Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

11.3.4. Wh-exclamatives

quickinfo

Exclamations can be made in many ways. In this section we are particularly interested in exclamative clauses with a designated exclamative element in first position. These are called wh-exclamatives because the designated element is a wh-word such as wat'what' in (382); see Section A3.1.2, sub V, for a more extensive discussion of the distribution of this element. We will ignore the use of welk(e)'which' and hoe'how' found in formal language and writing: cf. $Welk een dwaasheid (is dat)!'what folly that is!' and $Hoe spannend (is dat)!'How exciting that is!'.

382

a.	Wat	ben	jij	sterk!
	what	are	you	strong
	'How strong you are!'

a'.	Wat	ben	jij	een sterke vrouw!
	what	are	you	a strong woman
	'What a strong woman you are!'

b.	Wat sterk	ben	jij!
	what strong	are	you
	'How strong you are!'

b'.	Wat een sterke vrouw	ben	jij!
	what a strong woman	are	you
	'What a strong woman you are!'

Subsection I starts with a discussion of the semantics of wh-exclamatives on the basis of examples like (382a&a'); we will show that although it is generally assumed that wh-exclamatives give rise to an extremely-high-degree or an extremely-high-quantity reading, their meaning can be more adequately expressed in terms of "higher than expected", subsection II discusses two syntactic subtypes of wh-exclamative clauses, which are illustrated by, respectively, the (a)- and (b)-examples in (382). The first type is characterized by the fact that the first position of the clause is occupied by the exclamative wh-element only, while in the second type the exclamative wh-element is part of a larger phrase in initial position. This may give rise to the hypothesis that the exclamative wh-element is base-generated as part of a larger phrase, and that the (a)-examples are derived by stranding part of this larger phrase, while the (b)-examples are derived by pied piping it. We will show that this hypothesis is not viable and, more specifically, that the (a)-examples are in fact not derived by wh-movement at all, subsection III continues by showing that wh-exclamatives can also be embedded but that this requires the exclamative element to be embedded in a larger phrase in the initial position of the embedded clause; this is illustrated in the examples in (383). Furthermore the exclamative element may be different: while in main clauses the wh-element is always wat in colloquial speech, example (383a) shows that it sometimes must be realized as hoe'how' in embedded contexts.

383

a.	Ik	was	vergeten	[hoe/*wat sterk	jij	bent].
	I	was	forgotten	how/what strong	you	are
	'I had forgotten how strong you are.'

a'.	*	Ik	was	vergeten	[hoe/wat	jij	sterk	bent].
		I	was	forgotten	how/what	you	strong	are

b.	Ik	was vergeten	[wat een sterke vrouw	jij	bent].
	I	was forgotten	what a strong woman	you	are
	'I had forgotten what a strong woman you are.'

b'.	*	Ik	was vergeten	[wat	jij	een sterke vrouw	bent].
		I	was forgotten	what	you	a strong woman	are

The wh-exclamatives discussed in this section are merely instances of a wider range of constructions that can be used as exclamations. It is not the case, however, that all exclamations are relevant for syntactic descriptions; an exclamation such as Bah!'Yuk!', for example, should rather be described in lexicographic terms, subsection IV will provide a review of such constructions and discuss the question as to whether the various types should be given a syntactic or some other account. For want of in-depth syntactic investigations, this review will be necessarily of a preliminary nature.

I. Meaning
II. Two syntactic types of wh-exclamative
III. Wh-exclamatives can be main or non-main clauses
IV. Exclamations versus exclamatives

[+] I. Meaning

This subsection discusses the meaning of wh-exclamative constructions. It is often claimed that such exclamatives have an "extremely high degree" or an "extremely large quantity" reading, and Subsections A to C therefore start with a discussion of these prototypical readings. It has been suggested, however, that these readings do not constitute the core meaning of wh-exclamatives but are derived from two more basic properties: (i) wh-exclamatives are like wh-questions in that they behave semantically as operator-variable constructions (see Subsections A to C), and (ii) they are factive in the sense that the speaker presupposes the proposition expressed by the non- wh-part of the exclamative to be true (subsection D), subsection E will show that this enables us to derive a range of context-sensitive interpretations that can be characterized as "higher-than-expected-degree" or "larger-than-expected-quantity" readings.

[+] A. The extremely-high-degree reading

W h-exclamatives often express an extremely high degree. This can be illustrated by means of example (384a), in which the exclamative wh-element wat'what' expresses that the addressee has worked to a degree that exceeds a certain contextually given norm. This extremely-high-degree reading arises only if the wh-element does not function as an independent clausal constituent; cf. Bennis (1995/1998). In (384b), for instance, the wh-element hoe'how' functions as a manner adverb and this leads to an interrogative interpretation. Similarly, the wh-element wat functions as a direct object in (384c) and the construction must again be interpreted as a question. Ignore the elements Δi and ti in (384), which will be discussed shortly.

384

a.	Wati	heb	jij	vandaag Δi	gewerkt!	wh-exclamative
	what	have	you	today	worked
	'Boy, how you have worked today!'

b.	Hoei	heb	jij	vandaag ti	gewerkt?	wh-interrogative
	how	have	you	today	worked
	'How did you work today?'

c.	Wat	heb	je	gedaan?	wh-interrogative
	what	have	you	done
	'What have you done?'

Nevertheless, Corver (1990) and Zanutinni & Portner (2003) hypothesize that wh-phrases in questions and exclamatives perform a comparable function; they are operators that bind some variable in the clause. This means that questions and exclamations are similar in that they both denote open propositions or, in other words, sets of alternative propositions. The manner adverb hoe'how' in question (384b), for instance, gives rise to an open proposition that denotes a set of alternative propositions that differ in manner: the addressee may have worked well, badly, hard, with pleasure, with reluctance, etc. The exclamative construction in (384a) can likewise be seen as an open proposition, but in this case the alternative propositions differ in degree (here: intensity) only, for which reason we have represented the variable by means of the Greek capital Δ. The representation in (384a) of course does not yet answer the question as to why this example is normally used to express an extremely high degree, that is, that the addressee has worked exceptionally hard. We will return to this question in Subsection D.
We have claimed above that exclamative wat in (384a) does not function as a clausal constituent. In order to substantiate this, we should show that wat differs from hoe in (384b) in that it cannot be used as a manner adverb. A first reason for assuming this is that (384a) does not allow an interrogative interpretation: if the wh-phrase wat were a manner adverbial, this would of course be quite surprising. Another reason is that exclamative wat is also possible if a manner adverb is overtly expressed; this is shown in (385a), in which wat can be assumed to bind a degree variable Δ of the manner adverb hard. Note in passing that it is not likely that Δ stands for a wh-trace of exclamative wat in this example given that degree adverbs normally cannot be extracted from pre-adjectival position by wh-movement. The (b)-examples illustrate this for the degree adverb hoe by showing that this wh-element obligatorily pied-pipes the full AP.

385

a.	Wati	heb	jij	vandaag [AP Δi	hard]	gewerkt!	wh-exclamative
	what	have	you	today	hard	worked
	'Boy, have you worked hard today!'

b.	*	Hoei	heb	jij	vandaag [APti	hard]	gewerkt?	wh-interrogative
		how	have	you	today	hard	worked

b'.	[AP	Hoe hard]i	heb	jij	vandaag ti	gewerkt?
	[AP	how hard	have	you	today	worked
	'How hard did you work today?'

That wh-movement is not involved in the derivation of the type of wh-exclamatives under discussion is also clear from the fact illustrated in (386a) that wat can bind a degree variable embedded in an attributive modifier of a noun phrase. The (b)-examples show that wh-movement of the degree modifier hoe again gives rise to an unacceptable result in questions, as does, in fact, wh-movement of the full attributively used AP; the only option is movement of the full noun phrase, in (386a'').

386

a.	Wati	is	dat [NP	een [AP Δi	mooi]	boek]!
	what	is	that	a	beautiful	book
	'What a beautiful book that is!'

b.	*	Hoei	is	dat [NP	een [APti	mooi]	boek]?
		how	is	that	a	beautiful	book

b'.	*	[AP	Hoe mooi]i	is dat [NP	een ti	boek]?
	*	*[AP	how beautiful	is that	a	book

b''.	[NP	een [AP	hoemooi]	boek]i	is dat ti?
	[NP	a	how beautiful	book	is that
	'How beautiful a book is that?'

Subsection II will provide more evidence for assuming that the derivation of examples like (384a), (385a) and (386a) does not involve wh-movement, but for the moment we will simply assume that exclamative wat is base-generated in clause-initial position in suchlike examples. Furthermore, we assume that exclamative wat requires a degree variable to be present in order to be licit. This requirement can be made to follow from a generally accepted economy constraint on natural language that states that an operator is only licit if it actually binds a variable: if an operator does not bind a variable, it is superfluous and should be omitted. This ban on vacuous quantification is also empirically motivated, as it provides a simple account for the acceptability contrast between the two examples in (387), taken from Krijgsman (1983). Under the plausible assumption that the phonetically empty degree variable Δ can only occur with gradable adjectives, exclamative wat can be licensed by a gradable adjective such as groot'big' but not by a non-gradable adjective such as houten'wooden'. Note that the number sign indicates that (387b) is marginally acceptable if wat is associated with some contextually determined gradable property that is left implicit with, e.g., the meaning "impressive", an option also found in the fully acceptable sentence Wat is dat een huis!'What an impressive house that is!'.

