Chapter 7 - Complementiser Phrasesenables the clause to be interpreted as an interrogative. One way to realise this
agreement relationship is in terms of the presence of an interrogative complementiser,
i.e. the empty question particle, in the C position:
(46) CP
DP C'
who C IP
-Q
Again, as this particle is a bound morpheme, it will trigger movement to support it:
(47) CP
DP C'
what C IP
-Q DP I'
you I VP
have done
This all seems fairly straightforward. Unfortunately things are a little more
complex and it appears that we do not always get inversion in question clauses. One
place where we find that inversion doesn’t happen is in embedded questions:
(48) a I didn’t know [what he would say]
b *I didn’t know [what would he say]
In some embedded contexts, it seems as though inversion is optional:
(49) a the boarder guard asked [why the tourist didn’t have a passport]
b the boarder guard asked [why didn’t the tourist have a passport]
Note, however, these two sentences have very different meanings. In the first case the
embedded question reports on the ‘content’ of the question that was asked. The
question might not have been framed in these exact words, or even in English! In
contrast, in the second case the embedded clause reports on the words that were
actually used. Thus in the second case, the embedded clause actually echoes a previous
sentence that has been uttered. When it was uttered, obviously this sentence was not an
embedded clause but a main one, and hence it is not surprising that it follows the
pattern of a main clause. Therefore, (49b) isn’t really an example of an embedded
clause with inversion but it involves something that is a main clause, seemingly being
used in an embedded context. The conclusion is that in real embedded clauses we
don’t get inversion.