LingLunch: Christos Vlachos - Unselected Embedded wh-Questions

In their paper on Unselected Embedded Questions (UEQs), Adger and Quer (2001) argue that certain occurrences of interrogative *if*-clauses, which appear to be selected by predicates that select propositions, like *say*, are in fact embedded under a functional D-layer. This D translates to a Polarity Item, and is the actual argument of the propositional attitude verb. The conjecture that a nominal layer of some sort may dominate a clausal argument finds its roots in the very early investigations into generative grammar, when it was assumed that (in)finite complementation in English is introduced by a nominal shell (Chomsky 1955/1985, and especially, Rosenbaum 1967). Along with Adger and Quer's implementation, this conjecture has been explored from various perspectives, and the upshot appears to be that D may correspond to either a Polarity Item or a definite element (e.g., Kiparsky 1971, Alrenga 2005, Arsenijevi\’{c} 2009, Kayne 2010, Roussou 2010, Takahashi 2010, Knyazev 2016). Despite its long history, the conjecture has so far remained incomplete, as it neither includes, nor excludes for that matter, indefinites. This is where this talk comes in: I claim that D may also be indefinite. To motivate this claim, I look into certain occurrences of interrogative wh-clauses that seem to be selected by propositional attitude verbs, like *think*. I argue that these wh-clauses are embedded under an indefinite D-layer, and by doing so, I extend the empirical scope of UEQs to wh-questions.