Local wh-subjects under Quem nunca? ellipsis

• Tarcisio Dias ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Connecticut

     University of Connecticut

     Town of Mansfield, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Isogloss: Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, ISSN-e 2385-4138, Vol. 9, Vol. 4, 2023 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Trending topics in Romance linguistics)
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper I show that there is an elliptical construction in Brazilian Portuguese involving nunca ('never') restricted to locally moved wh-subjects and provide an account of this peculiar restriction. The construction in question corresponds to the sequence Quem nunca? ('Who never?'), which is used as a follow-up comment to a declarative sentence such as Pedro beijou João ('Pedro kissed João'), meaning 'Who did never kiss João?'. Curiously, the wh-element in such cases must correspond to the locally moved subject. I argue that the construction in question provides evidence for Bošković's (2023) proposal regarding two different positions for wh-movement, in which local wh-subjects move to a position below CP and above TP, whereas other wh-elements all move to Spec,CP. I also show this approach provides evidence for the view in which a Spec-head relation is needed for ellipsis licensing.