Coordinated wh-questions

A response to Bošković (2022)

Abstract

Bošković (2022) challenges the claim from Citko & Gračanin-Yuksek (2013) that mono-clausal Coordinated Wh-Questions (mCWHs) and multiple wh-questions without coordination are derived through the same mechanism: multiple wh-fronting. This claim predicts that the two constructions behave the same with respect to superiority, which Bošković calls into question. We show that the analysis of Coordinated Wh-Questions in Citko & Gračanin-Yuksek (2013) does derive the parallelism between the two constructions with respect to superiority with one additional assumption: that the sidewards movement of wh-phrases happens late in the derivation. This assumption also derives the sensitivity of mCWHs to islands. We also present some empirical challenges for Bošković’s analysis.