Swiping in Child English*
Koji Sugisaki
Mie University

1. Introduction
It has been observed at least since Ross (1969) and Rosen (1976) that English allows apeculiar type of elliptical wh-questions that can be found only under sluicing, in which thewh-object of the preposition appears not after the preposition but before it, as illustrated in (1).
Merchant (2002) calls this construction Swiping (sluiced wh-word inversion with prepositions inNorthern Germanic).
(1) a.
b.

John fixed it, but I don’t remember what with.
John was talking, but I don’t remember who to.

Since the recent minimalist analysis by Merchant (2002), this phenomenon has gainedmuch attention, and two major types of analysis have been proposed in the syntactic literature.
One approach (Merchant 2002) argues that swiping crucially involves pied-piping ofprepositions (P-pied-piping) in its derivation, while the other approach (Hasegawa 2007; Kim
1997; Nakao and Yoshida 2006) claims that swiping is derived through preposition-stranding(P-stranding). In light of this background, this study attempts to shed new light on the syntax ofthis construction, by bringing data from a novel source. More specifically, the present study
evaluates these two types of syntactic analysis based on the data from child English. Ourfindings, even though preliminary, suggest that the P-stranding approach is more consistent withthe time course of the acquisition of English, and cast doubt on the proposal that P-pied-piping
plays a crucial role in the derivation of Swiping sentences.

2. Two Major Approaches to Swiping
Swiping has a few fundamental characteristics that any theory of this phenomenon should
account for. One of these properties is that, at least in English, only a limited variety ofwh-expressions can occur in this construction. Based on his classification of wh-elements inswiping sentences given in (2), Merchant (2002:297) proposes the generalization in (4) that thewh-element must be a head, not a phrase.1(2) Possible and impossible wh-elements in swiping:a. Swiping possible:
who, what, when, whereb. Swiping impossible: which, which one, whose, how rich, what kind, what time, etc.
*I am grateful to Cedric Boeckx, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Hilda Koopman, Yukio Otsu, John Stephenson,Akira Watanabe, and especially to William Snyder for valuable comments. The usual disclaimers apply.
This research was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from the Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science (#20320058, Project Leader: Seiki Ayano).
1. The wh-expressions which and whose in (2b) are monomorphemic, as well as those in (2a). Yet,
Merchant (2002) argues that which must select a complement (which may be null due to NP-ellipsis), andwhose can be analyzed as who in the specifier of DP headed by the genitive ’s. These properties distinguishthem from other simple wh-expressions listed in (2a).
©2008 Koji Sugisaki
UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics
Completed August 7, 2008

(3) a. * She bought a robe for one of her nephews, but God knows which (one) for.
b. * They were riding in somebody’s car, but I don’ know whose in.
(4) The Minimality Condition: Only ‘minimal’ (i.e. X0) wh-operators occur in swiping.
Another basic property of swiping is that such inversion of a preposition and its argument
occurs only in sluicing: For example, neither nonelliptical questions nor VP-ellipsis canco-occur with swiping, as exemplified in (5). Given this limitation, Merchant (2002:298)
establishes the generalization in (6).
(5) a. * I don’t know [who to] Lois was talking.
b. *We know when she spoke, but we don’t know [what about] she did.
(6) The Sluicing Condition: Swiping occurs only under sluicing.
In order to account for these two fundamental properties of swiping, Merchant (2002)
proposed an analysis in which swiping sentences are derived through wh-movement involving
pied-piping of a preposition, followed by head movement of the wh-word to the selecting
preposition.2 Merchant argues that this head movement of the wh-element occurs at PF, after
Spell-Out and after the application of the deletion operation. A sample derivation under thisanalysis is shown in (7).
(7) (John was talking, but I don’t remember …)
a. wh-movement + P-pied-piping:[CP[IP he was talking [PP about what] ]b.
c.

sluicing (IP-deletion) in PF:[CP [PP about what ][IP he was talking
head movement in PF:[CP [PP what + about t ] ]t]]]This “P-pied-piping + PF head-movement” analysis provides a straightforward account for
the Minimality Condition: In order to adjoin to the preposition, which is a head, the wh-element
must also be a head, due to Structure Preservation. In other words, by using head movement toderive the observed inversion, this analysis correctly rules out the possibility that phrasal
wh-operators participate in swiping. Furthermore, by locating this head movement in the PFcomponent, we can make its application sensitive to whether IP has undergone the deletion
operation in PF. Namely, under Merchant’s analysis, the Sluicing Condition reduces to thesensitivity of the relevant head-movement to IP-deletion in PF.
Even though the analysis by Merchant (2002) captures the two conditions in (4) and (6) in astraightforward way, it offers no account of the cross-linguistic distribution of swiping that
Merchant himself notes: The languages that allow swiping are limited to those that permit
P-stranding. English, Danish, and some varieties of Norwegian allow swiping, and theselanguages also permit P-stranding, as illustrated in (8) and (9). This observation suggests thatthe availability of P-stranding constitutes a necessary condition for the possibility of swiping.3
Yet, as we have seen above, what is crucially involved in Merchant’s analysis is P-pied-piping,
not P-stranding. Then, under this approach, it remains mysterious why P-stranding seems
relevant in determining the distribution of swiping across languages.

