A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 995.4.2.2 Preposition stranding in English
The statement of the linking algorithm in (63) specifies simply that a WH-
word appears in the PCS, and this is the case for unmarked WH-questions
in English. A WH-word is always a narrow focus in a question, regardless
of whether it occurs in situ or in the PCS (see Figures 13, 25). It was stated
in section 2.5 that the basic information units in the information structure of
the clause are predicates, arguments (NPs, AdPs, clauses) and peripheral
AdPs and adverbials, and the various WH-words in the language reflect
this, e.g. what, who = NP, where, when = AdP, adverbial. The internal
components of these basic information units cannot be questioned directly
using a simple WH-word, as the impossibility of the question-answer pairs
in (88a,b) shows.
(88) a. Q: Who did Mary see a tall?
A: Stock car driver,
b. Q: What/what kind of/which did Mary see a stock car
driver?
A: Tall.
This is also shown by the inability to question a single NP in a conjoined
NP, e.g. Who did you see and Fred?; here too an element of the internal
structure of a basic information unit is being questioned, yielding an
ungrammatical question.
This raises interesting questions regarding preposition stranding in
English, in which it appears that a basic information unit, the PP, is being
broken up and the head stranded. This is not possible in all cases, however,
as (89c) shows.
(89) a. Who did John give the book to?
b. What did Mary put the letter in?
What did John eat breakfast in?
d. Where did John eat breakfast?
The difference between (89a,b) and (89c) is that to and in in these examples
are non-predicative, while in in (89c) is predicative (see section 1.7). The
non-predicative ones are predictable to a certain extent from the meaning
of the verb, and consequently in non-predicative PPs the primary informa
tion resides in the NP object. This is reflected in the structural representa
tion of non-predicative PPs in Figure 8a, in which the preposition is treated
as a case marker. This contrasts sharply with the structure of predicative
PPs in Figure 8b, in which the preposition is not licensed by the verb and