On wh-copying in Mon

Abstract

This paper presents the first detailed study of pronouncing multiple wh-pronouns within the same dependency in Mon (Mon-Khmer). I argue the data involve movement, and thus a wh-copying construction: multiple wh-copies can be pronounced, either in full pronoun form or in a reduced pronoun form—and I propose reduction occurs via m-merger (Harizanov in Nat Lang Linguist Theory 32:1033–1088, 2014). This supports the view (McCloskey in Everaert, van Riemsdijk (eds) The Blackwell companion to syntax, Blackwell, Oxford 94–117, 2006) that resumptive pronouns can be the pronunciation of structurally reduced copies. Interestingly, the distribution of full and reduced copies is highly free, although there is a puzzling restriction on where reduced copies can appear, which is analyzed with a context-sensitive constraint that is subject to Richards’s (Linguist Inq 29:599–629, 1998) Principle of Minimal Compliance. This relatively free, though constrained, distribution is novel, and is challenging for prominent approaches to copy-chain realization. For example, the linearization-based approach of Nunes (Linearization of chains and sideward movement, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004) struggles to account for this restriction, and though I follow the economy-based approach of Van Urk (Nat Lang Linguist Theory 36:937–990, 2018) in having the syntax specify which copies end up pronounced, I show that economy does not drive copy reduction in the data here.