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Intervention Effects in Alternative Questions

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Abstract

Alternative questions exhibit intervention effects, in that the disjunctive phrase may not be c-commanded by a focusing or quantificational element. This seems to hold crosslinguistically. We provide an analysis of this phenomenon that combines a focus semantic explanation of intervention effects in questions with an analysis of alternative questions in which the disjunctive phrase makes available appropriate alternatives in a way similar to a wh-phrase. We point out consequences for the analysis of intervention as well as for the analysis of alternative questions. We also note interesting further issues pertaining to the semantic contribution of dis- junction.

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  1. Englisches Seminar, Universität Tübingen, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Sigrid Beck & Shin-Sook Kim

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  1. Sigrid Beck
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  2. Shin-Sook Kim
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Correspondence to Sigrid Beck.

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Beck, S., Kim, SS. Intervention Effects in Alternative Questions. J Comp German Linguistics 9, 165–208 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-006-9005-2

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