Yimei Xiang (Rutgers)
Higher-order readings of WH-questions
It is commonly thought that questions of the form ‘which-A P?’ expect answers naming entities in A. However, evidence from questions with modals and collective predicates suggests that sometimes a question expects answers naming higher-order meanings, such as Boolean disjunctions (Spector 2007, 2008) and Boolean conjunctions (Xiang 2016). To derive such readings, I coin a H-shifter which applies to a root noun and turns a set of entities into a set of positive GQs and GQ-compounds. Further, I discuss two types of higher-order readings and explain their constraints. First, the basic higher-order reading, which admits all types of positive answers, is unavailable if the wh-phrase is singular-marked or numeral-modified. I argue that the atomicity constraint of singular nouns and the cardinality constraint of numerals block the application of the H-shifter. Second, the ‘disjunction-only’ reading is available in singular marked and numeral-modified questions but disallows conjunctive answers. I argue that this higher-order reading involves reconstructing the wh-complement, and that low uniqueness (Hirsh & Schwarz 2019) makes conjunctive answers contradictory.