Echo questions in Brazilian Portuguese

ABSTRACT Brazilian Portuguese (BP) can have the wh-element in-situ with two types of sentence intonation: (a) the rising intonation of a yes/no question, in which case it is interpreted as an echo question, and (b) the falling intonation, similar to that of a declarative sentence, in which case it is interpreted as an ordinary question. Kato (2013) analyzed the falling intonation type as a fake wh-in-situ, with a short movement of the wh-element to a lower focus position, inspired by Miyagawa’s (2001) proposal for Japanese whereas the rising intonation type was analyzed in accordance with Kayne’s (1994) proposal, with the whole TP containing the wh-element moving to Spec of C. In this article we maintain the analysis of the wh-in-situ with falling intonation as a fake in-situ but analyze the echo question as a short yes/no indirect question. The languages used to support this analysis of BP are English, French, and Japanese.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kato,Mary A.
Format: Digital revista
Language:English
Published: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC-SP 2019
Online Access:http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-44502019000100403
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