Pied-Piping by Non-Phrase-Initial Wh-Words in English Reconsidered From the Processing Perspective

Pied-Piping by Non-Phrase-Initial Wh-Words in English Reconsidered From the Processing Perspective

  It has been observed that pied-piping in English is freer in appositive relative clauses than in restrictive relative clauses and in matrix questions than in embedded questions (Emonds 1979, Cowper 1987, etc.). This kind of clause-type sensitivity of pied-piping has caused great difficulties for the analysis of pied-piping, and some recent accounts such as Yoon (2002, 2003) and Heck (2004) propose to explain it, along with various other properties of pied-piping, by assuming that such pied-piping involves a secondary movement and that this secondary movement is of a special type which has properties different from the typical wh-movement. In this paper I reexamine the pied-piping data from the perspective of non-structural factors such as semantics, pragmatics and ultimately, processing, and show (ⅰ) that the so-called unique properties of pied-piping including clause-type sensitivity are not specific to pied-piping and (ⅱ) that they can be better explained in terms of processing. Based on the way various non-structural factors affecting the locality of wh-movement have been explained from the perspective of processing, I will show how those unique properties of pied-piping can be explained in a similar way without complicating the syntax of pied-piping.