387

a.	Wati	is	dat	[een [AP Δi	groot]	huis]!
	what	is	that	a	big	house
	'What a big house that is!'

b.	#	Wati	is	dat	[een [AP	houten]	huis]!
		what	is	that	a	wooden	house

The ban on vacuous quantification may also account for the acceptability contrast between (388a) and (388b); the fact that (388a) is fully acceptable is due to the fact that the degree modifier erg is gradable itself, as shown by [[heel erg] mooi], while the degraded status of (388b) is due to the fact that zeer is not gradable, as shown by *[[heel zeer] mooi]; cf. Krijgsman (1983). The same can perhaps be said for comparative forms such as mooier'more beautiful' in (388c), as these cannot be modified by degree adverbs like heel either (cf. *heel mooier), although this raises the potential problem that comparatives do allow modification by quantifiers like veel'much' (cf. veel mooier'much more beautiful'); we leave this problem to future research.

388

a.	Wati	is	dat [NP	een [AP [Δi	erg]	mooi]	boek]!
	what	is	that	a	very	beautiful	book
	'What a very beautiful book that is!'

b.	*	Wat	is dat [NP	een [AP	zeer mooi]	boek]!
		what	is that	a	very beautiful	book

c.	*	Wat	is dat een [NP	een	mooier	boek]!
		what	is that	a	more.beautiful	book

The acceptability contrast between (389a) and (389b) also follows from the ban on vacuous quantification: example (389a) is acceptable because exclamative wat is properly binding a degree variable associated with the gradable quantifier veel in (389a), while (389b) is unacceptable because cardinal numbers are not gradable and thus cannot introduce a degree variable. Example (389c) is unacceptable for the same reason: a definite noun phrase like het antwoord'the answer' does not contain a degree variable.

389

a.	Wati	weet	jij [NP [Δi	veel]	dingen]]!
	what	know	you	many	things
	'How much you know!'

b.	*	Wat	weet	jij [NP	[een miljoen]	dingen]!
		what	know	you	a million	things

c.	*	Wat	weet	jij	het antwoord!
		what	know	you	the answer

The fact that we can easily account for the acceptability judgments in (387) to (389) by means of the ban on vacuous quantification provides strong support for the hypothesis that wh-elements in wh-exclamatives function as operators that must bind a phonetically empty degree variable.

[+] B. The extremely-large-quantity reading

The extremely-high-degree reading discussed in Subsection A is not the only reading found with wh-exclamatives: if the wh-element in clause-initial position is associated with a certain type of noun phrase, an extremely-large-quantity reading may also arise; a prototypical example is (390a). The examples in (390b&c) show that the noun phrase must satisfy certain criteria in order for the extremely-large-quantity reading to be possible: a count noun such as boek'book' must be plural and the noun phrase must contain the spurious indefinite article een; the notion "spurious" is used here because the indefinite article een normally cannot be used in plural noun phrases; see N5.1.

390

a.	Wat	heb	jij	een boeken!
	what	have	you	a books
	'What a lot of books you have!'

b.	#	Wat	heb	jij	een boek!
		what	have	you	a book

c.	*	Wat	heb	jij	boeken!
		what	have	you	books

The number sign in (390b) indicates that this example is at least marginally acceptable with an extremely-high-degree reading, in which case wat is associated with some contextually determined gradable property that is left implicit, such as "impressive"; the same in fact holds for (390a), which is therefore ambiguous; see Subsection C for more examples of such ambiguities.
A non-count noun like water'water' is also compatible with an extremely-large-quantity reading: it appears in the singular (as it does not have a plural form), but must again be preceded by the spurious indefinite article een, as is clear from the fact that example (391b) is unacceptable.

391

a.	Wat	ligt	daar	een water!
	what	lies	there	a water
	'So much water over there!'

b.	*	Wat	ligt	daar	water!
		what	lies	there	water

If Zanutinni & Portner (2003) are correct in assuming that exclamative wh-phrases are operators that must bind some variable, the acceptability contrasts in (390) and (391) strongly suggests that the spurious article een is able to introduce a variable ranging over quantities; see Bennis (1998) for a similar conclusion.

[+] C. Ambiguity

Plural noun phrases such as (392a), which contain both a gradable attributively used adjective and the spurious article een, are ambiguous between an extremely-high-degree and an extremely-large-quantity reading. If we omit the spurious article, as in (392b), the extremely-large-quantity reading becomes unavailable. If we omit the gradable adjective, as in (392c), the extremely-large-quantity reading becomes the most prominent one (although an extremely-high-degree reading remains at least marginally possible with respect with some contextually determined gradable property that is left implicit). If we omit both the spurious article and the gradable adjective, the result is unacceptable.

392

a.	Wat	heeft	Jan [NP	een mooie boeken]!	ambiguous
	what	has	Jan	a beautiful books
	'What (a lot of) beautiful books Jan has!'

b.	Wat	heeft	Jan [NP	mooie boeken]!	extremely high degree
	what	has	Jan	beautiful books
	'What beautiful books Jan has!'

c.	Wat	heeft	Jan [NP	een boeken]!	extremely large quantity
	what	has	Jan	a books
	'What a lot of books Jan has!'

d.	*	Wat	heeft	Jan [NP	boeken]!	uninterpretable
		what	has	Jan	books

The interpretations and judgments above are all expected if the spurious indefinitie article een and gradable adjectives are able to introduce a degree variable that can be bound by the exclamative operator wat. However, if the spurious article een and the gradable adjective mooi in (392) are indeed both able to introduce a degree variable, we expect example (392a) to simultaneously express the extremely-high-degree and the extremely-large-quantity reading, given that Subsection IIB will show that exclamative wat is able to bind more than one variable. It does seem that example (392a) is capable of expressing these two readings simultaneously, but it is not clear that this is obligatory given that the extremely-high-degree reading is the most prominent and for some speakers even the only possible one. If the extremely-large-quantity reading is optional, we may have to conclude that spurious een has some other function in addition to the introduction of a quantity variable; we leave this issue for future research.

[+] D. Factivity

Since Elliott (1974) and Grimshaw (1979) it has generally been accepted that exclamatives are factive in the sense of Kiparsky & Kiparsky (1970) that the speaker presupposes the truth of the proposition expressed by the utterance. So, a speaker uttering the exclamative in (384a), repeated here as the first part of (393), presupposes that the addressee did work today. This is clear from the fact that this utterance cannot felicitously be followed by the question given as the second part of (393), as it questions the truth of the presupposed proposition. We indicated this by means of the dollar sign.

393

Wati

heb

jij

vandaag

gewerkt!

$Of

heb

vandaag

niet

gewerkt?

what

have

you

today

worked

have

you

today

not

worked

'How you have worked today! Or didnʼt you work today?'

Exclamations crucially differ in this respect from questions. This is clear from the examples in (394). While the exclamation in (394a) cannot be followed felicitously by the question Of heb je geen boeken gekocht? because it questions the truth of the presupposed proposition, the question in (394b) can readily be followed by it; this shows that the speaker does not presuppose that the addressee has bought books by uttering the question Welke boeken heb je gekocht?

394

a.	Wat	heb	jij	een boeken	gekocht!	$Of	heb	je	geen boeken	gekocht?
	what	have	you	a books	bought	or	have	you	no books	bought
	'How many books you have bought! Or havenʼt you bought any books?'

b.	Welke boeken	heb	je	gekocht?	Of	heb	je	geen boeken	gekocht?
	which books	have	you	bought	or	have	you	no books	bought
	'Which books did you buy? Or havenʼt you bought any books?'

Elliott and Grimshaw further support the claim that exclamatives are factive by showing that they cannot be selected by non-factive verbs; while we do find exclamative clauses as complements of the factive verb weten'to know', such clauses do not occur as complements of the non-factive verb beweren'to contend'.

395

a.	Marie weet	[wat een mooie boeken	Peter heeft].
	Marie knows	what a beautiful books	Peter has
	'Marie knows what beautiful books Peter has.'

b.	*	Marie beweert	[wat een mooie boeken	Peter heeft].
		Marie contends	what a beautiful books	Peter has

That the speaker presupposes the truth of the proposition expressed by the embedded exclamative is also clear from the acceptability contrast indicated in (396): cf. Grimshaw (1979:283). Because the speaker presupposes the truth of the proposition expressed by the exclamative, the use of the first person pronoun leads to an incoherent result in (396b) as the speaker cannot deny to have knowledge about the truth of a proposition that he is presupposing to be true. Example (396a), on the other hand, is coherent; the speaker can easily deny that Marie has knowledge about the truth of a proposition that he is presupposing to be true.

396

a.	Marie	weet	niet	[wat een mooie boeken	Peter heeft].
	Marie	knows	not	what a beautiful books	Peter has
	'Marie doesnʼt know what beautiful books Peter has.'

b.	$	Ik	weet	niet	[wat een mooie boeken	Peter heeft].
		I	know	not	what a beautiful books	Peter has
		'I do not know what a beautiful books Peter has.'

[+] E. Widening

Subsections A through C have shown that wh-exclamatives prototypically express an extremely-high-degree or an extremely-large-quantity reading. Other notions often used in describing the interpretation of exclamatives include "surprise", "unexpectedness", "emotional reaction" and "noteworthiness". Now consider the wh-exclamatives in (397), which are used to express that the book under discussion is very expensive and thus seem to imply the truth of the propositions expressed by the declarative clauses in the primed examples.

