The complex prosody of complex wh-questions

In this paper, we investigate the prosody of wh-questions with a complex wh-phrase, focusing on the role of the presence of a lexical restriction (e.g., what book) and of D(iscourse)-linking of the wh-phrase in the distribution of the main prosodic prominence (or nuclear pitch accent [NPA]). Through three read-aloud production studies, we show that the presence of a lexical restriction within the wh-phrase is a necessary condition for NPA assignment to the latter; that lexically restricted wh-phrases allow for NPA assignment to both the verb and the wh-phrase; that the likelihood of NPA assignment to the wh-phrase is sensitive to the phonological heaviness of the wh-phrase, and that D-linking per se is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for such NPA assignment, such that there is no detectable correlation of NPA assignment with an interpretive effect. The distribution of NPA assignment in complex wh-questions is discussed in light of the analysis proposed by Bocci et al. (2021, 2024) for bare wh-questions.