Anke Holler: Towards an analysis of the adverbial use of German interrogative was (`what')

The paper discusses the so-called adverbial use of the wh-pronoun was (`what'), which establishes a non-standard interrogative construction type in German. It argues that the adverbial use of was (`what') is based on the lexical properties of a categorically deficient pronoun was (`what'), which bears a causal meaning. In addition, adverbial was (`what') differs from canonical argument was (`what') as it is analyzed as a functor which is generated in clause-initial position.

By means of empirical facts mainly provided by d'Avis (2001) it is shown that was (`what') behaves ambivalently regarding the wh-property: On the one hand, was (`what') can introduce an interrogative clause, but on the other hand it cannot license wh-phrases in situ. While formally analyzing the data against the background of existing accounts on wh-interrogatives couched in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, an analysis is developed that separates two pieces of information to keep track of the wh-information percolating in an interrogative clause. Whereas the WH-value models wh-fronting and pied-piping phenomena, the QUE value links syntactic and semantic information and thus keeps track of wh-phrases in-situ.

Toc of the proceedings and download