Reasons for looking at EQsEnglish echo questions (EQs) are exemplary untutored constructions; however, they appear to operate contrary to the system of ‘normal’ question formation. 

ThesisEQs are explained in terms of independently necessary scope assignment mechanisms and a complementizer which subordinates the utterance being echoed and ‘freezes’ its CP structure. No norms of question formation are violated. 

The EQ challengeThe problems posed by EQs (relative to ‘normal’ question formation) include the following:

•simple wh-in-situ (‘Mary saw who?’);

•apparent Superiority violations (‘What did who see?’);

(iii) apparent verb movement without wh movement (‘Has Mary seen what?’);

(iv) requisite wide scope for an EQ-introduced wh- phrase (underlined in these examples), and requisite narrow scope for other wh phrases (only who in ‘What did who see?’ is being asked about in the EQ);

(v) partial wh marking (eg the what) possible in EQs but not in normal questions (‘You saw the what?’, but not *‘The what did you see?’)

 

The scope of wh-phrasesPreliminary to the analysis of EQs is the question of how wh-phrases get wide or narrow scope. C L Baker (1970) noted the wh-scope ambiguity in (1), where (1a) may be answered by (1b) with what having narrow scope, or by (1c) with what having wide scope. (1) a. Who knows where Mary bought what?

b. Bill does.c. Bill knows where she bought the soap, Jane

knows where she bought the toothpaste, etc.

Echo Question SyntaxNicholas Sobin

Echo Question SyntaxNicholas Sobin

The University of Texas at El Paso