Chapter 7 - Complementiser Phrases3 Interrogative CPs
3.1 Basic positions within the CP
So far we have looked mainly at declarative CPs. In this section we will turn our
attention to interrogatives. There are a number of different types of interrogatives and
most of them seem to make use of the CP in one way or another. The two most
obvious ones are wh-questions and yes–no questions.
A wh-question is formed with the use of an interrogative pronoun, usually called a
wh-element as in English they mostly begin with the letters ‘wh’, as in who, why,
which, what, where, etc. How is an exception to this spelling convention, though from
a linguistic point of view, the spelling is uninteresting and it is syntactic and semantic
behaviour that are more important. From these points of view, how is just like the other
‘wh’-elements. In a wh-interrogative, the sentence begins with the wh-element:
(18) a who said that?
b what did you say?
c why do you say that?
Apart from (18a) where the wh-element replaces the subject, all other instances of wh-
questions involve the wh-element being in front of the subject. Given that the subject’s
surface position is the specifier of the IP, this indicates that the wh-element sits in a
position outside the IP. Above the IP is the CP, so we may assume that the wh-element
is situated in the CP. As wh-elements are phrases, probably DPs, though some of them
have underlying distributions similar to PPs and therefore are either PPs or perhaps
DPs non-canonically realising the prepositional role, they must occupy a phrasal
position in the CP and the most obvious choice would be the specifier of the CP:
(19) CP
DP C'
what’s C IP
he doing
In yes–no questions, there is no interrogative pronoun and the question is
interpreted as asking about the truth of the proposition that it expresses. Hence they
may be answered by “yes” (that’s true) or “no” (that’s not true):
(20) a will they ever stop singing?
b have you seen my glasses?
c did you see that?
Note that these questions are formed by placing an auxiliary verb in front of the
subject, a phenomenon traditionally termed subject–auxiliary inversion. Again, given
that the auxiliary is to the left of the subject, it seems to be outside of the IP and
presumably somewhere in the CP. This time, however, the position needed is a word
position and the obvious choice is the complementiser position itself: