Tanaka, M; (2015) Scoping out of adjuncts: Evidence for the parallelism between QR and WH-movement. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

What gives rise to reversal of quantifier scope has been a long-standing question in the study of linguistics. In the framework of Generative Grammar, it has been standard since May (1977) to analyse scope-shift as a form of covert movement, Quantifier Raising (QR). Evidence for this analysis comes from the fact that QR is sensitive to the very same island constraints that restrict overt movement (e.g. wh-movement). However, the widely assumed parallelism between scope-shift and wh-movement, which the theory of QR rests on, has not been experimentally examined in any depth. This thesis reports an experimental study that examined the parallelism between QR and wh-movement in terms of their sensitivity to the adjunct island constraint, in order to test the QR theory empirically. An experimental study based on acceptability judgement tasks was carried out in order to test QR and wh-argument extraction out of three types of non-finite adjuncts: bare participial gerunds, after-prepositional gerunds, and during-PPs. The outcome mostly revealed similarities in the locality of QR and wh-extraction, supporting a parallelism between the two, and hence the theory of QR. On the other hand, the outcome also suggested some differences between these two operations: wh-argument extraction out of a bare participial gerund is marginally acceptable, while QR out of the same environment is unacceptable. On the basis of this result, I argue that both QR and wh-argument extraction out of a non-finite adjunct are subject to the same syntactic constraint: a barrier-effect of the adjunct phase boundary. On the other hand, they are additionally subject to different constraints at the syntax-semantics interface. QR is subject to Scope Economy, whereas wh-extraction is subject to the Single Event Grouping Condition. The remainder of this thesis discusses how these assumptions can capture the parallelism and asymmetries between QR and wh-argument extraction.

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