The True Nature of WH-the Hell Phrases

Abstract

Since the seminal work of Pesetsky (1987) WH-the hell phrases have widely been re-garded as non-D-linkable. This paper shows that these phrases, as well as their Japanese counter-parts, can indeed be D-linked. It also argues that both of them are identificationally focused in the sense of É. Kiss (1998), which has to do with obligatory overt movement, exhaustiveness, the un-availability of pair list readings, and existential presupposition.