Coordinated Multiple Wh-questions in Wh-in-situ Languages: A Mono-Clausal Movement Analysis

Coordinated Multiple Wh-questions (CMWHs) in wh-in situ languages have received scant attention in the literature. Citko and Gracanin-Yuksek (2013) propose that UG allows for three types of structures for CMWHs: a mono-clausal structure and two bi-clausal structures of bulk-sharing and non-bulk sharing. Kasai (2016) puts forth a bi-clausal backward ellipsis analysis, based on Japanese. In this paper, I argue that neither Citko and Gracanin-Yuksek’s (2013) typology nor Kasai’s (2016) ellipsis analysis can properly accommodate the properties of CMWHs in wh-in situ languages. I propose alternatively, based on Korean, that CMWHs in languages without wh-movement are constructed via a sideward movement of wh-phrases in a mono-clausal structure, adopting Zhang (2007), which is triggered by a special coordinating head & 0 , and then the conjoined wh-complex remerges to a typical scrambling site already available in the language: SpecvP or SpecTP. This paper thus teases out the interwoven properties of wh-questions and scrambling, and suggests that CMWHs in wh-in situ languages are simply an instantiation of scrambling of which focus meaning is interpreted through its ‘labeled’ projection at CI (Chomsky 2013).