Interrogative constructions in Kavalan and Amis

This dissertation investigates the syntactic structures of wh-in-situ questions, whinitial questions, and interrogative verbs in Kavalan and Amis, two Austronesian languages in Taiwan, and offers theoretical explanations within the framework of Generative Grammar. It is argued that the wh-initial construction exhibits a pseudo-cleft structure and is not derived via wh-movement to Spec, CP. In both Kavalan and Amis, this question formation strategy is only available for questions where the absolutive DP is questioned. This constraint results from the predicate-initial derivation of Kavalan and Amis clauses. An absolutive interrogative phrase in Kavalan cannot stay in-situ. This distributional pattern conforms to the account that analyzes subjects in Austronesian languages as topics and attributes the ban on in-situ subject interrogatives to this property. By contrast, Amis allows all types of interrogative phrases to stay in-situ regardless of their grammatical function or case-marking. We propose an account that relates this distributional pattern to the requirement on the formal marking of subjects based on Law's (2006) descriptive generalization and Landau's (2007) analysis of EPP. Another significant component of this dissertation is concerned with the analysis of interrogative verbs. We argue for a syntactic approach to the derivation of interrogative verbs. Their grammatical properties and constraints follow from the interaction of the following factors: The inherent semantics of interrogative words, the verbal structures and semantic interpretations of the voice markers, and the syntactic principles and constraints that are crosslinguistically valid. Finally, a syntactic analysis is proposed for the Interrogative Verb Sequencing Construction (IVSC). It is found that the syntactic relationship between the interrogative verb and the lexical verb in an IVSC is not coordination, but subordination. The interrogative verb serves as the main verb, whereas the lexical verb occurs in a reduced non-finite clause. It is argued that IVSCs encompass two different structural configurations. A =do how'-IVSC takes a lexical vP as its complement and features DP movement for Case checking. By contrast, the lexical vP in a =where'- or =how many'- IVSC is an adjunct and the construction is characterized by adjunct control of the theme DP.