Abstract
Hungarian multiple sluicing has been claimed to only be allowed in contexts that set up a pair-list, but not a single-pair reading. This has been taken as evidence that multiple sluicing is derived from multiple wh-fronting questions, which only license pair-list, but not single-pair answers. Providing novel experimental evidence, we show that all three relevant constructions in Hungarian - multiple sluicing, single wh-fronting questions, and multiple wh-fronting questions - in fact pattern alike in their answerhood conditions: both pair-list and single-pair readings are allowed, with a modest preference for single-pair readings. Based on our results, we thus argue that answerhood conditions are not sufficient to determine the source of multiple sluicing.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 401-423 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Linguistic Review |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 1 2022 |
Funding
For their helpful comments and suggestions, we thank the three anonymous reviewers, Karlos Arregi, Michael Tabatowksi and Ming Xiang, as well as the audiences at the Morphology and Syntax Workshop at the University of Chicago, TLS 2019, WCCFL 38 and ECBAE 3. We are grateful to Asya Achimova for sharing experimental materials with us. We thank the Humanities Division Council at the University of Chicago for their generous financial support. All errors are our own.
Keywords
- Hungarian
- ellipsis
- experimental syntax
- multiple sluicing
- multiple wh-questions
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language