Questioning Interrogative Interpretation in some Indo-European Languages

In the Indo-European languages, where there is the identity of morphological realisation between interrogative and independent relative pronouns, indirect WH questions and independent relatives are in many cases homophonous. Although the two constructions, interrogative and independent relative, are acknowledged in literature as syntactically and semantically different, the evaluation of these subordinates lacks consistency when they depend on a series of semifactive assertive families of predicates. This discordance in the interpretation of the same clause, oscillating between interrogative and independent relative, constitutes, in itself, grounds for analysis. It has consequences not only on the level of descriptive adequacy, but it also seems to have some bearing on the explanatory principles of linguistic theory. In giving an adequate description of indirect WH questions, an appropriate semantic characterisation, verified in a variety of different pragmatic contexts is necessary. A contrastive framework, moreover, evidentiates the relevance of semantics and pragmatics not only in controlling linguistic stipulations, but in capturing wider generalisations and in abstracting properties of language. The question is all the more interesting because syntactic theory, in its mostly influential variants, has been constructed via argumentation which makes minimum use of necessarily pre-theoretic notions about meaning and connected thought. WH clauses and verbs of knowledge: from contradictory statements to a resolution The aim of this paper is to emphasize the relevance of evaluating the data in a perspective including more than one level of representation. In particular, in giving an adequate description of indirect WH clauses, an appropriate semantic characterization, verified systematically in a variety of different pragmatic contexts, is indispensable. A contrastive framework, moreover, evidentiates the relevance of semantics and pragmatics not only in controlling linguistic stipulations, but in capturing wider generalizations and in abstracting properties of language. An example is offered by analyzing some aspects of the controversial distinction between indirect WH questions and independent relatives in Romance and Germanic. In these languages, where the interrogative and relative pronominal systems share the same 'signifiant ' deriving from the Indo-European indefinite/interrogative *kw, there is identity of morphological realization between interrogative and independent relative pronouns. Indirect WH questions and independent relatives are in many cases homophonous. Although the two constructions are acknowledged as syntactically and semantically different, a review of the literature on the topic highlights a discordance in their interpretation, oscillating between interrogative and independent relative.