The syntax of the Finnish question particle

Holmberg, A

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740390.003.0009

The syntax of the Finnish question particle

Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Anders Holmberg

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Abstract

In descriptive terms Finnish yes/no-questions are formed by adjoining the enclitic particle -ko to the first constituent of the sentence. In the unmarked case this is the finite verb or auxiliary moved to sentence-initial position. In the marked case when the question narrowly focuses on a constituent of the sentence, that constituent is fronted, and the clitic is attached to it. Its syntactic properties broadly follow from the the fact that it is a focus marker and a question marker. Like the focus-clitic -kin 'also/even' it merges with a TP-internal constituent, in a position where it c-commands a focused category. Unlike -kin it moves to the C-domain, pied-piping the constituent it is merged with.