On Typing Of Direct And Indirect Questions-with Special Reference To Sentence Final Particles

Question formation is a classic and proper syntactic issue. Matrix questions, andquestions in direct speech (henceforth direct questions), which have largely been neglectedin syntactic research, and questions in indirect speech (henceforth indirect questions)behave differently in more than one sense. In traditional syntactic analysis, C may host a[+WH] feature and a strong (as in matrix/direct questions) or a weak (as in embeddedquestions) or even no [+Q] feature (as in relative clauses). This helps to explain theirdistinct linguistic behaviors but has the shortcoming of being stipulative. Moreover,sentence final particles (SFPs) and intonation, unique to direct and matrix questions, fail toreceive adequate attention or systematic justification despite of the unanimous agreementon their pragmatic significance, and their syntactic status is largely at issue.The current thesis, following the cartographic approach by Rizzi (1997), attempts toclarify interrogative function and the nature of interrogative SFPs as a category.Proceeding from the universally perceived dichotomy of direct vs. indirect questions, thispaper reconsiders the issue for four languages: English, Chinese, Japanese and Koreanalong two dimensions: direct vs. indirect; yes-no vs. wh-questions. By contrasting directwith indirect yes-no questions, we show that the former favor PF in addition to a structuraloperation such as auxiliary inversion (if any), and the latter invariably employ a lexicaldevice. We propose a theory, along the cartographic approach, to separate Interrogativefrom Q feature, thus taking pragmatic end (answer-seeking) from formal concept (clausetype). In analysis of direct vs. indirect wh-questions, we show that the PF operationbecomes optional in the former, arguing wh-words’ potential to check Interrogative, andthat the distribution of CT vs. C as observed in Huang2009can be explained in the light ofTsai1999’s compositional analysis of wh-words, from which we proceed to argue thatthose words, unlike Q morphemes in agglutinative languages, lack inherent Q, but operatorand/or variable embodying information gap. We go on to propose our “Split-Q Hypothesis”from the foregoing discussion, and put it to the test of language facts. Such independenttypological evidence lends our argument with explanatory adequacy, and the ambiguous status of SFPs is nicely resolved in our Split-Q framework.Peripheral to sentences, SFPs and intonation are closed related to PF, thus an idealtopic for interface study under Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. The comparative analysison question typing of four languages explains our intuition in a principled way withsupport from independent researches. Its outcome is believed to help enriching syntacticspace as well as motivating language-specific realization, and contribute its due part in thesearch of a unified account on linguistic individualities, thus a step toward human languageuniversality.