3. The rule applies last-cyclically.
Notes: (i) There appear to be no strong arguments for ordering the Initial Conjunction Deletion rule prior to this rule. It must precede the Reduced Alternative Question rule. The trees in this section are drawn as though the rule had already applied to remove the initial conjunction.
(ii) The rule is intended to apply to WH questions (see below), alternative questions and sentences with pre- posed negative adverbials (cf. NEG). In fact, the rule will not apply to alternative questions unless the WH-spreading rule were to insert a node ADV dominating the feature [+WH]; alternatively, con- stituent 3 of the S.I. could be stated to be any single constituent immediately dominated by S.
(iii) The X at h is probably tantamount to (NP).
(iv) Condition (l) blocks the derivation of such forms as
»Does he be going (or doesn't he be)?, *Where did he have gone?
(v) Condition (3) prevents [+WH] from triggering AUX- attraction in Rel clauses and indirect questions.
(vi) This rule follows a number of rules which affect the order of elements within MOD, e.g. Pre-verbal ADV placement, Pre-verbal NEG placement (cf. NEG). The application of these rules accounts for the discrepancy between the order given here of elements 6, 7, and 8 and their deep structure order,
(vii) We accept Ross's (1967c) output condition (3.27) that S's containing internal S's dominated by NP's are unacceptable, as the explanation for the ungraramati- cality of »Did that John showed up please you? and therefore put no special condition on this rule to exclude such sentences.
INTERROG - 13
(viii) The HAVE in 3 of the S.I. of the AUX-attraction rule cannot be [+V]. Thus the WH-deletion rule generates
(25.d) but not (26.a) (which is grammatical in British English). Since AUX-attraction is a last-cyclic rule, NEG must already be in the position indicated in the S.I.
of this rule (i.e. following HAVE). Therefore, we would derive Has he something to do or doesn't he? but not
(26.a), (cf. NEG p. 53).
(ix) Apparently the usual condition on conjunction constrain- ing the conjoining of identical sentences (S, / So) does not obtain in the case of alternative questions. Thus sentences like (25.f), which achieve their effect by seeming to offer a choice without actually doing so, are both grammatical and common.
Example in Tree Format {2k) (a)
# [+WH] NP
he [-PAST] always snore CONJ [+or]
he [-PAST] NEG always snore
(by applying AUX-ATTRACTION to each subtree dominated by S)
INTERROG - lU
(2U) (b)
PROP #
[-PAST] he always snore CONJ
[+or]
[-PAST] NEG he always snore
Examples:
(25) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)
(J) (k)
Does he always snore or doesn't he always snore?
Could he have left yesterday or was he being detained?
Are you a man or are you a mouse?
Has he left or does he have something to do?
Can't you hear me or aren't you listening?
Is Chomsky right or is Chomsky right?
Was his doing that a surprise or had you expected it?
Was it a surprise for him to do that or had you expected it?
Was it a surprise that he did that or had you expected it?
Is it raining or is it snowing?
Is there a book on that table or isn't there one there?
Ungrammatical and disallowed:
(26) (a) *Has he something to do or hasn't he?
(b) *Does he be going or doesn't he be?
k. WH-Deletion
SI: # [+WH] TNS X 12 3 SC: Delete 2.
COND: The rule is obligatory.
INTERROG - 15
Notes: This rule deletes the [+WH] that has been moved to sentence initial position by WH-Spreading, after the application of AUX-Attraction.
Example in Tree Format:
Tree (2U.b) is changed to (27) by this rule.
(27) S
# TNS
# TNS NEG NP MOD PROP 0
5. Reduced Alternative Question (including yes-no questions) SI:
#TNS(
(M ) (M
HAVEH (NEG) NP X CONT # OR #TNSUHAVE^) (NEG) NP X § BE ) (BE
1 2 3 U 5 6 789 10 SC: 1. Delete 9 or:
2. Delete 6, 8, 9 (where 7 • NEG) or:
3. Delete 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 COND: 1. 1...3 * 6...10, except 2 i 7
2. The rule is optional.
Notes: (i) The three SC's are all optional. Their products are considered stylistic variants of each other and of non-reduced alternative questions.
(ii) Yes-no questions are generated by SC (3).
Example in Tree Format:
The REDUCED ALTERNATIVE QUESTION rule operates on the tree of (27) converting it by the three SC's into the respective trees of (29)
INTERROG - 16
-* (29) (a)
[-PAST] he always snore CONT CONJ [+or]
[-PAST] NEG he
(29) (b)
[-PAST] he always snore CONT CONJ [+or]
NEG
(29) (c)
[-PAST] CONT
INTERROG - IT
Does he always snore or doesn't he?
Does he always snore or not?
Does he always snore?
