That is, is there a language that allows the following type of movement
- WH1 ... (ATTITUDE-VERB) QUOT ... t1
- DP-TOP1 ... (ATTITUDE-VERB) QUOT ... t1
1 Answer
I'm not sure about specific cases of wh-movement, but Japanese allows long-distance scrambling out of a quotative clause, which seems to be a positive answer to your question. For instance, here's an example adapted from Saito (1992):
[Sono hon-o]_i Hanako-ga [CP Taroo-ga t_i katta to] omotteiru.
that book-ACC Hanako-NOM Taro-NOM bought QUOT think
'Hanako thinks Taro bought that book.'
In general I don't think I've ever heard of quotative clauses being islands, so I'd expect in wh-movement languages with quotatives you'll be able to do the type of extractions you're talking about.
Saito, M. (1992). 'Long Distance Scrambling in Japanese.' Journal of East Asian Linguistics 1(1): 69-118.
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Hello Supergrunch! Welcome to the Linguistics SE! I fixed your interlinear gloss. Please double check it in case there are mistakes, I was not sure about the "bought QUOT" part... :)– AlenannoApr 4, 2012 at 13:09
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Thanks for the welcome and fixing the gloss! The "bought QUOT" part should be right - the Japanese quotative is a head-final complementizer and so occurs at the end of the clause. Apr 4, 2012 at 21:56
Who did John_i say, "I_i talked to"?(Where "_i" is a subscripted index; I'm attempting to exploit the shifting of indexicals in English quotations to demonstrate what the reading would have to be.)