397

a.	Wat	is	dat boek	duur!
	what	is	that book	expensive
	'How expensive that book is!'

a'.	Dat boek	is zeer duur.
	that book	is very expensive
	'That book is very expensive.'

b.	Wat	is dat	een duur boek!
	what	is that	an expensive book
	'How expensive a book that is!'

b'.	Dat	is een zeer duur boek.
	that	is a very expensive book
	'That is a very expensive book.'

It would be wrong, however, to conclude that the primeless and primed sentences are equivalent, as there are many cases in which speakers could easily use the primed examples without necessarily being able to use the primeless examples. To present-day standards, for instance, a hardcover 300 page book that costs 100 euro's would normally be called very expensive, so that any speaker could easily use the primed examples in (397) to discuss such a book. A speaker who opens the book and finds out that the book is written by a popular, best-selling novelist would probably also be able to use exclamatives like (397a&b). On the other hand, a linguist who knows that the book is on linguistics would probably not use these exclamatives since he knows that many scientific publishers ask twice as much for similar publications. This shows that the expectation of the speaker is a decisive factor in determining the appropriateness of the use of wh-exclamatives.
      Zanutinni & Portner (2003) claim that the notions mentioned above are not basic and are actually pragmatic implicatures derived from the two core properties of wh-exclamatives we have already discussed in the previous subsections. First, such exclamatives are constructions in which an operator binds a degree/quantity variable and thus denote a set of alternative propositions that differ in degree or quantity. Second, wh-exclamatives are factive; the speaker presupposes the truth of the proposition expressed by the non- wh-part of the exclamation.
      Zanutinni & Portner's claim that the notions normally used to characterize the interpretation of wh-exclamatives are pragmatic implicatures is based on a particular view on discourse semantics. In any conversation, there is a set of propositions that the speaker and addressee equally hold true, the so-called common ground. For a sentence to be successfully asserted, the proposition it contains must be added to the common ground. Because the truth of the proposition expressed by the non- wh-part of a wh-exclamative is already presupposed, such exclamatives are less useful for assertion. Because every utterance must have some function, wh-exclamatives must have a function –other than assertion– that is compatible with their factivity; Zanutinni & Portner propose that this function is affecting, or more specifically, widening the common ground.
      We will explain the notion of widening on the basis of the examples in (398). Assume that the common ground includes a height scale applicable to adult humans, which ranges from 1.70 to 1.90 meter. The assertion expressed by (398a) would establish that Jan occupies a high position on this scale. Zanutinni & Portner claim that the wh-exclamative in (398b) widens this scale and locates Jan on the extended part of it; this derives the extremely-high-degree reading discussed in Subsection A. Note in passing that we might also expect an extremely-low-degree reading of (398b) to arise, but this can be excluded by Grice's (1975) Maxim of Quantity because the use of groot'tall' will be blocked for expressing this reading by its more informative antonym, klein'short'.

398

a.		Jan is groot.
		Jan is tall

a'.		Peter is klein.
		Peter is short

b.	Wat	is	Jan groot!
	what	is	Jan tall
	'How tall Jan is!'

b'.	Wat	is Peter klein!
	what	is Peter short
	'How short Peter is!'

Although Zanutinni & Portner do not discuss this, it seems that their reasoning does not necessarily lead to an extremely-high-degree reading of exclamatives; what is predicted is simply a higher-than-expected-degree reading, and it seems that this is correct. Suppose Jan has a garden that needs intensive watering. In order to save drinking water, he has installed a 2000 liter water tank fed by rainwater. After a modest shower he inspects the contents of the tank and finds that it is already half full. Since this is much more than he had expected, he can easily express his surprise by using the exclamative in (399a); the crucial point is that we are not dealing with an extremely high degree, but simply with a higher-than-expected degree. After the water tank has been completely filled, there is a drought. Jan starts watering the garden and after two weeks he peeks into the water tank, and to his surprise the tank is still half full. Since this is much more than he had expected, he can readily express his surprise by using the exclamative in (399b); the crucial point is again that we are not dealing with an extremely high degree, but with a higher-than-expected degree. For the use of al'already' and nog'still' in these examples, we refer the reader to Sections A3.2, sub II, A3.2, sub III, and A3.3, sub I.

399

a.	Wat	is de waterbak	al	vol!
	what	is the water.tank	already	full
	'How full the water tank already is!'

b.	Wat	is de waterbak	nog	vol!
	what	is the water.tank	still	full
	'How full the water tank still is!'

The examples in (399), which where inspired by a similar example provided by Castroviejo (2006), which was also cited in Villalba (2008), clearly show that the extremely-high-degree reading prototypically found in wh-exclamatives is not a inherent part of the meaning of wh-exclamatives. This reading is pragmatically derived from the more semantic basic properties of exclamatives, as is clear from the fact that it arises under the proper contextual circumstances only.

[+] II. Two syntactic types of wh-exclamative

Wh-exclamatives come in two different forms; the exclamative wh-phrase can be part of a larger phrase that occupies the clause-initial position or it can occupy this position on its own. This was already illustrated in example (382); more examples are given in (400). For reasons that will become clear shortly, we will refer to the (a)-examples as the non-split pattern and to the (b)-examples as the pseudo-split pattern.

400

a.	Wat snel	is die auto!
	what fast	is that car
	'How fast that car is!'

a'.	Wat een snelle auto	heb	jij!
	what a fast car	have	you
	'What a fast car you have!'

b.	Wat	is die auto	snel!
	what	is that car	fast
	'How fast that car is!'

b'.	Wat	heb	jij	een snelle auto!
	what	have	you	a fast car
	'What a fast car you have!'

The main question in this subsection will be whether or not wh-movement is involved in the derivation of the wh-exclamatives in (400). In order to establish this, we should show that the two constructions exhibit at least the three characteristic properties of wh-movement listed in (401).

401

There is an obligatory interpretative gap, viz., the trace left by wh-movement.

The antecedent-trace relation can be non-local in bridge-verb contexts.

The antecedent-trace relation is island-sensitive.

Our survey will lead to the conclusion that the non-split pattern in the (a)-examples does involve wh-movement of the phrase containing the wh-element wat into clause-initial position, whereas the wh-element wat in the pseudo-split pattern in the (b)-examples is base-generated in clause-initial position. The latter claim motivates the use of the notion pseudo-split pattern for the (b)-examples in (400), as these do not involve actual splitting of a larger phrase by wh-movement, subsection A and B successively discuss the non-split and the pseudo-split pattern.

[+] A. Non-split pattern

Non-split exclamative wh-phrases may perform several syntactic functions. The examples in (402) show that they can easily be used as arguments and predicates; the wh-phrases are related to an interpretive gap within the clause with the function of, respectively, subject, direct object and complementive. Because this shows that non-split wh-exclamative constructions exhibit the characteristic property of wh-movement in (401a), we indicate the interpretive gap by means of a trace. The remainder of this subsection will show that this is fully justified as the non-split pattern also exhibits the other characteristic properties of wh-movement in (401b&c).

402

a.	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	staan	er ti	in die kast!	subject
	what a beautiful books	stand	there	in that bookcase
	'What beautiful books there are in that bookcase!'

b.	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	heb	je ti	gekocht!	direct object
	what a beautiful books	have	you	bought
	'What beautiful books you have bought!'

c.	[Wat mooi]i	zijn	die boeken ti!	complementive
	what beautiful	are	those books
	'How beautiful those books are!'

The wh-movements indicated in (402) are obligatory; the unacceptability of the examples in (403) shows that leaving the wh-phrase in the position indicated by the trace results in ungrammaticality. The number sign in (403c) indicates that this example is acceptable without an exclamative intonation if wat is interpreted as an intensifier with the meaning "quite"; we will ignore this reading here. It should further be noted that, for unknown reasons, example (403c) improves considerably if the particle maar is added: Die boeken zijn maar wat mooi! We leave this issue for further research.

403

a.	*	Er	staan	[wat een mooie boeken]	in die kast!
		there	stand	what a beautiful books	in that bookcase

b.	*	Je	hebt	[wat een mooie boeken]	gekocht!
		you	have	what a beautiful books	bought

c.	#	Die boeken	zijn	wat mooi!
		those books	are	what beautiful

The obligatoriness of wh-movement follows if we assume that exclamative wat must be moved into clause-initial position in order to create an exclamative operator-variable configuration; see the discussion in Subsection I. As the initial position of a clause can be occupied by a single constituent only, we should also conclude that exclamative wat can be part of a larger phrase and is able to pied-pipe this larger phrase under wh-movement. That pied piping is common in non-split wh-exclamatives can also be illustrated by means of the examples in (404) in which exclamative wat is more deeply embedded in a prepositional object/complementive: wh-movement of wat triggers movement of the full PP.

404

a.	[Over wat een rare onderwerpen]i	schrijft	hij	toch ti!	PP-complement
	about what a strange topics	writes	he	prt
	'What strange topics he writes about!'

b.	[Op wat een grote stoel]i	zit	jij ti!	PP-complementive
	on what a big chair	sit	you
	'What a big chair you are sitting in!'

