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From obligatory WH-movement to optional WH-in-situ in Labourdin Basque
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2026
Abstract
In this article, we analyze the nature and origin of a new WH-question strategy employed by young speakers of Labourdin Basque. We argue that this new strategy implies a parametric change: while Basque has always been a bona fide WH-movement language, these new constructions are instances of WH-in-situ and display the syntactic and semantic properties and patterns of in-situ WH-questions in French. We analyze the emergence of this new strategy as being due to the combination of three factors: (i) the abundance of structurally ambiguous WH-questions in the primary linguistic data, (ii) the change in the sociolinguistic profile of bilingual Basque-French speakers, and (iii) an economy bias for movementless derivations.
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- Historical Syntax
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- Copyright © 2014 Linguistic Society of America
Footnotes
*
Both authors contributed equally to this work. We would like to thank Iñaki Camino, Ricardo Etxepare, Marijo Ezeizabarrena, Junkal Gutierrez, Itziar Laka, Bryan Leferman, Nerea Madariaga, and three anonymous referees for their useful comments, as well as George Walkden for editorial support. This work was partially funded by the following projects: IT769-13 (Eusko Jaurlaritza), UFI 11/14 HiTeDI (UPV/EHU), ISQI 2011 JSH2 004 1 (Agence Nationale de la Recherche), FFI2012-38064-C02-01 (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad), FFI2011-29218 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), BCS-1147083 (National Science Foundation), and La phrase dans la langue basque et les langues voisines: une approche comparative (GECT Eurorégion Aquitaine-Euskadi).
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