Abstract This paper is concerned with the Q-particle də in Sinhala wh-questions and polar questions. Previous approaches propose a two-legged semantic dependency: (i) the lower leg projects a set of alternatives and (ii) the upper leg forms a choice function dependency. The contribution of the present paper is two-fold. First, it presents novel empirical data on complex questions with islands that pose a serious problem for this architecture when applied to polar questions. Second, it develops a new proposal that maintains a common meaning for the Q-particle in the two question types while avoiding this empirical problem. The key insight of the new analysis is to liberalize the upper dependency leg as to pass up a focus value that can later combine with different operators: with the Q-operator in wh-questions and with the squiggle operator in polar questions.

中文翻译：

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僧伽罗语中的 Q 粒子和岛屿 wh 和极地问题

摘要 本文关注僧伽罗语 wh 问题和极地问题中的 Q 粒子 də。以前的方法提出了一种两腿语义依赖：（i）小腿投射一组备选方案，（ii）大腿形成选择函数依赖。本文的贡献是双重的。首先，它提供了关于岛屿复杂问题的新经验数据，这些问题在应用于极地问题时对该架构构成严重问题。其次，它提出了一个新的提议，该提议在两种问题类型中保持 Q 粒子的共同含义，同时避免了这个经验问题。新分析的关键见解是放开上依赖腿，以传递一个稍后可以与不同运算符组合的焦点值：