Pied piping also occurs if exclamative wat is part of an adverbial phrase. This is illustrated in (405) by means of, respectively, an adjectival and prepositional adverbial phrase of manner.

405

a.	[Wat zorgvuldig]i	heb	jij ti	gewerkt!
	what carefully	have	you	worked
	'How meticulously you have worked!'

b.	[Met wat een grote zorgvuldigheid]i	heb	jij ti	gewerkt!
	with what a great care	have	you	worked
	'With what a great care you have worked!'

The examples in (404) and (405) again illustrate that non-split wh-exclamatives exhibit the characteristic property of wh-movement in (401a): the wh-phrase in clause-initial position is the antecedent of an interpretative gap within the clause with various functions: argument, complementive and adverbial.
Let us now continue with property (401b), according to which the antecedent-trace relation can be non-local in bridge-verb contexts. Extraction of an exclamative wh-phrase from an embedded clause always gives rise to a somewhat marked result, but there seems to be a consensus that it is possible if the matrix clause is headed by a bridge verb such as zeggen'to say'; cf. Krijgsman (1983:132), Corver (1990:ch.4) and Bennis (1998).

406

a.	(?)	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	zei hij	[dat	er ti	in die kast	staan]!	subject
		what a beautiful books	said he	that	there	in that bookcase	stand
		'What beautiful books he said are in that bookcase!'

b.	(?)	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	zei	hij	[dat	je ti	gekocht	hebt]!	direct object
		what a beautiful books	said	he	that	you	bought	have
		'What beautiful books he said you have bought!'

c.	(?)	[Wat mooi]i	zei	hij	[dat	die boeken ti	zijn]!	complementive
		what beautiful	said	he	that	those books	are
		'How beautiful he said those books are!'

That the examples in (406) are indeed relatively good becomes especially clear when we compare them to the examples in (407) in which the matrix clause is headed by the factive, non-bridge verb betreuren'to regret'. In order to make the interpretation of these examples more plausible, we have replaced the adjective mooi'beautiful' by the adjective saai'boring', but the results are still infelicitous. We conclude from the contrast between the two sets of examples in (406) and (407) that non-split wh-exclamatives exhibit property (401b): the antecedent-trace relation can be non-local in bridge-verb contexts.

407

a.	*	[Wat een saaie boeken]i	betreurde	hij	[dat	er ti	in die kast	staan]!
		what a boring books	regretted	he	that	there	in that bookcase	stand

b.	*	[Wat een saaie boeken]i	betreurde	hij	[dat	je ti	gekocht	hebt]!
		what a boring books	regretted	he	that	you	bought	have

c.	*	[Wat saai]i	betreurde	hij	[dat	die boeken ti	zijn]!
		what boring	regretted	he	that	those books	are

Finally, we show that non-split wh-exclamatives are sensitive to islands. First, the examples in (408) show that exclamative wh-phrases cannot be extracted from interrogative clauses.

408

a.	*	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	vroeg hij	[of	er ti	in die kast	staan]!
		what a beautiful books	asked he	if	there	in that bookcase	stand

b.	*	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	vroeg	hij	[of	je ti	gekocht	hebt]!
		what a beautiful books	asked	he	if	you	bought	have

c.	*	[Wat mooi]i	vroeg	hij	[of	die boeken ti	zijn]!
		what beautiful	asked	he	whether	those books	are

Krijgsman (1983) shows that non-split wh-exclamatives are also sensitive to complex noun phrase configurations: example (409b) illustrates that it is impossible to extract an exclamative wh-phrase from a relative clause.

409

a.	Jan verdedigde	[de stelling	[dat	kernenergie	zeer gevaarlijk	is]].
	Jan defended	the thesis	that	nuclear.energy	very dangerous	is
	'Jan defended the claim that nuclear energy is very dangerous.'

b.	*	[Wat gevaarlijk]i	verdedigde	Jan	[de stelling	[dat	kernenergie ti	is]]!
		what dangerous	defended	Jan	the thesis	that	nuclear.energy	is

The examples in (408) and (409) thus show that non-split wh-exclamatives also exhibit the third, and final, characteristic property of wh-movement in (401c): the island-sensitivity of the antecedent-trace relation. It is therefore safe to conclude that wh-movement is involved in the derivation of non-split wh-exclamatives.

[+] B. Pseudo-split pattern

Now that we have established that the non-split pattern is derived by wh-movement, our next task is to show that the pseudo-split pattern does not involve wh-movement. Consider example (410), which provides the pseudo-split counterparts of the non-split wh-exclamatives in (402).

410

a.	Wat	staan	er	een mooie boeken	in die kast!	subject
	what	stand	there	a beautiful books	in that bookcase
	'What beautiful books are in that bookcase!'

b.	Wat	heb	je	een mooie boeken	gekocht!	direct object
	what	have	you	a beautiful books	bought
	'What beautiful books you have bought!'

c.	Wat	zijn	die boeken	mooi!	complementive
	what	are	those books	beautiful
	'How beautiful those books are!'

The previous subsection has argued that the wh-phrases in clause-initial position in the non-split exclamatives in (402) are constituents, and a conceivable analysis of the split exclamatives in (410) would therefore be that wh-movement of exclamative wat doesn't have to pied-pipe the remainder of the larger constituent but may also strand it. This would give rise to the representations in (411), with t representing the wh-trace of exclamative w at.

411

Wati staan er [ti een mooie boeken]

in die kast!

Wati heb je [ti een mooie boeken] gekocht!

Wati zijn die boeken [ti mooi]!

The discussion below will show, however, that this analysis is not tenable: wh-movement cannot be involved in the derivation of the pseudo-split pattern. Instead, we will be led to assume that exclamative wat is base-generated in clause-initial position and that it enters into a syntactic dependency relation with a degree variable introduced by the gradable adjective mooi'beautiful' (in the present examples that receive a higher-than-expected-degree reading). The correct analysis of the examples in (410) is therefore the one sketched in (412), in which Δ stands for the degree variable and the indices indicate the syntactic dependency relation between exclamative wat and the variable.

412

Wati staan er [een [Δi mooie] boeken] in die kast!

Wati heb je [een [Δi mooie] boeken] gekocht!

Wati zijn die boeken [Δi mooi]!

The two analyses cannot easily be evaluated on the basis of the examples in (410), as they give rise to more or less similar, since wh-extraction is possible from interrogative wat voor-phrases functioning as subject or object. Evaluation is possible, however, on the basis of the pseudo-split counterparts of the non-split wh-exclamative in (404), in which exclamative wat is embedded in a PP. The primeless examples in (413) show that the pseudo-split counterparts of these examples are fully acceptable. The wh-movement analysis would assign to these examples the structures in the singly-primed examples, while the alternative hypothesis according to which exclamative wat is base-generated in clause-initial position is given in the doubly-primed examples.

413

a.	Wat	schrijft	hij	toch	over een rare onderwerpen!	PP-complement
	what	writes	he	prt	about a strange topics
	'What strange topics he writes about!'

a'.

Wati schrijft hij toch [PP over [NPti een rare onderwerpen]]!

a''.

Wati schrijft hij toch [PP over [NP een [AP Δi rare] onderwerpen]]!

b.	Wat	zit	jij	op een grote stoel!	PP-complementive
	what	sit	you	on a big chair
	'What a big chair you are sitting in!'

b'.

Wati zit jij [PP op [NPti een grote stoel]]!

b''.

Wati zit jij [PP op [NP een [AP Δi grote] stoel]]!

What we will show now is that the syntactic representations in (413a'&b') are syntactically ill-formed, which leaves us with the structures in the doubly-primed examples. We will do so with the help of a brief discussion of so-called wat voor-phrases, which are used to form questions and arguably do involve wh-movement. The examples in (414) show that such wat voor-phrases at first sight behave exactly like wh-exclamatives in that they optionally split in certain cases; the reader can verify this by comparing the examples in (414) to the wh-exclamatives in (402a&b) and (410a&b).

414

a.	[Wat voor een boeken]i	staan	er ti	in die kast?	subject
	what for a books	stand	there	in that bookcase
	'What kind of books are there in that bookcase?'

a'.	Wati	staan	er [ti	voor een boeken]	in die kast?
	what	stand	there	for a books	in that bookcase
	'What kind of books are there in that bookcase!'

b.	[Wat voor een boeken]i	heb je ti gekocht?	direct object
	what for a books	have you bought
	'What kind of books have you bought?'

b'.	Wati	heb	je [ti	voor een boeken]	gekocht?
	what	have	you	for a books	bought
	'What kind of books have you bought?'

However, wat voor-constructions exhibit a crucially different behavior from wh-exclamative phrases in that the split pattern is impossible if the wat voor-phrase is the complement of a preposition. It is important to note that the impossibility of the split pattern is in conformity with the fact that wh-movement from prepositional phrases is normally excluded, the only exception being wh-movement from pronominalized PPs of the form waar'P + what'.

