Nested wh-phrases and degenerate questions

Abstract

Questions with nested wh-phrases like "which book by which author" cannot receive pair-list readings. We propose that this restriction falls out of a general constraint against questions whose answers are all Strawson-equivalent, together with certain independently motivated assumptions about the syntax-semantics of multiple wh-questions. Support for our proposal comes from Bulgarian, a language that has been argued to display key components of the LF of wh-questions overtly. If this is true, the language teaches us that there are two LFs that can in principle be associated with nested wh-questions, only one of which is subject to the restriction observed in English. This distinction is a direct consequence of our proposal.