Partial Movement Strategies in Punjabi Relative Clauses and Questions
As we see in (1), the same rel-phrase appears in situ (1a), partially moved (1b), and fully fronted (1c). Partial movement in Punjabi relative clauses refers to movement of the rel-phrase out of its base position but not into a fully fronted position as in (1b).
(1)
The term partial movement is often used to refer to a special strategy found in question formation, also known as the scope-marking strategy, illustrated in (2).
(2)
The examples in (2) have a wh-pronoun in the embedded clause and an invariant ‘what’ in the matrix clause. The invariant ‘what’ is taken as a scope marker, and the form of the wh-phrase in the embedded clause depends on the syntactic context. Several questions concerning the scope-marking structure have drawn much investigation. The most general one is how the matrix question interpretation is achieved. There are two main competing analyses: the direct dependency approach (e.g., Van Riemsdijk 1983; McDaniel 1989) and the indirect dependency approach (e.g., Dayal 1994). The former suggests that the wh-phrase in the embedded position moves at LF to replace the scope marker, which is analyzed as a purely expletive element. The latter argues that the matrix clause is interpreted as a question over a proposition that is restricted by the embedded wh-question. No matter which analysis we adopt here, it is clear that the nature of the operation applied in (2) is different from the one applied in (1). Therefore, we can conclude that the strategy used in Punjabi rel-movement is distinct from the strategy used in Punjabi questions.
The question left at this point is why we do not find an analogue in relativization of the partial wh-movement strategy used for question formation. Such a relative clause would presumably look like (3a) or (3b).
(3)
Or, the other way around, why do we not find an analogue in Punjabi questions of the partially or fully fronting rel-movement operation? Such a question would presumably look like either (4a) or (4b).
(4)
We do find the structure in (4b) in Punjabi; however, this structure will only give us an embedded question reading. The absence of a structure like (4a) or (4b) for a matrix question reading suggests that wh movement in Punjabi is subject to stricter locality constraints and is clause bound. I further suggest that movement of question phrases in Punjabi is the result of an A-scrambling effect, which never crosses any CPs. The absence of a structure like (3) in Punjabi relative clauses is puzzling. A tentative proposal would be that the way semantic interpretations of relative clauses are derived differs from the way those of questions are derived. If the indirect dependency approach is correct, a scope-marking structure is designed to deal with a question over a proposition that is restricted by the embedded wh-question. That is why wh phrases do not have wide scope and are constrained inside embedded clauses. Since relative clauses are not designed to deal with propositions, a scope-marking structure is not available for relative constructions.