415

a.	[Over wat voor een onderwerpen]i	schrijft	hij ti?	PP-complement
	about what for a topics	writeS	he
	'About what kind of topics is he writing?'

a'.	*	Wati	schrijft	hij [PP	over [NPti	voor een onderwerpen]]?
		what	writes	he	about	for a topics

b.	[PP	Op wat voor een stoel]	zit	jij ti?	PP-complementive
	[PP	on what for a chair	sit	you
	'In what kind of chair are you sitting?'

b'.	*	Wati	zit	jij [PP	op [NPti	voor een stoel]]?
		what	sit	you	on	for a chair

In short, the fact that the primed examples are unacceptable shows that Dutch prepositional phrases do not only constitute islands for wh-extraction of their nominal complements but also for subparts of their nominal complement. Now that we have established this, we can return to the pseudo-split wh-exclamatives in (413). The fact that the two singly-primed structures derived by wh-movement are in all relevant respects identical to the unacceptable primed examples in (415) shows that they are syntactically ill-formed. We should therefore conclude that the postulation of a wh-trace was incorrect and that the alternative analysis in the doubly primed examples in (413), according to which exclamative wat binds the degree variable introduced by the gradable adjective, is to be preferred.
A similar argument can be built on the basis of the pseudo-split counterparts of the adverbial wh-phrases in (405), which are given in (416); the wh-movement hypothesis assigns to these constructions the representations in the singly-primed examples while the alternative hypothesis provides the structures in the doubly-primed examples. Because the earlier discussion of the examples in (413) to (415) has already shown that representation (416b') is syntactically ill-formed, we will focus on the exclamative in (416a).

416

a.	Wat	heb	jij	zorgvuldig	gewerkt!
	what	have	you	carefully	worked
	'How meticulously you have worked!'

a'.

Wati heb jij [APti zorgvuldig] gewerkt!

a''.

Wati heb jij [AP Δi zorgvuldig] gewerkt!

b.	Wat	heb	jij	met een grote zorgvuldigheid	gewerkt!
	what	have	you	with a great care	worked
	'With what a great care you have worked!'

b'.

Wati heb jij [PP met [NPti een grote zorgvuldigheid]] gewerkt!

b''.

Wati heb jij [PP met [NP een [AP Δi grote] zorgvuldigheid]]] gewerkt!

The reason to exclude analysis (416a') has to do with the fact that it violates another independently motivated restriction on wh-movement, viz., that wh-movement of degree modifiers such as hoe'how' triggers pied piping of the full adverbial phrase of manner; stranding of the non- wh-part of the phrase gives rise to a severely degraded result. The fact that the unacceptable structure in (417b) resembles (416a') again disfavors the wh-movement analysis.

417

a.	[AP	Hoe zorgvuldig]i	heb	jij	gewerkt?
	[AP	how carefully	have	you	worked
	'How carefully have you worked?'

b.	*	Hoei	heb	je [APti	zorgvuldig]	gewerkt?
		how	have	you	carefully	worked

The discussion above has shown that pseudo-split exclamative constructions are not sensitive to certain well-established islands for wh-movement, and thus do not exhibit the characteristic property of wh-movement in (401c). Pseudo-split wh-exclamatives do not exhibit the property in (401b) either. The examples in (418) show that the relation between the exclamative element wat and its associate (the trace/degree variable cannot be established in a non-local fashion in bridge-verb contexts; cf. Krijgsman (1983:150), Corver (1990:ch.4) and Bennis (1998).

418

a.	*	Wat	zei	hij	[dat	er	een mooie boeken	in die kast	staan]!	subject
		what	said	he	that	there	a beautiful books	in that bookcase	stand

b.	*	Wat	zei	hij	[dat	Marie	een mooie boeken	gekocht	had]!	direct object
		what	said	he	that	Marie	a beautiful books	bought	had

c.	*	Wat	zei	hij	[dat	die boeken	mooi	zijn]!	complementive
		what	said	he	that	those books	beautiful	are

The unacceptability of the pseudo-split wh-exclamatives in (418) is hard to explain under a wh-movement approach. One possibility would be to assume that the unacceptability is related to the fact that wat is subextracted from a noun/adjectival phrase. The acceptability of the examples in (419) shows, however, that such subextraction is possible in the case of uncontroversial wh-constructions involving wat voor-phrases; cf. Corver (1990) and Bennis (1998).

419

a.	Wati	zei	hij	[dat	er [ti	voor een boeken]	in die kast	staan].
	what	said	he	that	there	for a books	in that bookcase	stand
	'What kind of books said he are in the bookcase?'

b.	Wati	zei	hij	[dat	Marie [ti	voor een boeken]	gekocht	had].
	what	said	he	that	Marie	for a books	bought	had
	'What kind of books said he Marie had bought?'

An alternative account for the unacceptability of the examples (418) can be built on the earlier suggestion that exclamative wat must enter in a syntactic dependency relation with the degree variable introduced by the gradable adjective mooi'beautiful'. Given that such syntactic dependencies are normally clause-bound, no relation can be established between the exclamative operator wat and the degree variable introduced by the gradable adjective mooi'beautiful'; the two elements are simply not sufficiently local, as the former is located in the main clause while the latter is located in the embedded clause. Note that the clause-bound nature of the syntactic dependency makes it impossible to test whether the pseudo-split pattern is sensitive to islands evoked by, e.g., embedded interrogative or relative clauses, as these imply that the syntactic dependency crosses a clause boundary: the pseudo-split counterparts of the non-split examples in (407) to (409) are therefore (correctly) predicted to be impossible anyway.

[+] C. More differences between non-split and pseudo-split wh-exclamatives

The conclusion that non-split and pseudo-split wh-exclamatives have different underlying structures is consistent with the fact that they exhibit different syntactic behavior in other respects as well. The examples in (420), for instance, show that they differ with respect to the presence of spurious een: while een is obligatorily present in non-split wh-exclamatives such as (420a) with a higher-than-expected-degree reading, it can easily be left out in the corresponding pseudo-split counterpart.

420

a.	[Wat	*(een)	mooie	boeken]i	heb	jij ti	gekocht!
	what	a	beautiful	books	have	you	bought
	'What beautiful books you have bought!'

b.	Wati	heb	jij	[(een) [Δi	mooie]	boeken]	gekocht!
	what	have	you	a	beautiful	books	bought
	'What a beautiful books you have bought!'

We have already mentioned in Subsection IC that it is somewhat surprising that spurious een can be present in pseudo-split wh-exclamatives such as (420b) with a higher-than-expected-degree reading; we expect it to introduce a quantity variable which is not reflected in the meaning. It has been argued, however, that the obligatory presence of spurious een in non-split wh-exclamatives is not only related to meaning but may also have a syntactic motivation; see Bennis et al. (1998) for discussion. Such an approach to the obligatoriness of spurious een in non-split wh-exclamatives would be incompatible with the claim that the pseudo-split constructions are derived from the same base structures as their non-split counterparts, given that we would then predict spurious een to be obligatory in the pseudo-split pattern as well. The contrast between the two examples in (420) with respect to spurious een thus indirectly supports the conclusion that non-split and pseudo-split wh-exclamatives have different underlying structures.
The conclusion that pseudo-split wh-exclamatives do not involve wh-movement may also account for the fact that a single exclamative wh-element is able to bind more than one variable; cf. Corver (1990:110). This is illustrated in (421): the presence of the spurious article een in the examples in (421a&b) first shows that exclamative wat can be associated with either the subject or the object; the relative acceptability of (421c) further shows that wat can also be associated with both the subject and the object.

421

a.	Wat	hebben	er	[een mensen]	goederen	gedoneerd!
	what	have	there	a people	goods	donated
	'What a lot of people have donated things!'

b.	Wat	heeft	Marie	[een goederen]	gedoneerd!
	what	has	Marie	a goods	donated
	'What a lot of things Marie has donated!'

c.	(?)	Wat	hebben	er	[een mensen]	[een goederen]	gedoneerd!
		what	have	there	a people	a goods	donated
		'What a lot of people have donated what a lot of things!'

This would be very difficult to account for under a wh-movement analysis given that the one-to-many relation in (421c) is not found in the case of uncontroversial wh-extraction. We illustrate this by means of questions with the wat voor split: although the examples in (422a&b) show that subjects and objects both allow the wat voor split, example (422c) shows that wat cannot be associated with two wh-traces; see Section 11.3.7, sub I, for a more detailed discussion of this restriction.

422

a.	Wati	hebben	er [ti	voor een mensen]	goederen	gedoneerd?
	what	have	there	for a people	goods	donated
	'What kind of of people have donated things?'

b.	Wati	heeft	Marie [ti	voor een goederen]	gedoneerd?
	what	has	Marie	for a goods	donated
	'What kind of goods has Marie donated?'

c.	*	Wati	hebben	er [ti	voor een mensen] [ti	voor een goederen]	gedoneerd?
		what	have	there	for a people	for a goods	donated
		'What kind of of people have donated what kind of things?'

Note, finally, that while example (423b) is notably better than (422c), example (423b) is much worse than (421c). The contrast between the two examples in (423) would again be surprising if pseudo-split wh-exclamatives were derived by wh-movement of exclamative wat.

423

a.	*	Wat	hebben	er	[een mensen]	[wateen goederen]	gedoneerd!
		what	have	there	a people	what a goods	donated
		'What a lot of people have donated what a lot of things!'

b.	Wati	hebben	er [ti	voor een mensen]	[wat voor een goederen]	gedoneerd?
	what	have	there	for a people	what for a goods	donated
	'What kind of people have donated what kind of things?'

