WHYを含む中日多重WH疑問文の統語論・意味論について

The differences in the restrictions on multiple-wh-questions in Chinese and Japanese appear strange. On the one hand, at least one nominal wh-phrase (nani (‘what’) or dare (‘who’)) must precede the adverbial wh-phrase naze (‘why’) in Japanese. On the other hand, in Chinese, multiple-wh-questions are permitted only in embedded sentences, and never in monoclausal sentences. Moreover, ‘why’ takes the narrow scope, whereas nominal wh-phrases take wide scope in the semantic interpretation. In this paper, a new syntactic and semantic analysis is developed to investigate the differences between Japanese and Chinese, and the characteristics of naze.
In Japanese, wh-phrases employ covert movement. The Q (question)-operator of a nominal wh-phrase directly merges in DP/PP, and the Q-operator of the adverbial wh-phrase naze appears in Spec CP. Therefore, nominal wh-phrases and naze can coexist in monoclausal sentences. In contrast to the case in Japanese of covert movement of wh-phrases, in Chinese, feature movement is applied to wh-phrases, and the Q-operators of both nominal wh-phrases and naze are present in Spec CP. Therefore, nominal wh-phrases and naze cannot co-occur in monoclausal sentences where only one Spec CP is included. However, they can co-occur in monoclausal sentences where two Spec CPs are included.
Due to its semantic characteristics, ‘why’ cannot take other wh-questions in its scope. We also find that the above-mentioned restrictions in Japanese apply to the linear order of wh-phrases, because the preceding wh-phrases take wide scope, while these restrictions for Chinese language appear in the differences between monoclausal sentences and embedded sentences instead of the linear order.