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In:The Ziggurat of Grammar: In honor of Ur Shlonsky
Edited by Lena Baunaz, Giuliano Bocci and Andrew Nevins
[Language Faculty and Beyond 20] 2025
► pp. 532–551

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Chapter 26
Long wh questions in French

Negation doesn’t intervene where?

 | Université Côte d’Azur / UMR 7320, CNRS, Bases, Corpus, Langage
 | University of Siena
 | University of Geneva
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 13 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.20.26bau
Abstract
This study investigates the interaction between negation and wh-dependencies in French long-distance questions. An acceptability judgment experiment tested 12 conditions, comparing in situ and ex situ wh phrases in positive contexts, under matrix negation, and under embedded negation. Wh extraction occurred from embedded clauses selected by communication and factive matrix verbs. Results show that matrix negation causes a severe reduction in acceptability, while embedded negation has a milder effect. Crucially, in situ wh phrases are consistently rated at least as high as their ex situ counterparts, even under negation. These findings support both a unified, locality-based analysis of intervention effects. We propose a Relativized Minimality account distinguishing A- and A′-chains and suggest refinements to phase theory to account for the sensitivity of long-distance wh dependencies to matrix negation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Design, method and procedure
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Approaches to the selective intervention problem
    • 4.2An alternative analysis
  • 5.Summary of main points
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (26)
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