[+] III. Wh-exclamatives can be main or non-main clauses

The discussion of wh-exclamatives in the previous subsections has focused on exclamative main clauses, that is, we have looked at cases in which the wh-phrase occupies the initial position of the main clause, subsection ID has briefly mentioned, however, that there are also embedded exclamative clauses. This subsection will show that such embedded cases differ from their main clause counterparts in various respects. The first difference is illustrated in (424): while main clauses allow both the non-split and the pseudo-split pattern, embedded exclamatives allow the non-split pattern only.

424

a.	Ik	was	vergeten	[[wat een aardige vrouw]i	Marie ti	is].
	I	was	forgotten	what a nice woman	Marie	is
	'Iʼd forgotten what a nice woman Marie is.'

b.	*	Ik	was	vergeten	[wati	Marie	[een [Δi	aardige]	vrouw]	is].
		I	was	forgotten	what	Marie	a	nice	woman	is

The examples in (425) illustrate a second difference: the exclamative wh-element hoe'how' can sometimes be used in embedded contexts.

425

a.	Ik	was	vergeten	[[hoe aardig]i	Marie ti	is].
	I	was	forgotten	how nice	Marie	is
	'Iʼd forgotten how nice Marie is.'

b.	*	Ik	was	vergeten	[hoei	Marie [Δi	aardig]	is].
		I	was	forgotten	hoe	Marie	nice	is

The examples in (426) show that this option is only available if the preposed wh-phrase is adjectival in nature, that is, hoe'how' is excluded if the preposed wh-phrase is a noun phrase.

426

a.	Ik	was	vergeten	[[wat/*hoe een aardige vrouw]i	Marie ti	is].
	I	was	forgotten	what/how a nice woman	Marie	is
	'Iʼd forgotten what a nice woman Marie is.'

b.	Ik	was	vergeten	[[hoe/*wat aardig]i	Marie ti	is].
	I	was	forgotten	how/what nice	Marie	is
	'Iʼd forgotten how nice Marie is.'

The examples in (427) show that embedded wh-exclamatives differ in this respect from main clause wh-exclamatives, as the use of hoe'how' is normally excluded in the latter case; cases like (427b) are normally found in formal language and (older) writing only and considered obsolete.

427

a.	[Wat/*Hoe een aardige vrouw]i	is Marie ti!
	what/how a nice woman	is Marie
	'What a nice woman Marie is!'

b.	[Wat/#Hoe aardig]i	is Marie ti!
	what/how nice	is Marie
	'How kind nice is!'

The fact that hoe is only acceptable in embedded clauses such as (426b) may give rise to the idea that there are in fact no embedded wh-exclamative constructions; we may be dealing with special uses of embedded wh-questions instead given that hoe is the designated interrogative element in questions such as (428).

428

		[Hoe aardig]i	is Marie ti?
		how nice	is Marie
		'How nice is Marie?'

The hypothesis that apparent embedded wh-exclamative constructions are actually interrogative deserves serious consideration, as certain questions can indeed be used as exclamatives, a typical example being Wat heb je nu weer gedaan?!'What stupid things have you done now?!'. We will show, however, that this hypothesis runs into several potential problems. First, it leaves unexplained why the main clause counterparts of the embedded clauses with a nominal wh-phrase in (429a&b) cannot be used as regular questions: the number signs in the primed examples indicate that such main clauses are acceptable but only as exclamations.

429

a.	Ik	weet	[[wat een boeken]i	hij heeft ti].
	I	know	what a books	he has
	'I know what a large quantity of books he has.'

a'.	#	[Wat een boeken]i	heeft	hij ti?
		what a books	has	he

b.	Ik	weet	[[wat een mooie boeken]i	hij heeft ti].
	I	know	what a beautiful books	he has
	'I know what fine books he has.'

b'.	#	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	heeft	hij ti?
		what a beautiful books	has	he

That we cannot interpret the primed examples in (429) as questions probably means that we should restrict the prohibition of embedded exclamatives to cases in which the fronted wh-phrase is adjectival in nature. While it is actually very difficult to implement this idea, there are also empirical reasons for assuming that it is not on the right track. Elliott (1974) and Grimshaw (1979) have shown, for example, that while interrogative wh-elements cannot readily co-occur with degree modifiers, this is easily possible with exclamative wh-elements. This is illustrated in (430) for the degree modifier vreselijk'terribly': while the question in (430b) is quite marked, example (430a) is completely natural with a higher-than-expected-degree reading. This contrast would be hard to explain if apparent embedded wh-exclamatives were in fact interrogatives.

430

a.	Ik	weet	[[hoe vreselijk groot]i	hij ti	is].
	I	know	how terribly tall	he	is
	'I know how terribly tall is.'

b.	$	[Hoe vreselijk groot]i	is hij ti?
		how terribly tall	is he

Furthermore, there is good reason for assuming that examples such as (431a) are structurally ambiguous. This can be brought out by the fact that Dutch allows overtly realization of the complementizer in constructions like these in speech. The (b)-examples show that the complementizer may be of'whether', which can be seen as a typical quality of embedded interrogative clauses, but can also be dat'that', which is a characteristic of non-interrogative clauses. Although judgments are not fully clear, it seems that the embedded clause in (431b) must indeed be interpreted as interrogative, while the embedded clause in (431b') is preferably interpreted as exclamative (although some speakers also allow an interrogative interpretation).

431

a.	Ik	weet	[[hoe groot]i	hij ti	is].	ambiguous
	I	know	how tall	he	is
	'I know how tall he is.'

b.	Ik	weet	[[hoe groot]i	of	hij ti	is].	question reading only
	I	know	how tall	comp	he	is
	'I know how tall he is.'

b'.	Ik	weet	[[hoe groot]i	dat	hij ti	is].	exclamative reading preferred
	I	know	how tall	comp	he	is
	'I know how tall he is.'

Judgments may become clearer for some speakers if we add the degree adverb vreselijk'terribly' to the adjectival phrases in (431). In accordance with the fact illustrated in (430b) that this disfavors the interrogative interpretation, example (432a) receives a higher-than-expected-degree reading and the example with the complementizer of in (432b) seems degraded.

432

a.	Ik	weet	[[hoe vreselijk groot]i	hij ti	is].	exclamative reading preferred
	I	know	how terribly tall	he	is
	'I know how terribly tall he is.'

b.	??	Ik	weet	[[hoe vreselijk groot]i	of	hij ti	is].
		I	know	how terribly tall	comp	he	is
		'I know how terribly tall he is.'

b'.	Ik	weet	[[hoe vreselijk groot]i	dat	hij ti	is].
	I	know	how terribly tall	comp	he	is
	'I know how terribly tall he is.'

The discussion above has shown that the hypothesis that the presumed embedded exclamative clauses are actually interrogative clauses runs into various problems; we refer the reader to Elliott (1974) and Grimshaw (1979) for more problems based on English. If we conclude from this that we are dealing with true embedded exclamatives, there are still at least two difficult questions to answer: Why is the pseudo-split pattern excluded in embedded clauses and how is it that the wh-element hoe'how' can be used in embedded clauses only? We have to leave these issues to future research.

[+] IV. Exclamations versus exclamatives

The wh-constructions discussed in the previous subsections are by no means the only way to form exclamations. In fact, there are many types of exclamations, but it is not the case that all types are of interest for syntactic research. It seems that syntax has very little to say about exclamations that consist of a single word (often interjections) like goddank!'thank goodness!', bah !'yuck!', asjemenou!'good heavens', or lexicalized phrases like Lieve hemel'good heavens' or Mijn god'My God!', as their use as exclamations is mainly a matter of lexical meaning. According to Castroviejo Miró (2008) exclamations such as those in (433) are not a subject matter of syntax either but of pragmatics; we are dealing with regular declarative expressions that are used as exclamations.

433

a.	Wat	vind	je	van dit schilderij?	Dat	is fantastisch!
	what	find	you	of this painting	that	is great
	'What do you think of this painting? Itʼs great!'

b.	Kom je morgen?	Ja,	ik	kijk ernaar	uit!
	come you tomorrow	yes	I	look to.it	out
	'Are you coming tomorrow? Yes, I am looking forward to it!'

Another typical example already mentioned in subsection III is the question in (434a), in which the exclamative intonation contour indicates that a special non-interrogative interpretation is intended; this example is used to express a reproach. We are thus dealing with a similar phenomenon as in (434b), in which a question is used as an order. Examples like these belong to the domain of pragmatics that investigates indirect speech acts; we refer the reader to the seminal paper by Searle (1975) and the brief review of speech act theory in Huang (2009).

434

a.	Wat	heb	je	nu	(weer)	gedaan?!
	what	have	you	now	prt	done
	'For Godʼs sake, what have you done now?!'

b.	Wil	je	daar	alsjebieft	mee	ophouden?!
	want	you	there	please	with	prt.-stop
	'Will you, please, stop doing that?!'

What the cases mentioned so far have in common is their special exclamative intonation contour, which is a clue for the hearer that a certain construction is intended as an exclamation. Syntactic research is more interested in exclamations that have certain special syntactic features; such exclamations are normally referred to as exclamative constructions orexclamatives. Next to the wh-exclamatives which have been the main interest of our discussion in the previous subsections, there are several other types of exclamative construction, which we will briefly discuss in Subsection A, subsection B discusses a number of other cases that can be used as exclamations but which we believe would be more profitably analyzed in terms of the lexicon or language use. For want of in-depth syntactic investigations, the discussion will necessarily be of a preliminary nature.

