UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 10 (1998)
Adjunct preposing, wh-interrogatives and dependency competition
RICHARD HUDSON
Adjuncts may occur (by adjunct preposing) before a wh-interrogative clause which is a main clause, but not before one which is subordinate; for example: (i) Tomorrow what shall we do? (ii) I told you (*tomorrow) what we shall do. Why should adjunct preposing be different in main and subordinate clauses? The pretheoretical answer is obvious: the wh-word must be initial in the subordinate clause that it introduces. However not all theories allow this insight to be expressed. A number of possible explanations based on standard assumptions are considered and rejected. The proposed solution is based on enriched dependency structure (Word Grammar) which does allow an analysis in which the wh-word must be initial in the subordinate clause but not in the main clause.
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