Colloquium, 01/21 – Maribel Romero

    In a wide variety of languages, Q(uestion)-particles are –optionally or mandatorily– used in the formation of some interrogative clause types(see e.g. Kamali 2015 for Turkish mI; Rudin et al. 1999 for Macedonian li; Hagstrom 1998 for Japanese ka; Kishimoto 2005, Cable 2010 and Slade 2011 for Sinhala də). The present talk concentrates on Sinhala, in which the Qparticle də appears in wh-questions (WhQs), alternative questions (AltQs) and polar questions (PolQs), as illustrated in (1)-(3):

                    (1)  Chitra monəwa də gatte                                          WhQ

                           Chitra what       də bought.E

                         `What did Chitra buy?’                                             [Slade 2011: (2) p. 19]

                   (2) oyaa maalu.də mas.də kanne?                                 AltQ

                          you fish.də       meat.də eat.E

                        `Did you eat meat or fish?’                                       [Weerasooriya 2019: (36) p. 12]

                    (3) Chitra [ee potə]F də kieuwe?                                  PolQ- narrow

                          Chitra that book   də read.E

                         `Was it that book that Chitra read?’                      [Kishimoto 2005: (21a) p. 11]

    A prominent line of analysis, developed by Cable (2010) for WhQs and by Slade (2011) for AltQs and PolQs, posits that the Q-particle də introduces a choice function variable coindexed with the question operator in all three interrogative clause types.

    Against this background, the goal of our talk is two-fold. First, we present novel data on the distribution of the Q-particle də in interrogatives containing islands which challenge the Cable-Slade choice function analysis. We will see that, while də in AltQs patterns like də in WhQs in being sensitive to islands, də is PolQs is island-insensitive. Second, we develop a first unified semantic analysis of the Q-particle də that accounts for its distribution in all three question types and for the disparity in island-(in)sensitivity between WhQs/AltQs and PolQs.