The Syntactic Structure of Wh-Exclamatives and Negation
Masatoshi Honda
Kanda University of International Studies
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze wh-exclamatives in English on the basis of theirsyntactic characteristics such as wh-operator types, negation, and root phenomena including
topicalization and negative inversion. In previous studies, wh-exclamatives were investigatedmainly in terms of the root/embedding distinction and the categorial similarity between
Exclamative-wh/how-phrases (E-wh/how-phrases) and such/so phrases (for example, what abeautiful girl/such a beautiful girl, how beautiful/so beautiful, etc.). However, it seems that lessattention has been paid to the relationship between wh-operator types, the occurrence of negation,and root phenomena in wh-exclamatives. In the present study, we consider the occurrence ofnegation in wh-exclamatives and show that wh-exclamatives are classified into three types: Root
Exclamatives (REs), Embedded Exclamatives (EEs), and Negative Exclamatives (NEs). After
identifying some syntactic characteristics of REs, EEs, and NEs concerning root phenomena suchas negative inversion and topicalization, in order to account for them, we propose an analysis
based on the cartographic framework, which was developed by Rizzi (1997, 2009). Furthermore,
we show that the proposed analysis is compatible with some insights into wh-exclamatives that
previous research within the framework of transformational grammar provided.
In the literature, it is pointed out that Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (SAI) is not applied towh-exclamatives:(1) a. What a beautiful girli John met ti!
b.* What a beautiful girli did John meet ti!
(cf. Whoi did you meet ti?)Another well-known fact is that factive predicates can embed wh-exclamatives but not otherpredicates such as wonder, as shown below:(2) John knows/*wonders how very cutei the baby is ti!
The Root Exclamative (RE) in (1a) and the Embedded Exclamative (EE) in (2) are similar in thatthey are incompatible with negation:(3) a. * How very cutei the baby is not ti!
b. * It is amazing how very cutei the baby is not ti!

[RE]
[EE]

However, negation is allowed to occur in the Negative Exclamative (NE) in (4b), where theE-wh-operator, which refers to the number of books, magazines, etc., is used:(4) a. What a lot of themi we had time to read ti!
b. What a lot of themi we didn’t have time to read ti!

[NE]
[NE]

Thus, NEs are differentiated from REs and EEs in that the occurrence of negation is restricted toNEs. In addition, negative inversion and topicalization are applicable to NEs, as illustrated below(note that REs and EEs are incompatible with negation, and hence negative inversion cannot bereadily applied to them):

(5) In how many countries of the world, such behaviour, under no circumstances would
autocratic leaders tolerate!
(Radford (2009: 328))
NEs also differ from REs and EEs in that a topic can occur between an E-wh-operator and the restof the sentence in NEs, but not in REs and EEs:
(6) a. * What a beautiful picture, to John, Mary gave (him) as a gift!
[RE]b. * It’s amazing what a nice book, to your sister, they gave (her) as a gift. [EE]
(Zanuttini and Portner (2003: 75))
c. In how many countries, that kind of behaviour, autocratic leaders would simply not
tolerate!
[NE](Radford (2009: 328))
After considering the relationship between the three types of wh-exclamatives and root
phenomena, we make the following three claims:(7) a. All wh-exclamatives involve a wh-operator-variable configuration and a factive operator.
b. All wh-exclamatives are derived by exclamatory movement.
c. In REs and EEs, there is a locality restriction imposed on an E-wh-operator and a factiveoperator, and hence, topicalization is impossible (See (6a, b)). In NEs, the same restriction
is irrelevant to the two operators, and thus topicalization is available (See (6c)).
As for the claim in (7a), we follow Zanuttini and Portner’s (2003) proposal that all
wh-exclamatives have two syntactic components: a wh-operator-variable configuration and afactive operator. Concerning the claim in (7b), reviewing Imai and Nakajima’s (1978) insight into
wh-exclamatives that wh-exclamatives are derived by exclamatory movement, which is applied toa scalar-related wh-phrase like what a beautiful girl, we develop Rizzi’s (2009) idea that there is aCP projection dedicated to the “Exclamative” interpretation, revising the original split CPhypothesis, as shown below:(8) Force … Exclamative (Excl) … Topic (Top) … Focus (Foc)… Finite (Fin)Here, we assume that an E-wh-operator occupies [Spec, Excl] and a factive operator, [Spec, Top].
Regarding the claim in (7c), based on Zanuttini and Portner’s (2003) idea that the source of afactive operator can be either an E-wh-operator or a factive predicate, we propose that theoccurrence of a topic between an E-wh-operator and a factive operator is blocked in REs and EEs
because the additional topic intervenes between the two operators.
In conclusion, we suggest that some A-bar movement constructions (includingwh-exclamatives) involve different CP projections dedicated to discourse-related properties suchas Topic, Focus, and Exclamative.
References
Radford, Andrew (2009) Analysing English Sentences: A Minimalist Approach. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Rizzi, Luigi (1997) “The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery,” Elements of Grammar, ed. byLiliane Haegeman, 281-337. Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Rizzi, Luigi (2009) The Cartography of Syntactic Structures: Locality and Freezing Effects onMovement. Paper Presented at the Symposium of the 138th Conference of the LinguisticSociety of Japan, Chiba.
Zanuttini, Raffaella and Paul Portner (2003) “Exclamative Clauses: At the Syntax-Semantics
Interface,” Language 79, 39-81.