The Integrative Approach to the Derivation of Interrogatives in Korean and English

This paper investigates the derivation of interrogatives in Korean and English from an integrative perspective that connects syntax, prosody, and speech act. Challenging the traditional Minimalist view that the Q-feature on C directly determines interrogative force, the study highlights the contradictory treatment of Q-features in Chomsky’s framework: interpretable in yes/no questions but uninterpretableinwh-questions. Toresolve thisinconsistency, the paper adopts a Speech Act Phrase (SAP)-based model, in which the head of SAP determines the sentence type by encoding the speaker’s illocutionary force, and the head of CP realizes this information morphologically or prosodically. Cross- linguistic data reveal a crucial asymmetry. In Korean, sentence-final endings and prosodic contours can independently license interrogativity, rendering wh-movement unnecessary, whereas in English prosodic insufficiency compels syntactic movement such as wh-fronting. This analysis shows that prosody not only reflects but also shapes syntactic operations, liberating syntax in Korean while driving it in English. By situating interrogative force in SAP rather than in C, the study resolves the stipulative nature of Q-features and provides a more coherent account of cross-linguistic variation in interrogative formation.