Interrogative clauses that don’t interrogate: the interpretation and the syntax of the West Flemish discourse particle kwestje

Abstract

In this paper we examine the West Flemish discourse particle kwestje , a root element that marks syntactically interrogative clauses as non-canonical, non-inquisitive questions. We discuss the speaker-oriented meaning that kwestje expresses and suggest that this comes about by analogy with a subtly different West Flemish particle, kwe(t)sunder , whose k- element derives from the first-person singular pronoun. We present a cartographic syntactic analysis of kwestje , arguing that it is generated in the left-periphery in IntP, resulting in interesting interactions with other left-peripheral items including specific wh -words and complementisers. In line with the topic of this collection, we discuss the extent to which particles like kwestje can contribute to understanding similarities and differences between discourse-related expletives and discourse ‘markers’.