Anti-Superiority Redux: A Criticism of Relational Approach

Abstract

I will show that anti-superiority effect can receive a more satisfactory account, given the asymmetric scope taking strategy of the two types of wh-words as claimed by Choi (2002). The relational approach by Watanabe(1992) and Saito(1994) as crucially based on the idea that wh-words in Korean type languages, being like quantifiers, should have their relation as established at some point maintained throughout the derivation is flawed, given that wh-words, unlike quantifiers, have the same scope in the same clause. It will be also shown that there are examples which violate relation preservation but are more or less acceptable, suggesting that the constraint of relation preservation cannot be part of the grammar.