Interrogative disjunction in Mandarin and beyond

Some languages of the world have been described as lexically distinguishing an “interrogative disjunction” for alternative questions from a “standard disjunction” (Haspelmath 2007 a.o.). One such language is Mandarin Chinese, but it turns out the distribution and range of use of the two disjunctors (interrogative háishi and standard huòzhe) are somewhat complicated and also subject to substantial speaker variation. I argue that the speaker variation reflects the fact that the link between interrogative disjunction and interrogative force can be syntactically enforced or not; for speakers where no such syntactic enforcement is in place, háishi can be used non-interrogatively in the same contexts that wh-words are in the language.

• Accepted with revisions. “Interrogative and standard disjunction in Mandarin Chinese.”  
  Journal of Semantics.
• 2014. “Alternative questions through focus alternatives in Mandarin Chinese.”  
  Proceedings of the 48th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 48), pages 221–234.

I am also working on the broader typology of languages that distinguish between “interrogative” and “standard” disjunction:

• 2023. “Cross-linguistic variation in ordinary vs interrogative disjunctions.”  
  Presented at the 14th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation (TbiLLC 14) and Workshop on Logical Operators at the 8th Bucharest Colloquium of Language Acquisition (BUCLA 8).

Focus intervention effects

Certain quantificational elements (“interveners”) have long been known to disrupt the interpretation of wh-in-situ (Hoji 1985 and many others), but the correct description of the set of interveners and the nature of such intervention effects have been the subject of continued debate. My work has strengthened the motivation for the Beck 2006 view of intervention effects as reflecting Rooth-Hamblin equivalence, that formal alternatives for focus (Rooth 1985 et seq) and formal alternatives for questions (Hamblin 1973) are ontologically the same objects.

• To appear. “Focus intervention, multiple association, and the unity of focus and wh alternatives.”  
  Linguistics and Philosophy. DOI: 10.1007/s10988-025-09435-x
• Erlewine and Kotek, 2018. “Intervention tracks scope-rigidity in Japanese.”  
  Manuscript, National University of Singapore and Yale University.
• Erlewine and Kotek, 2017. “Intervention tracks scope-rigidity in Japanese.”  
  Proceedings of LENLS 14.
• Erlewine and Kotek, 2017. “Movement and alternatives don’t mix: Evidence from Japanese.”  
  Proceedings of the 21st Amsterdam Colloquium, pages 245–254.

Contrast sluicing in Japanese and English

Teruyuki Mizuno and I investigate constraints on contrast sluicing in Japanese and English, as in examples such as "I know which book John read, but not which magazine," which has been relatively understudied in the literature on sluicing. For the first time, we discuss contrast sluicing between multiple wh question antecedent and slucing clauses, and observe a curious pattern of grammaticality in Japanese. This pattern constitutes a puzzle for the LF syntax of sluicing and/or pair-list multiple wh questions.

• Erlewine and Mizuno, accepted with revisions. “Japanese contrast sluicing and pair-list questions.”
  Linguistic Inquiry.
• Mizuno and Erlewine, 2018. “Constraints on contrast sluicing.”  
  Japanese/Korean Linguistics 24, pages 201–214.
• 水野 輝之、アーリーワイン マイケル芳貴 [Mizuno and Erlewine], 2016. “多重wh疑問文のペアリスト解釈とスルーシング [Sluicing and the pair-list interpretation of multiple wh-questions].”  
  日本言語学会第152回大会予稿集 [Proceedings of the 152nd meeting of the Linguistic Society of Japan], pages 204–209.