2. See van Craenenbroeck (2004) for a related proposal.
3. It is not a sufficient condition, though. Languages like Frisian, Icelandic, and Swedish rule out
swiping, even though they permit P-stranding.

(8) Danish:a. Perer gåetibiografen, men
jeg vedPeris goneto cinemabutI know
‘Per went to the movies but I don’t know who with.’b. Hvem har
Petersnakket
med?
whohasPetertalkedwith‘Who was Peter talking with?’(9) Norwegian:a.% Per gikkpå kino,men
jeg veitikke
Per went
to cinema but
I know not‘Per went to the movies but I don’t know who with.’b. Hvem harPersnakket med?
whohasPer
talked with
‘Who was Per talking with?’

ikkenothvem
whohvenwhomed.
withmed.
with(Merchant 2002: 291, 309)

Capitalizing on this cross-linguistic generalization, Hasegawa (2007) and Nakano andYoshida (2006) proposed an analysis of swiping in which P-stranding plays a central role.4
More specifically, they argue that the swiping construction is derived through the combinationof P-stranding and a rightward movement of PP. A sample derivation under Hasegawa’s (2007)
analysis is shown in (10).5(10) (John was talking, but I don’t remember …)
a. wh-movement + P-stranding:[CP[IP he was talking[PP about what ]b.

c.

rightward movement of PP:[CP what[IP he was talkingsluicing (IP-deletion) in PF:[CP what[IP he was talking[PP about t ]

t]

]

]

]

]

[PP about t ] ]Such a “P-stranding + PP movement” analysis is quite appealing in that it opens up a way tocapture the cross-linguistic generalization that swiping is restricted to P-stranding languages.
Furthermore, under this analysis, it is not necessary to postulate the condition in (6) that theswiping sentences involve obligatory IP-deletion: Even without the application of sluicing, wewould obtain a well-formed sentence, as we can see in (10c). On the other hand, this approachhas difficulty in offering a satisfactory account of the Minimality Condition: There is no reason
not to expect both phrasal and minimal wh-expressions to appear in the swiping construction,
given that both of them can undergo P-stranding.
(11) a.
b.

What was John talking about?
Which (book) was John talking about?

In sum, both the “P-pied-piping + PF head-movement” analysis and the “P-stranding + PPmovement” analysis have their own strengths and weaknesses, and the evaluation of these twoapproaches awaits evidence from a different source. In light of this situation, we now turn to anovel source of evidence: the time course of child language acquisition.

4. See also Kim (1997) and Richards (2001).
5. A crucial difference between Hasegawa’s (2007) analysis and that of Nakao and Yoshida (2006) isthat the latter analysis places the PP movement before the P-stranding movement. Since this difference
does not affect the discussion to follow, I will refrain from further discussion.

3. Predictions for the Acquisition of English
The P-pied-piping approach of Merchant (2002) and the P-stranding approach of Hasegawa(2007) and Nakao and Yoshida (2006) make different predictions for the acquisition of English.
The former approach gives wh-movement involving P-pied-piping a central role in thederivation of swiping. Under this analysis, the syntactic knowledge required for P-pied-piping
constitutes a proper subset of the syntactic knowledge required for swiping. Then, we expectthat English-learning children should never acquire swiping significantly earlier thanP-pied-piping with wh-movement. In other words, the P-pied-piping approach predicts that (12)should hold in the acquisition of English. In contrast, under the P-stranding approach,wh-movement involving P-stranding constitutes a crucial step in deriving swiping sentences,and the syntactic knowledge required for P-stranding constitutes a proper subset of the syntactic
knowledge required for swiping. Then, we predict that English-learning children should neveracquire swiping significantly earlier than P-stranding with wh-movement, as stated in (13).
(12) Prediction for the Acquisition of English from the P-pied-piping Approach:English-learning children should acquire P-pied-piping with wh-movement significantly
earlier than or at around the same time as swiping.
(13) Prediction for the Acquisition of English from the P-stranding Approach:English-learning children should acquire P-stranding with wh-movement significantly
earlier than or at around the same time as swiping.

