Italian wh-questions and the low periphery

This article deals with Italian questions with a post-verbal wh-element, which are generally defined as in situ. We show that post-verbal wh-questions can be interpreted as information-seeking questions, and provide syntactic arguments supporting the hypothesis that the post-verbal wh-element is only apparently in situ. We claim that, in certain contexts, the post-verbal wh-element undergoes a syntactic movement targeting a low-peripheral focus position dedicated to the expression of informational focus. We integrate our analysis with the examination of a number of cases of low-peripheral wh-elements from the CLIPS and LIP corpora of spoken Italian. As for prosody, the available data show that a sentence-final wh-element carries the nuclear accent of the utterance. Moreover, low-peripheral wh-questions seem pragmatically more restricted compared to their counterparts with a fronted wh-. Although further investigation may reveal additional contexts for the questions at stake, low-periph...