Wh-interrogatives in ancient Greek

Nicolas Bertrand (1, 2, 3) , Richard Faure (4, 5)

1 BCL, équipe Linguistique de l’énonciation
2 SU - Sorbonne Université
3 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163
4 BCL, équipe Dialectologie et Linguistique formelle
5 BCL - Bases, Corpus, Langage (UMR 7320 - UCA / CNRS)

This article explores the problem of information structure in ancient Greek direct constituent questions from the perspective of wh-placement. It begins with the observation that wh-items are intrinsically focused and that typologically, wh-placement is predictable based on the focusing properties in some languages, such as Indonesian (in situ strategy) and Basque or Hungarian (focus position strategy), but not in others, such as English (specific wh-position strategy). Ancient Greek has multiple ways to express narrow focusing, e.g., in situ or in a preverbal devoted position. Puzzlingly, with respect to whPs, the former way is only marginally attested and there is no good evidence for the latter way. Instead, based on syntactic and prosodic tests, we show that ancient Greek offers a third strategy, in which a high position in the structure is available. Nevertheless, when this result is recast in the framework of Phase Theory, the tests of wh-duplication and stranding indicate that whPs must go through all three positions, receiving their argument function in situ, checking their focus feature preverbally and verifying their wh-feature in the high position. The specificity of 'why' questions is addressed along the way.

Mots clés: Ancient Greek Language; Syntax of questions; Word order and information structure

Mots clés: Grec ancien langue; Syntaxe de l'interrogation; Ordre des mots; Structure informationnelle

Domaines: Linguistique; Etudes classiques; Littératures

Nicolas Bertrand, Richard Faure. Wh-interrogatives in ancient Greek: Disentangling focus- and wh-movement. Studia Linguistica, 2022, 76 (3), pp.735-771. ⟨10.1111/stul.12194⟩. ⟨hal-03579191v2⟩