1
Multiple wh-movement and Superiority in Persian
The Persian object marker (OM) suffix –ra conveys d(iscourse)-linking (Ghomeshi, 1997). In
multiple wh-questions, -ra enables movement of a wh-object over a wh-subject in violation of
Chomsky’s (1973) Superiority Condition. In (1a), the subject moves overtly and the object is insitu (Persian is SOV) – Superiority is respected. (1b) illustrates a Superiority violation: The whobject raises over the in-situ subject. The sentence is predictably ungrammatical. (1c) shows that
when the object bears the suffix –ra, it can licitly cross over the subject, in contrast to (1b). In
other words, (1c) gives rise to a Superiority configuration (the wh-object raises over the whsubject), but the sentence is grammatical.
(1)
a. ki
chi
kharid?
Who what bought.3sg
‘Who bought what?’
b. *chij ki __j kharid?
c. chi-raj ki __j kharid?
What-OM
Pesetsky (1987, 2000) observed that d-linking (expressed by a lexically restricted which-NP in
English) has a salutary effect on Superiority configurations, compare (2a) and (2b).
(2)
a. *Whatj did who buy __j?
b. Which bookj did which person buy __j?
In (2b), both wh-words are d-linked while in the Persian (1c) only one of them is (i.e. the object).
Indeed, if both wh-expressions in a multiple question are suffixed with –ra, the result is
surprisingly ungrammatical (and thus contrasts with (2b).) The ungrammaticality holds both
when the wh-expressions are bare and when they are lexically restricted.
(3)
*chi-raj/*kodum ketab-raj
ostad
ki-ra/kodum daneshju-ra
What-OM/which book-OM professor
who-OM/which student-OM
tashvigh kard __j
bekhune.
persuade.3sg
to read
‘What/which book did the professor persuade who/which student to read?’
We argue that ra-suffixed DPs are formed by moving DP to the specifier of –ra (Ganjavi, 2007),
a functional head bearing the feature [+Top(ic)]. The wh-feature – on the wh-element itself – is
contained within a larger phrase, raP. We further argue that movement of ra-marked wh-words
to the left periphery is obtained in two steps: First, the topic-feature is probed and raP is moved
to Spec/Topic in the left periphery. Second, the wh-expression is sub-extracted from raP and
moved to the specifier of a higher wh-head. Put differently, ra-marked wh-expressions are first
probed qua topics. In (1c), movement of chi-ra over ki is topic movement and not wh-movement.
Although the object is moved over the subject (as in (1b)), it does not wh-move over the subject
and hence does not give rise to a Superiority violation.
The sentences in (3) are ungrammatical because movement of an object-raP over another objectraP violates the anti-identity constraint of Relativized Minimality (Starke 2001; Rizzi 2004)
which proposes that in [*α [+F]… β [+F]… <α> [+F]]: Two occurrences of α cannot form a chain in
the presence of an intervening element β bearing identical morpho-syntactic feature(s). (3)
instantiates (complex) identity, in the sense of (Rizzi, 2014), and thus is ungrammatical.
2
English which-phrases, although d-linked, are not embedded in a raP-like structure. The topic
feature – which we assume throughout to be the formal correlate of d-linking – is not realized
structurally as in Persian. We assume that English which-phrases have only an optional [+Top].
(2b) thus has a grammatical derivation consisting of movement of an object [+wh, +Top] over a
subject [+wh]. By allowing the subject which-phrase to bear [+Top] only optionally, we can
account for the grammaticality of (2b) on the assumption that the derivation instantiates an
inclusion configuration in which the feature(s) of the intervener are a proper subset of those of
the moved phrase: [α [+F1], [+F2]… β [+F1] … <α> [+F1], [+F2]].
Our analysis of multiple wh-movement in Persian suggests that Chomsky’s Superiority condition
is a particular case of featural intervention in the sense of Relativized Minimality.
References:
Chomsky, N. (1973). Conditions on transformations. Ganjavi, S. (2007). Direct Objects in
Persian. Ghomeshi, J. (1997). Topics in Persian VPs. Pesetsky, D. (1987). Wh-in-situ:
Movement and Unselective Binding. Pesetsky, D. (2000). Phrasal Movement and Its Kin. Rizzi,
L. (2004). Locality and the left periphery. Rizzi, L. (2014). Minimality. Starke, M. (2001). Move
Dissolves into Merge: A Theory of Locality.