Doesn't he always snore or does he?
Doesn't he always snore?
Did you say he always snores?
Did you (just) say, "He always snores."?
Did you (just) say, "Does he always snore?"
Do you have a son or a daughter or don't you?
Ungrammatical and disallowed:
(31) "Doesn't he always snore or?
Grammatical but not generated by this rule:
(32) (a) He always snores? (derived from (30.g) by T-ECH0- QUESTION)
(b) Does he always snore? (homophonous with (30.c) but derived from (30.h) by T-ECH0-QUESTI0N)
(c) Doesn't he always snore? (homophonous with (30.e) but derived as stylistic variant of He always snores, doesn't he? by T-TAG-QUESTION)
(d) Do you have a son or a daughter ? (This is a simple alternative question, with two simplex sentences in its deep structure, as opposed to (30.j): Do you have a son or a daughter ? (which is_ generated by this rule and has the meaning 'Do you have a child?'.) (30.j) has four simplex sentences in its deep struc- ture. The intonation contours clearly differentiate the graphically identical questions.)
Justification:
(i) The major Justification for deriving yes-no questions as
stylistic variants of (a subset of) alternative questions is semantic.
That is, sentences like (30.a,b,c) are perfect paraphrases of one another, and all are perfect paraphrases of the underlying full
alternative question, Does he always snore or doesn't he always snore?
(ii) A further Justification is the fact that this derivation
automatically relates the rising intonation pattern of yes-no questions to the rising pattern of the first part of alternative questions.
INTERROG - 18
(iii) This analysis agrees with Katz and Postal's analysis of yes-no questions in having WH plus OR (in Katz and Postal, WH plus either-or) in the deep structure of yes-no questions. It is not clear, however, whether Katz and Postal consider yes-no questions to be reduced
alternative questions, or whether they would say that alternative questions include an additional S in their deep structures that is absent in the deep structures of yes-no questions.
(iv) Malone's (1967) analysis of yes-no questions, which distin- guishes such questions from statements on the basis of interrogative
(vs. declarative) "sentence valences", cannot account for the
relations between yes-no and alternative questions, and is rejected on these grounds.
(v) The condition on SC (2) excludes strings such as (31).
Problems:
(i) There is some doubt about whether negative sentences such as (30.e) are in fact yes-no questions. The present treatment assumes that they can be, i.e. that (30.d,e) can be derived as alternative stylistic variants of: Doesn't he always snore or does he always snore? (This latter sentence, however, is itself rather peculiar
unless the auxiliaries are stressed: You said he doesn't always snore, but now you seem doubtful. Well, doesn't he always snore or does he always snore?)In any case, it seems clear that the usual interpreta- tion of Doesn't he always snore? is a paraphrase of He always snores, doesn't he?—see (30.c)
(ii) It is perhaps a problem for this derivation of yes-no questions that the answers to such questions are different from the answers to alternative questions:
(He does. ) (33) Does he always snore, or doesn't he always snore?V He doesn't.) (3U) Does he always snore? ( *^No (, he doesn't).) es,(»uhe„doe8!;, \
(iii) SC (l) retains only the pre-subject part of AUX, in the second of the conjoined questions. Thus from Should he have been doing that or shouldn't he have been doing that? SC (1) derives: Should he have been doing that or shouldn't he? But the following are also grammati- cal: Should he have been doing that or shouldn't he have? Should he have been doing that or shouldn't he have been? The same patterning of AUX retention is found in other kinds of conjoined structures—He should have been doing that and she should (have (been)), too.—so perhaps the general conjunction-reduction rules are all that is
INTERBOG - 19
necessary to account for the sentences generated by SC (l). Similarly, SC (2) seems only to be a special case of a more general phenomenon:
cf. He loves Jane and not Mary, Either he loves Jane or not.
B. WH Questions and Other Question Types 1. WH Question Words
Since the WH's which yield question words are introduced as features on the determiner of the indefinite NP, there is no need for a WH-ATTACHMENT rule with interrogative structures. The various question words (and relative pronouns) are derived from the feature complexes under the determiner node. The actual "spelling" of the feature complexes takes place in the second lexical lookup. The discussion and justification of this procedure, along with the rules, are found in the DETERMINER section.
2. WH Fronting
The rule is obligatory.
The fronting of [+WH] will trigger AUX-ATTRACTION.
In some cases the constituent with WH may be fronted from within a subordinate clause: When has he
decided to leave? Where did she tell him to go?
What did it surprise him that she did?
Fronting must be prevented, however, when the constituent with WH occurs in a relative clause or an indirect question. Rel clauses are one of the configurations where the movement across a variable is blocked by Ross's COMPLEX NP CONSTRAINT. The fact that interrogation is also impossible out of an indirect question suggests that the deep structure of indirect questions should have a lexical head.
