Why is 'Why' Unique? Its Syntactic and Semantic Properties considers the behaviour of this peculiar wh-element across many different languages, including Ewe, Trevisan, Italian, Basque, German, Dutch, Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Hebrew. In ten original chapters, the authors explore various aspects of why-questions, such as the way why interacts with V2 constructions in Basque, with a subject clitic in Trevisan or how its morpho-syntactic make-up determines its merge position in Ewe, to mention but a few. Furthermore, a clear-cut distinction is established between high and low reason adverbials which are subsequently examined in why-stripping environments in Dutch. Beyond why proper, the book explores a special class of wh-expressions in some in-situ languages which give rise to unexpected why-construals with a touch of whining force. The objective is to explain the unusual syntactic position of these wh-expressions as well as their association with peculiar pragmatics. The questions are addressed for Cantonese: are what-initial sentences genuine questions? To what extent are Cantonese what-initial sentences similar to how-initial sentences in Mandarin? Beside these what-as-why questions, a special class of rhetorical questions, the doubly-marked interrogatives in Hebrew, come under scrutiny. Why is 'why' unique also concerns the interface with prosody and several experimental studies investigate precisely this aspect.

• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Why in a Gbe language
• Reason questions as a complementizer domain phenomenon: Evidence from Ewe
• Part 2: Towards a cartography of high and low reason adverbials
• On ‘why’ in situ in Northern Italian dialects: Evidence from Trevisan
• Why questions break the residual V2 restriction (in Basque and beyond)
• Is German warum so special after all?
• Why in Dutch? On why-stripping and high and low adverbials
• Part 3: Wh-in-Situ languages: Whys, hows, and whats
• On applicative Why-questions in Chinese
• What-as-Why sentences in Cantonese
• Part 4: Some syntactic aspects of how come
• How come questions and diary English
• Part 5: A special class of why rhetorical questions: Semantics and pragmatics
• Why rhetorical questions?
• Part 6: Why and the syntax-prosody interface
• On some special properties of why in syntax and prosody
• Index of subjects