[+] A. Other types of exclamative constructions

Consider again the wh-exclamatives in (435). We have seen that these constructions have various characteristic properties. First, they involve the exclamative wh-element wat, which acts as an exclamative operator. Second, the exclamative operator is licensed by binding a variable introduced by a gradable adjective and/or the spurious article een. Third, the operator and the variable enter into a syntactic dependency relation, which means that they must be part of the same clause. The examples in (435) also illustrate that wh-exclamatives come in two types: non-split wh-exclamatives like the primeless examples, which are derived by wh-movement, and pseudo-split wh-exclamatives like the primed examples, which involve base-generation of the exclamative operator wat in sentence-initial position.

435

a.	[Wat een mooie boeken]i	staan	er ti	in die kast!
	what a beautiful books	stand	there	in that bookcase
	'What beautiful books there are in that bookcase!'

a'.	Wat	staan	er	een mooie boeken	in die kast!
	what	stand	there	a beautiful books	in that bookcase
	'What beautiful books are in that bookcase!'

b.	[Wat mooi]i	zijn	die boeken ti!
	what beautiful	are	those books
	'How beautiful those books are!'

b'.	Wat	zijn	die boeken	mooi!
	what	are	those books	beautiful
	'How beautiful those books are!'

The introduction to this subsection has shown that the use of an exclamative intonation pattern is not sufficient for concluding that we are dealing with exclamatives, that is, exclamations that are syntactically marked as such. We must therefore appeal to other properties in order to establish this, subsection I has shown that wh-exclamatives are characterized by the fact that they have a higher-than-expected-degree or a larger-than-expected-quantity reading; we will use this as first distinguishing feature of exclamative constructions, subsection IA has further shown that the exclamative wh-element is not licensed as a clausal constituent but as an exclamative operator; we will consider the presence of this element a second characteristic of exclamative constructions. Similarly, we will consider the presence of spurious article een as an important clue, although we must be more careful in this case because it can also occur in other construction types such as the interrogative wat voor-construction: cf. Wat voor een boeken heb je gekocht'What kind of books have you bought?'. From these three criteria we can safely conclude that we are dealing with genuine exclamative constructions in the examples in (436); it seems in fact reasonable to assume that they are derived from the primeless examples in (435) by some form of ellipsis.

436

a.	Wat	een	mooie	boeken!
	what	a	beautiful	books
	'What beautiful books!'

b.	Wat	mooi!
	what	beautiful
	'How beautiful!'

Other potential cases of exclamative constructions are given in (437a). These examples have a higher-than-expected-degree or a larger-than-expected-quantity reading; both examples in fact allow the two readings, although we have only indicated the most prominent one within square brackets. The fact that the noun phrases in these examples contain the spurious article een can be seen as an additional clue that we are dealing with exclamative constructions. If so, we should raise the question how the degree/quantity variable introduced by the adjective/spurious article is bound. Bennis (1998) has suggested that the ethical dative me is like exclamative wat in that it can function as an exclamative operator (which would of course be compatible with the fact that the ethical dative always expresses emotional involvement of the speaker). The fact illustrated in the primed examples that the ethical dative blocks the use of exclamative wat can be used to support this claim: if the ethical dative is indeed an exclamative operator, the addition of exclamative wat is blocked because it leads to vacuous quantification as it is not needed to bind the variable.

437

a.	Er	staan	me	een mooie boeken	in die kast!	quality
	there	stand	me	a beautiful books	in that bookcase
	'What beautiful books are in that bookcase!'

a'.	*	Wat	staan	er	me	een mooie boeken	in die kast!
		what	stand	there	me	a beautiful books	in that bookcase

b.	Er	staan	me	een boeken	in die kast!	quantity
	there	stand	me	a books	in that bookcase
	'What a lot of books are in that bookcase!'

b'.	*	Wat	staan	er	me	een boeken	in die kast!
		what	stand	there	me	a books	in that bookcase

Bennis also suggests that particles such as toch may function as exclamative operators. This would be consistent with the fact that the primeless examples in (438) do have a higher-than-expected-degree/larger-than-expected-quantity reading, but the fact that toch does not block the use of exclamative wat may be a problem for this claim: if toch is indeed an exclamative operator, the addition of exclamative wat should be blocked because it would lead to vacuous quantification as it is not needed to bind the variable. In fact, the same problem occurs with Er staan metoch een (mooie) boeken in die kast! in which toch co-occurs with the ethical dative me.

438

a.		Er	staan	toch	een mooie boeken	in die kast!	quality
		there	stand	prt	a beautiful books	in that bookcase

a'.		Wat	staan	er	toch	een mooie boeken	in die kast!
		what	stand	there	prt	a beautiful books	in that bookcase

b.		Er	staan	toch	een boeken	in die kast!	quantity
		there	stand	prt	a books	in that bookcase

b'.		Wat	staan	er	toch	een boeken	in die kast!
		what	stand	there	prt	a books	in that bookcase

Bennis solves the problem that the particle toch can co-occur with exclamative wat and the ethical dative by assuming that toch can have other (adverbial) functions next to its use as exclamative operator. It is not a priori clear whether appealing to the presence of toch is needed to account for the exclamative higher-than-expected-degree/larger-than-expected-quantity meaning of the primeless examples in (438), given that the examples in (439) also allow an exclamative reading. If we take the presence of the spurious article een as sufficient evidence for assuming that we are dealing with exclamatives, we should conclude that the exclamative operator does not have to be phonetically realized.

439

a.	Er	staan	een mooie boeken	in die kast!	quality
	there	stand	a beautiful books	in that bookcase
	'What beautiful books are in that bookcase!'

b.	Er	staan	een boeken	in die kast!	quantity
	there	stand	a books	in that bookcase
	'What a lot of books are in that bookcase!'

Postulating a phonetically empty exclamative operator makes it unnecessary to appeal to the particle toch to account for the exclamative reading of the primeless examples in (438), but it also raises the question as to why we need exclamative wat or the ethical dative at all. For completeness' sake, note that the spurious article can also be dropped in the examples in (439). The resulting structure in (440a) has the same higher-than-expected-degree reading as (439a). The resulting structure in (440b), on the other hand, does not allow the larger-than-expected-quantity reading, which is in fact expected on the hypothesis that the quantity variable is introduced by een; the higher-than-expected-degree reading that arises instead must be the attributed to some contextually determined gradable property that is left implicit.

440

a.		Er	staan	mooie boeken	in die kast!	quality
		there	stand	beautiful books	in that bookcase

b.		Er	staan	boeken	in die kast!	quantity
		there	stand	books	in that bookcase

Another potential exclamative construction without an overt exclamative operator is given in (441). The fact that (441a) involves the spurious article een may again be seen as an argument for assuming that we are dealing with a syntactically marked exclamation. A plausible account of this example would be to assume that the noun phrase een boeken undergoes reconstruction into the object position of the verb hebben in the scope of some empty exclamative operator, as a result of which the degree/quantity variable can be properly bound; the details of an analysis of this kind still need to be properly worked out. Although example (441b) does not provide a visible clue in favor of assuming exclamative status, we may assume this by analogy with example (441a).

441

a.		Een (mooie) boeken	dat	hij	heeft!
		a beautiful books	that	he	has

b.		Mooi	dat	het boek	geworden	is!
		beautiful	that	the book	become	is

Postulating a covert exclamative operator in the examples in (441) can be supported by the fact that it correctly predicts that use of the exclamative operator what is excluded in this construction, as this would lead to vacuous quantification.

442

a.	*	Wat	een (mooie) boeken	dat	hij	heeft!
		what	a beautiful books	that	he	has

b.	*	Wat mooi	dat	het boek	geworden	is!
		what beautiful	that	the book	become	is

Note in passing that the clauses following the noun and adjective are introduced by the complementizer dat'that'; dat cannot be analyzed as a relative pronoun given that it would then fail to agree in number with its antecedent; relative pronouns with a plural nominal antecedent surface as die, while relative elements with an adjectival antecedent surface as wat. This observation will become relevant in the next subsection.

[+] B. Exclamations

Not all exclamations are instantiations of exclamative constructions, that is, constructions having certain syntactic properties that can be held responsible for an exclamative interpretation. Such interpretations may also be the result of, e.g., lexical or pragmatic considerations. Consider example (443a), which superficially resembles example (441a) from the previous subsection but is in fact of an entirely different nature. First, we are not dealing with a higher-than-expected-degree or larger-than-expected-quantity reading; the speaker instead expresses surprise about the type of books that Peter reads. Second, (443a) does not provide any visible clue that we are dealing with an exclamative construction, due to the fact that een is not present. Third, we are dealing with a kind of relative construction; die in (443a) is a pronoun that agrees in gender and number with its antecedent boeken, while we have seen that dat in (441a) is a complementizer. Finally, example (443b) shows that (443a) can be used in regular NP-position, while (441a) cannot; an example such as *Ik ben verbaasd over een (mooie) boeken dat hij heeft! is unacceptable.

443

a.	De boeken	die	Peter leest!
	the books	rel	Peter reads
	'The books Peter is reading!'

b.	Ik	ben	verbaasd	over	de boeken die Peter leest.
	I	am	surprised	about	the books that Peter read
	'I am surprised about the books that Peter is reading.'