For example:
INTERROG - 20
(35) (a) The man S came the man killed who (b) *Who did the man who kill came?
(36) (a) You know
who came (b) *Who do you know came?
(c) *Who did you know come?
(iii) Condition (l) is needed to prevent the stacking of WH's.
(37) (a) *Why where when did you see him?
(b) Why, where and when did you see him?
(iv) A sentence with WH can be conjoined only with another sentence containing WH:
(38) (a) He died where and when?
(b) Where and when did he die?
(39) (a) *He died here and when?
(b) *Here and when did he die?
3. Tag Questions
There are certain requisites that any solution for tag ques- tions should meet. First, they should not be generated as optional variants of yes-no questions, since they are semantically distinct
from them. That is to say, they appear to be either negative or positive statements with an appended question element. They do not have the neutral disjunctive either/or characteristic of the alterna- tive question. Tag questions are underlying suppositions, hopes,
fears,etc., for which the speaker is seeking confirmation. An alterna- tive question seeks only information.
In addition, there is a co-occurrence restriction that holds for yes-no questions but not for Tag questions. As pointed out by Katz and Postal (196U), some sentence adverbials can not occur in
yes-no questions, but can occur in Tag questions (and in declaratives—
cf. II.B.2 above); e.g.,
(U8) (a) Certainly John is a doctor.
(b) Certainly John is a doctor, isn't he?
(c) *Is John certainly a doctor?
INTERROG - 21
This means, that if we were to derive Tag questions from
yes-no questions, we would have to constrain these sentence adverbials so as to trigger the "optional" Tag transformations. Such a constraint seems a very unlikely one.
Second, we would want the same rule for AUX ATTRACTION that applies to alternative questions to apply to the AUX in the Tag.
Third, the obligatory occurrence of the oppositive value of negation in the Tag to that in the main statement should be shown to be a function of the value of negation in the supposition underlying the tag question and not inherent to the tag in the deep structure.
For example, in (U9):
(U9) John has left, hasn't he?
the NEG in the tag results only because there is no NEG in the main statement. While in (50):
(50) John hasn't left, has he?
the non-occurrence of NEG in the tag results from the NEG present in the main S.
Previous analyses of tag questions have failed to meet one or more of these requisites. Klima's analysis (l96^c) fails with respect to the first requirement given above. The second and third are
recognized. Thus for Klima (51) and (52) are two sets of optional variants:
(51) (a) Has John left?
(b) John has left, hasn't he?
(52) (a) Hasn't John left?
(b) John hasn't left, has he?
Rosenbaum (1966) fails with respect to the first and third of the above requisites. For Rosenbaum all tag questions are optional variants of negative yes-no questions. Tag questions with a negative in the tag are derived by optionally moving the negative of a main sentence negative into the tag. This results in the claim that (53.a,b,c) are all optional variants:
(53) (a) Hasn't John left?
(b) John hasn't left, has he?
(c) John has left, hasn't he?
INTERROG - 22
There are two possible analyses that we have considered.
They both present certain difficulties. For this reason we shall not present specific rules in this section, but rather we shall briefly outline the alternative analyses.
One possibility is to suppose that tag questions are the result of a statement plus a following alternative question which has been further reduced. This alternative question might originate in a sentence adverbial. (5^.a) would be the deep structure for John has left, hasn't he? The alternative question in (5^.a) would then undergo CONJ SPREADING, WH SPREADING, CONJ DELETION, AUX FRONTING, WH DELETION, and ALTERNATIVE Q RED, to yield (5**.b):
(5*0 (a)
CONJ [+or]
[+WH]
John hasn't left John has left
<5M (b)
John has left hasn't John left
(5U.b) then undergoes the tag rule which moves adverb to post-position and further reduces the question in the tag which results in (51*.c):
(5M (c)
John has left
hasn't he
INTERROG - 23
The principle difficulty with this analysis is the stating of the identities in the tag reduction rule. We want to state that the S of the tag (i.e. ADV) is identical to the main sentence S with the exception of NEG. (This must be stated as a condition.) However, since the tag S has undergone AUX FRONTING it is no longer formally identical. As a result we must tortuously list the elements in both S's and their identities. Thus, although it is possible to write such a rule, it is rather complicated to state. A main virtue of this approach is that it does not add any new symbols to the base
structure (except ADV S) and employs the mechanism needed for alternative questions plus one additional rule.
