Alignment, Precedence, and the Typology of Pied-Piping with Inversion

Pied-piping with inversion is a phenonemon in a number of head-initial languages in which fronted interrogative phrases show an inverted, head-final word order.  This paper is a typological survey of this phenomenon in nine languages.   The survey supports the following conclusions: a.) Head-initial order in phrases is due to alignment constraints, b.) head-initial order in the phrases  NP, PP, and QP must be due to different alignment constraints, since these phrase types often show different behavior in pied-piping with inversion contexts, and c.) alignment constraints appear to be superior to precedence constraints in describing pied-piping with inversion.