Word order variation in Spanish and Italian interrogatives : The role of the subject in ‘why’-interrogatives

Abstract

This paper deals with some of the word order variation which can be found in Spanish and Italian wh-interrogatives. In particular, it investigates the variation between the whVS and whSV order in interrogatives introduced by ‘why’. We provide a brief overview of word order in Spanish and Italian wh-interrogatives and argue that there are various morphological, syntactic, and discourse pragmatic factors which influence the preference for a particular structure. We also argue, in section 2, that the word order variation depends on the type of the subject, namely on its DP-type (noun or pronoun), as well as on its heaviness or complexity. In section 3, we firstly present a comparative corpus study of Spanish and Italian Bible translations, showing that Spanish and Italian seem to have different word order preferences in ‘why’-interrogatives. Secondly, we present an acceptability task investigating different subjects of differing complexity, such as simple DPs, complex DPs, and pronouns. Both empirical studies provide original data showing word order variation in ‘why’-interrogatives in both Spanish and Italian. In section 4, we discuss the results and argue that the differences between the two languages can be best accounted for by assuming that the two languages have different preferences with respect to the information structure of such constructions and for their preferences for VS or SV order. We also discuss the effect of subject type for the word order in Spanish. Section 5 provides a short conclusion.