular QP is the result of either movement of the QP to the specifier of the relevant scope head, or, extending the proposal, the result of the establishment of an Agree relation between the scope head and the QP. It can be expected that in some languages, the scope heads will have overt realisations. The general Abstracting away from the presence of Agr nodes, this structure shows dedicated scope positions for different types of QPs. Scope for a particular QP is the result of either movement of the QP to the specifier of the relevant scope head, or, extending the proposal, the result of the establishment of an Agree relation between the scope head and the QP. It can be expected that in some languages, the scope heads will have overt realisations. The general approach runs as follows: suppose that the scope-marking functional heads optionally project, unless forced to do so. Suppose further that subjects always move out of the vP phase to [Spec,TP], for independent reasons. More specifically, consider the case of an object DP. If no scope head is merged, the DP in question will not move and will remain in the vP. All other things being equal, given the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC), it will be subject to transfer at the relevant point and will have, as a result, narrow scope or rather, it has no scope to speak of. Suppose now that DistP does project, then DP in question will enter into an Agree relation with Dist and will be interpreted distributively with scope corresponding to the Dist head’s position. In the present setting, whether or not the DP actually moves will be determined by the presence of an EPP feature on Dist. For reasons that go beyond the reach of this paper, ‘every’ forces Dist to project, while ‘all’ allows Dist to optionally project.17 To complete the picture, for non-universals, one option would be to suppose that there’s some projection, say ExistP above IP, where existential closure usually applies (Kratzer 2005). So in the case of ‘Everyone loves someone’, ‘everyone’ must always raise, since it is the subject. Then depending on whether or not ExistP is projected, wide/narrow existential scope can be derived. Setting aside, for good reason, the role played by interrogative 17 This is probably connected to the more general question of the lexical-functional distinction. Hegarty (1993, 2005) for example has suggested following a tradition that goes back to Abney (1987) and much work since that functional heads/features are interpolated as needed to match those of lexical categories. Tsoulas and Yeo: Scope assignment Art. 87, page 29 of 33 C, it appears that scope in general involves two parts: a scope marker/head equivalent to the Q particle and a QP equivalent to the wh-word. A case where these are overt is that of floating quantifiers. As noted by Dowty & Brodie (1984), floating quantifiers fix the scope of the DP that they associate with at the position of the floating quantifier. Tsoulas (2003) proposed that they are indeed scope markers generated directly in the relevant scope heads. But we can combine this insight with the more traditional stranding analysis in terms of the analysis of wh-scope. In other words the [Q+DP] constituent will be exactly parallel to the [Q+wh] constituent that we encountered earlier. The proposed account separates the different functions attributed to QR. The core suggestion is that to the extent that QR corresponds to a rule of Internal Merge that has as (perhaps one of) its effect(s) the creation of an operator–variable construct then it should be treated on a par with other instances of Internal Merge that result in the same representations. A fundamental question here is whether there is a residue of cases for which this account proves inadequate. We will leave this question open. Sketchy though it is, however, the above account suggests that it is possible to unify the scope assignment mechanisms that are seen in detail in the case of wh-scope with the way scope is assigned in general. 5 Concluding remarks The main idea that we pursued in this paper is that a careful look at a typologically rich set of wh-questions and their derivation focusing specifically on the mechanisms determining scope of wh-elements provides a particularly good lens through which scope assignment in general can be fruitfully considered. We concluded that the most promising way to look at wh-scope is through selective spell-out, which we suggested is a better way to understand the distributions than its relative, LF-movement, whose basic mechanisms seem to run counter to current theoretical understanding of syntactic derivations that includes a version of the copy theory of movement. We suggested that, when understood properly, the same mechanism of selective spell-out extends naturally to scope assignment in general, and QR in particular, given relatively neutral assumptions about the phrase structure of scope and the relations between scope markers and scope takers. If this analysis is on the right track, and there is no doubt a great deal remains to be done, sui generis syntactic scope assigning mechanisms can be dispensed altogether as scope assignment can be achieved through other generally available means, a welcome result. Whether all scope is syntactic is a question that should probably be answered negatively as far as our understanding extends. A case in point is indefinites, whose scope do not correspond to their c-command domains. Our proposal is compatible with the idea that there are semantic ways to determine scope. The sort of primitives that we have proposed give us, however, a way to consider more explicitly whether further simplification is possible or whether we need to assume independent semantic scope assignment mechanisms. Whatever the ultimate answer to this question, it will be an important result.