A second possibility which we have considered is that tag questions result from a copying rule which copies the subject NP and the relevant parts of AUX after a sentence and makes the tag opposite to the main sentence in negation. This, however, demands a separate trigger in the base. It has been suggested that WH be generated as a sentence ADV for this purpose. The copying rule would then operate on (55.a) and convert it to (55.b):
(55) (a)
PROP
(55) (b)
John has left CONJ John has
[+WH]
INTERROG - 2U
The WH, which has been post-posed, then serves as a trigger for the AUX ATTRACTION rule (as it does in alternative questions) to apply to the tag. There are technical difficulties with this solution, too. First of all, WH coming from ADV may have to be restricted to non-embedded sentences since tag questions, unlike alternative and WH questions, do not appear to tolerate embedding, e.g. *I wonder whether John has left, hasn't he? (This generalization is not entirely
correct since for many people the following sentences are grammatical):
(56) (a) I think (b) I'm sure
(c) I imagine 7 (that) John has left, hasn't he?
(d) I suppose
• • •cLC •
(e) ?I know (that) John has left, hasn't he?
Note the presence of that which seems to indicate that tag questions are really quite different from alternative and WH questions; e.g.,
(57) (a) »I know that who left
(b) *I know that whether he left or not
Yet there is a peculiar restriction on embedded tag questions which we do not fully understand: they must have 1st person singular pro- nouns as matrix subject:
(58) (a) "John thinks that Mary has left, hasn't she?
(b) *They are sure that we have left, haven't we?
k. Negative Questions from Tag
There is a type of negative yes-no question which resembles tag questions in that it seems to involve an underlying supposition.
The supposition is positive, however. This is illustrated in (59):
(59) (a) Didn't John write any poetry last year?
(b) Didn't John write some poetry last year?
(59.a) is an ordinary alternative question, but (59-b) seems to mean that the speaker supposes that John did write some poetry. We propose that (59.b) has the same base structure as (60):
(60) John wrote some poetry last year, didn't he?
If we were to choose one of the above alternatives (59-b) could be derived as follows: a tree such as (5^.a) for the underlying structure of (59.b) would be reduced by deletion of the main statement S and the right sister S of the tag, to:
(61)
INTERROG - 25
i ADV
/ Didn't John write some poetry last year? ) ( Hasn't John left? / 5. Questioned Quote (Including Echo Question)
SI: # [+PAST] you sax X CONT #
SC: Delete 1.
COND: This is an optional (stylistic) rule.
Note: The SI characterizes a subset of the products of REDUCED ALTERNATIVE QUESTION rule: viz., yes-no questions with the
subject you and the verb say. Say, which means "(just) say in this linguistic context" is different from the ordinary verb say in that it takes only quotes sentences or pro-forms
as objects. Its surface form, however, is homophonous with that of the ordinary transitive verb.
Example in tree format:
[+PAST] you SAY he's going CONT
INTERROG - 26
(62) (b)
he's going CONT
Examples:
(63) (a) He's going? (cf. Did you (just) say: "He's going?") (b) Is he going? (cf. Did you (just) say: "Is he going?") (c) Where did he go? (cf. Did you (just) say: "Where
did he go?") Justification and Alternatives:
(i) To date, Malone (1967) is by far the fullest treatment of echo questions and other echoic sentences (see WH QUESTIONED QUOTE, DECLARED QUOTE, below). The present analysis differs from Malone's in that it relates all echoic sentences to deep structures that in- clude the verb SAY (see Notes above). This analysis seems justified by the interchangeability of echoic sentences and sentences with SAY.
(ii) Examples like (63.b) are homophonous with yes-no questions.
(iii) Examples like (63.c) are distinguished intonationally from two other sentence types with initial WH words: WH questions and WH- questioned quotes. The questioned quotes have a /233+7 intonation pattern, the WH questions a /231+/ intonation pattern, and the WH- questioned quotes a /333+/ pattern:
(6U) 2 33+
(6h) Where did he go? (Echo question) 2 31+
(65) Where did he go? (WH question) 3 33+
(66) Where did he go? (WH-questioned quote)
INTERROG - 27
6. WH-Questioned Quote a. Intonation Introduction
SI: # you [+PAST] SAY # X (PREP) [+WH] X #
i i < . •_i
SC: 1. Attach RAISING INTONATION ("t") as left sister of 2.
2. Attach CONT as left sister of 3.
COND: The rule is obligatory.
Notes: (i) See QUESTIONED QUOTE, Notes for SAY.
(ii) The "+" introduced by the SC is an intonation marker.
It represents a high pitch (Trager-Smith level 3) on all material that follows it.
(iii) CONT is also an intonational marker. It represents a final pitch rise.
Example in tree format:
(67) (a)
you [+PAST] SAY he[+PAST] see [+WH] [+N] yesterday [+INDEF] [+PRO]
[+HUM]
INTERROG - 28
(67) (b)
you [+PAST] SAY he[+PAST] see t [+WH [+H