The discussion above suggests that (443a) is simply an elided form of a declarative clause such as (443b), and it is therefore not immediately obvious that an exclamative interpretation can be attributed to identifiable syntactic properties of the construction; we might as well be dealing with a pragmatically determined interpretation. This is consistent with the observation that "incomplete" sentences more generally have special features; Evans (2007) and Boogaart & Verhey (2013), for instance, claim that independently used non-main clauses such as the declarative in (444) are normally used in order to express a special emotional (exclamative) value.

444

Dat	je	dat	durft!
that	you	that	dare
Approximately: 'Boy, that you dare to do that! You have a nerve!'

The interpretation of examples such (444) is evidently a performance phenomenon related to language use, and not related to syntactic competence. Furthermore, it seems that many cases are more or less idiomatic in nature, that is, not productively derived by means of deletion of a matrix clause; an exclamation like (445), for example, does not allow the addition of a matrix clause. That the exclamation in (445b) is idiomatic in nature is also clear from the fact that En of! can be used as an independent utterance to express emphatic confirmation or even an expression of high degree. Ben je blij? En of!'Are you glad? Yes, very much so!'.

445

A:	Dat	durf	je	niet. B:	En	of	ik	dat	durf!
A:	that	dare	you	not	and	if	I	that	dare
'A: You wouldnʼt dare! B: O, yes, I would!'

Other cases of independently used non-main clauses, which were recently discussed by Nouwen & Chernilovskaya (2013/2014) as an additional type of wh-exclamative, are given in the primeless examples in (446). That the primed examples can be easily used as regular complement clauses suggests again that the exclamative import of the primeless examples can be attributed to the fact that we are dealing with "incomplete" sentences. For this reason, we do not accept Nouwen & Chernilovskaya's claim that the examples in (446a&b) instantiate a new type of wh-exclamative.

446

a.		Wie ik	nou	weer	gezien	heb!
		who I	prt	prt	seen	have

a'.	Je	raadt	nooit	[wie	ik	nou	weer	gezien	heb].
	you	guess	never	who	I	prt	prt	seen	have
	'Youʼll never guess who I have seen just now.'

b.		Wat voor boek	hij	nou	weer	aan het	lezen	is!
		which book	he	prt	prt	aan het	read	is

b'.	Je	raadt	nooit	[wat voor boek	hij	nou	weer	aan het	lezen	is].
	you	guess	never	what for book	he	prt	prt	aan het	read	is
	'Youʼll never guess what kind of book he is reading now.'

Another reason to not adopt this claim is that the primeless examples in (446) exhibit none of the properties of the wh-exclamatives discussed in the previous subsections. First, they do not have a higher-than-expected-degree or a larger-than-expected-quantity reading, which is consistent with the fact that they do not contain an independent, designated element that can be held responsible for introducing a degree variable. Second, the wh-element in clause-initial position is independently licensed as an argument of the embedded clause and, consequently, there is no clear reason for assuming that it functions as an exclamative operator; we are simply dealing with the operator-variable relation normally found in interrogative clauses.

[+] C. Conclusion

This subsection has argued that we must make a terminological distinction between exclamation and exclamative; the latter denotes a subset of exclamations that are syntactically marked as such. The fact that the use of an exclamative intonation pattern is not sufficient for assuming exclamative status forces us to pinpoint specific properties as defining characteristics of exclamatives. Taking the discussion of wh-exclamatives as our point of departure we have assumed the following: (i) exclamatives involve an exclamative wh-element, which acts as an exclamative operator; (ii) the exclamative operator is licensed by binding a variable introduced by some designated element in the clause; (iii) the operator and the variable enter into a local syntactic dependency relation, which means that they must be part of the same clause. Because the operator and the variable are sometimes phonetically empty, it is not always easy to determine whether the defining properties are indeed present, and we therefore occasionally have to appeal to meaning, that is, to the question as to whether the construction has a higher-than-expected-degree or a larger-than-expected-quantity reading. We applied these criteria to a small sample of exclamation types in order to determine which types are eligible for a syntactic account and which types should be accounted for by other means (lexicon, pragmatics, etc.). Given the lack of sufficiently sophisticated syntactic investigations on exclamatives, our conclusion should be considered to be of a preliminary nature.

References:

Bennis, Hans1995The meaning of structure: the wat voor construction revisitedDen Dikken, Marcel & Hengeveld, Kees (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1995Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins
Bennis, Hans1998Exclamatives!Bezooijen, Renée van & Kager, René (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1998Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins27-40
Bennis, Hans1998Exclamatives!Bezooijen, Renée van & Kager, René (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1998Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins27-40
Bennis, Hans1998Exclamatives!Bezooijen, Renée van & Kager, René (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1998Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins27-40
Bennis, Hans1998Exclamatives!Bezooijen, Renée van & Kager, René (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1998Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins27-40
Bennis, Hans1998Exclamatives!Bezooijen, Renée van & Kager, René (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1998Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins27-40
Bennis, Hans1998Exclamatives!Bezooijen, Renée van & Kager, René (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1998Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaJohn Benjamins27-40
Bennis, Hans, Corver, Norbert & Den Dikken, Marcel1998Predication in nominal phrasesThe Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics185-117
Boogaart, Ronny & Verheij, Kim2013Als dát geen insubordinatie is! De pragmatiek van zelfstandige conditionele zinnenHonderd jaar taalwetenschap. Artikelen aangeboden aan Saskia Daalder bij haar afscheid van de Vrije UniversiteitAmsterdamUitgaven Stichting Neerlandistiek VU13-28
Castroviejo Miró, Elena2006Wh-exclamatives in CatalanUniversity of BarcelonaThesis
Castroviejo Miró, Elena2008Deconstructing exclamationsCatalan Journal of Linguistics741-90
Corver, Norbert1990The syntax of left branch extractionTilburgUniversity of TilburgThesis
Corver, Norbert1990The syntax of left branch extractionTilburgUniversity of TilburgThesis
Corver, Norbert1990The syntax of left branch extractionTilburgUniversity of TilburgThesis
Corver, Norbert1990The syntax of left branch extractionTilburgUniversity of TilburgThesis
Corver, Norbert1990The syntax of left branch extractionTilburgUniversity of TilburgThesis
Elliott, Dale E1974Towards a grammar of exclamationsFoundation of Language11231-246
Elliott, Dale E1974Towards a grammar of exclamationsFoundation of Language11231-246
Elliott, Dale E1974Towards a grammar of exclamationsFoundation of Language11231-246
Evans, Nicholas2007Insubordination and its usesNikolaeva, I. (ed.)Finiteness. Theoretical and empirical foundationsOxfordOxford University Press366-431
Grice, H.P1975Logic and conversationCole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds.)Speech acts: Syntax and Semantics 3New YorkAcademic Press41-58
Grimshaw, Jane1979Complement selection and the lexiconLinguistic Inquiry10279-326
Grimshaw, Jane1979Complement selection and the lexiconLinguistic Inquiry10279-326
Grimshaw, Jane1979Complement selection and the lexiconLinguistic Inquiry10279-326
Grimshaw, Jane1979Complement selection and the lexiconLinguistic Inquiry10279-326
Huang, Yan2009Speech actsMey, Jacob L. (ed.)Concise encyclopedia of pragmaticsAmsterdam/BostonElsevier
Kiparsky, Paul & Kiparsky, Carol1970FactBierwisch, Manfred & Heidolph, Karl Erich (eds.)Progress in linguisticsThe Hague/ParisMouton143-173
Krijgsman, K.J1983Wat-uitroepen en wh-verplaatsingGLOT5123-156
Krijgsman, K.J1983Wat-uitroepen en wh-verplaatsingGLOT5123-156
Krijgsman, K.J1983Wat-uitroepen en wh-verplaatsingGLOT5123-156
Krijgsman, K.J1983Wat-uitroepen en wh-verplaatsingGLOT5123-156
Krijgsman, K.J1983Wat-uitroepen en wh-verplaatsingGLOT5123-156
Nouwen, Rick & Chernilovskaya, Anna2013Wh-exclamatives with and without scales
Nouwen, Rick & Chernilovskaya, Anna2014Two types of wh-exclamatives
Searle, John R1975Indirect speech actsCole, Peter & Morgan, Jerry L. (eds.)Syntax and Semantics3: Speech actsNew YorkAcademic Press59-82
Villalba, Xavier2008Exclamatives: a thematic guide with many question and few answersCatalan Journal of Linguistcs79-40
Zanuttini, Raffaella & Portner, Paul2003Exclamative clauses: at the syntax-semantic interfaceLanguage7939-81
Zanuttini, Raffaella & Portner, Paul2003Exclamative clauses: at the syntax-semantic interfaceLanguage7939-81
Zanuttini, Raffaella & Portner, Paul2003Exclamative clauses: at the syntax-semantic interfaceLanguage7939-81

⇑ Back to top

About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver

Category: Dutch Syntax

Publication date: 22 November 2023

Keywords: AdjunctArticleBridge VerbCommon groundCardinal NumeralComparativeComplementizerDeclarative ComplementizerEthical DativeExclamationFactivityIndefinite ArticleInsubordinationInterrogative ClauseIntonationNoun PhraseNumeralParticlePied PipingQuantifierStrandingVerbVerb-secondWh-exclamativeWh-movement

report errorprintcite

Jump to:

introduction
references
related articles