4. Transcript Analysis
In order to determine which of the two acquisitional predictions is correct, I analyzed 20
longitudinal corpora for English from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2000), which
provide a total sample of more than 434,000 lines of child speech. For each child, we located thefirst clear uses of (i) swiping, (ii) wh-movement involving P-pied-piping, and (iii) wh-movement
involving P-stranding. The corpora I analyzed are summarized in Table 1. The CLAN program
Combo was used, together with complete files of prepositions and wh-words in English, toidentify potentially relevant child utterances. These were then searched by hand and checkedagainst the original transcripts to exclude imitations, repetitions, and formulaic routines. The ageof acquisition was taken as the first clear use, followed soon after by repeated use (Stromswold1996, Snyder 2007).
The results were as follows. Two children (Abe and Aran) showed frequent use of swiping,while other children did not produce any swiping sentences. One of these two children (Abe),however, uttered only a single type of swiping: What for? This limitation leaves the possibility
that this expression is a formulaic routine for this child. Hence, I now focus on the analysis of
the remaining single child, Aran.
Aran exhibited the first clear use of swiping at the age of 2;07 (years;months). His swiping
sentences exhibited two kinds of wh-expressions (who and what) and various different
prepositions. This variety suggests that Aran had already acquired adult-like knowledge ofswiping. Some actual utterances are listed in (14).
(14) a.
b.
c.
d.

*CHI:
*CHI:
*CHI:
*CHI:

what in ?
who for ?
who from ?
what with ?

(Aran26a.cha)(Aran27a.cha)(Aran28b.cha)(Aran33a.cha)

Despite such productive use of swiping, Aran showed not a single use of P-pied-piping withwh-movement. This complete absence of P-pied-piping in the spontaneous speech makes it
difficult to statistically evaluate the prediction in (12). Yet, the lack of P-pied-piping in child
English despite the presence of swiping casts serious doubt on any analysis in which swiping isderived through wh-movement involving P-pied-piping.

Child
Abe
Adam
Anne
AranBeckyCarl
Dominic
Eve
Gail
JoelJohn
Liz
Naomi
NicoleNinaPeter
RuthSarahShemWarrenCollected byKuczaj (1976)
Brown (1973)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Brown (1973)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Sachs (1973)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Suppes (1973)
Bloom (1970)
Theakston et al. (2001)
Brown (1973)
Clark (1978)
Theakston et al. (2001)

Age Span
2;04 – 5;00
2;03 – 4;101;10 – 2;09
1;11 – 2;102;00 – 2;111;08 – 2;08
1;10 – 2;101;06 – 2;03
1;11 – 2;11
1;11 – 2;10
1;11 – 2;10
1;11 – 2;10
1;02 – 4;09
2;00 – 3;00
1;11 – 3;03
1;09 – 3;01
1;11 – 2;11
2;03 – 5;01
2;02 – 3;02
1;10 – 2;09

# Child Utterances
22,63345,555
19,902
17,19323,33925,084
21,18011,563
16,973
17,916
13,39016,56915,96016,95031,50526,891
20,41937,012
17,507
16,651

Table 1: Corpora Analyzed
In contrast, P-stranding under wh-movement was frequently observed in Aran’s speech. The
first clear use of P-stranding appeared at the age of 2;05, two months earlier than the first clear
use of swiping. In order to evaluate the statistical significance of the observed age-differences
between acquisition of P-stranding and acquisition of swiping, I counted the number of clear
uses of the earlier construction before the first clear use of the later construction. I next
calculated the relative frequency of the two constructions in the child’s own speech, startingwith the transcript after the first use of the later construction, and continuing through the end ofthe corpus. A Binomial Test was then used to obtain the probability of sampling the observed
number of tokens of the earlier construction simply by chance, before the first use of the later
construction, under the null hypothesis that both became available concurrently and had thesame relative probability of use as in later transcripts (Stromswold 1996, Snyder 2007).
This statistical analysis revealed that Aran acquired P-stranding significantly earlier thanswiping (p < .0001), along the lines of the prediction in (13). This finding, combined with thecomplete lack of P-pied-piping, lends support to the P-stranding approach to swiping, and puts
further explanatory burden on the P-pied-piping analysis.

5. Conclusion
Even though the results are preliminary in that the crucial data comes from a single child,these findings suggest that the time course of the acquisition of English is more consistent with
the P-stranding analysis of swiping (Hasegawa 2007; Nakao and Yoshida 2006), and poses a
new problem for the P-pied-piping analysis (Merchant 2002). A broader implication of thisstudy is that the time course of child language acquisition is potentially an important testingground for evaluating competing syntactic analyses.

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