Intervention effect, scope, and type-shifting

Kim, Jieun. 2018. Intervention effect, scope, and type-shifting. Linguistic Research 35(2), 305-335. This paper proposes a new approach to the intervention effect in Korean. Instead of attributing this effect to the failure of proper binding between a wh-phrase and its Q-operator in syntactic (Beck 1996; Beck and Kim 1997) or in semantic sense (Beck 2006; Kim 2002; Wee 2007), this paper points out that the properties of the semantics of interveners and the contribution of interveners scope to compositional process of forming a wh-interrogative meaning should be investigated more carefully. In this paper, I regard quantifying items as potential interveners and suggest how only some specific classes of quantifying items escape from being a real intervener. As for the remnant quantifying items, the real interveners, two factors are suggested as the cause of intervention effect: (1) combinatorial mismatch in wh-interrogative composition process and (2) improper formation of informative content when an intervener scopes over a wh-phrase. We can find that not only the positive information but also the negative information delivered by strong exhaustive reading of a wh-question are not formed properly when an intervener scopes over a wh-phrase. This suggestion is distinguished from previous ones in that it explains why not all quantifying items are interveners and how interveners cause semantic problems, not syntactic problems. (University of Ulsan)