Aggressively non-D-linked construction and ellipsis: A Direct Interpretation approach 1

The so-called aggressively non-D-linked construction (ANDC) involving wh-the-hell phrases like what the hell is of empirical and theoretical interest due to its complex morphosyntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties. This paper focuses on the construction in general as well as in ellipsis phenomena. We ﬁ rst explore its grammatical properties on the basis of attested corpus data and show that the construction can occur more widely in elliptical constructions than suggested by previous literature. We then suggest that the licensing conditions of the ANDC in ellipsis are not solely syntax-based but due to tight interactions among a variety of grammatical components such as morphosyntax, semantics, and discourse/pragmatics. We also argue that the authentic uses of the construction favor a Direct Interpretation (DI) approach that can account for its uses in a variety of environments.

The key difference of these two types, as pointed out by Pesetsky (1987) and subsequent work, comes from a discourse structure.The expression which book in (1a) implies the existence of a set of contextually determined entities from which the [1] Our deep thanks go to three anonymous reviewers for their critical and insightful comments which helped to reshape and improve the paper a lot.The usual disclaimers apply.
speaker asks for a choice, whereas what in (1b) carries no such implication.That is, in (1a) with the D-linked wh-phrase which book, there is a set of books determined in the discourse and it is questioned to select one from the members of this set that Kim read. However,in (1b) with the non-D-linked wh-phrase what book, there is no discourse-provided set referring to the entities Kim read.
In addition to these two types, there is another related wh-type that combines with an emotive expression like the hell, the heck, on earth, and the Dickens.This phrase is taken to be an 'aggressively non-D-linked' wh-phrase since it is non-D-linked and further expresses a strong negative feeling, as illustrated by the following examples (Pesetsky 1987;Ginzburg & Sag 2000;Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002;Huang & Ochi 2004): (2) (a) What the hell did Kim buy? (b) I wonder what the hell Kim is talking about.
(3) (a) *Which the hell did Kim buy?(b) *I wonder which the hell Kim is talking about.
The contrast here can be attributed to the difference in the D-linking property of what and which. 2 The interrogatives in (2) are information-asking questions, but can accompany a negative inference such that Kim should not buy anything for (2a), or the speaker's negative attitude (surprise, frustration, annoyance, etc.) toward the sentence in question.
Literature has noted that the wh-the-hell phrase displays unusual properties with respect to ellipsis.The noted observation has been that the wh-the-hell phrase is disallowed in Sluicing, but can occur in the so-called Swiping (Merchant 2001(Merchant : 111-112, 2002;;Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002;Sprouse 2006;Hartman & Ai 2009).Consider the following data: (4) (a) They were arguing about something, but I don't know what (*the hell).
(Sluicing) (b) They were arguing, but I don't know about what (*the hell).(Pied-piping Sluicing) (c) They were arguing, but I don't know what (the hell) about.(Swiping) Examples in (4a, b) are typical Sluicing examples, but, as observed, cannot have the emotive phrase the hell following the wh-expression.However, as in the Swiping example in (4c), this ungrammaticality can be saved by having a preposition after the emotive phrase.These three elliptical constructions have been often argued to involve movement as well as clausal ellipsis while attributing the illegitimate presence of the wh-the-hell phrase in ellipsis to a phonological constraint such that the rightmost expression needs to be given stress (Merchant 2001(Merchant , 2002;;Hartman & Ai 2009;Güneş & Lipták 2021).
However, a corpus search yields a significant number of wh-the-hell phrases in Sluicing environments: 3   (5) (a) If he was to believe what he saw, he was looking at a ball of water, floating in space, within which chlorophyll reactions were proceeding.Such attested examples, in which Sluicing after the wh-the-hell phrase occurs in matrix and embedded clauses, indicate that we cannot simply rule out the uses of the wh-the-hell phrase in elliptical environments.If the wh-the-hell phrase is licensed in Sluicing and other related ellipsis phenomena, questions then arise: when and how the construction can be used, and what licenses the wh-the-hell phrase in ellipsis environments.This paper attempts to answer these questions.
We organize the paper as follows.In Section 2, we first review some key grammatical properties of the ANDC (aggressively non-D-linked construction) noted in literature.Section 3 discusses the findings of our corpus investigation to understand its authentic uses in real life.This section also suggests that attested data do not countenance some of the observations made in previous literature.In Section 4, we then offer a construction-based Direct Interpretation (DI) analysis of the construction that introduces no hidden syntactic structures in the putative ellipsis site.In Section 5, we summarize our main findings and conclude the paper.

SOME KEY PROPERTIES
The wh-the-hell phrase has several unique morphosyntactic properties.First, the combination of the wh-expression with an emotive phrase is an inseparable [3] The corpus COCA, freely available online and the main corpus that we used in this study, is the largest structured corpus of Contemporary American English that continues to be updated (Davies 2008-).When the corpus searches were carried out for this research in 2019, the corpus contained 600 million words of text from 1990 to 2019 and it was divided into five different registers (i.e.spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, and academic) in a balanced manner.In these examples, the contracted auxiliary or the possessive marker 's hosts the whthe-hell phrase.Given the fact that the former combines with a subject and the latter with an NP, the attested examples here suggest that the wh-the-hell phrase is a single constituent as a whole.
A key defining property of the wh-the-hell phrase is that unlike normal whphrases it cannot occur in situ (Pesetsky 1987;Ginzburg & Sag 2000: 229-230;Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002;Huang & Ochi 2004) [4] Languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean have no such restriction.For example, consider the following Chinese data from Huang & Ochi (2004: 280-281): (i) (a) daodi shei na-zou-le nei-ben shu? daodi who take-away-PERF that-CL book 'Who the hell took away that book?' (b) ta daodi mai-le shenme? he daodi bought what 'What the hell did he buy?' The adverb daodi, roughly corresponding to the hell in English, can be adjacent to the wh-word as in (ia) but it does not need to be as in (ib).
Examples as in (9) show that a normal wh-phrase what alone can occur in situ, but its wh-the-hell phrase counterpart what the hell needs to be 'fronted' to the sentence initial position.The requirement for fronting the wh-the-hell phrase to the sentence initial position also holds when it is in a lower clause, as demonstrated in (10). 5 As discussed earlier, a salient property of the ANDC concerns the discourse information.The wh-the-hell phrase in general has no referent available in the previous discourse.This discourse requirement disallows it from combining with which (N): (11) (a) *Which the hell did Kim buy?(b) *I wonder which the hell book Kim is talking about.
Different from the which (N) phrase, wh-expressions like what, who, when, and how many (N) do not require a determined set of individuals in discourse (Pesetsky 1987;Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002;Huang & Ochi 2004). 6For instance, consider the examples below: [5] A similar fact can be observed when the wh-the-hell phrase is in an embedded clause: (i) (a) Bill assumes that Jill met who?(b) *Bill assumes that Jill met who the hell?(c) Who the hell does Bill assume that Jill met?
[6] As noted earlier, Ginzburg & Sag (2000: 248) are skeptical about the D-linking distinction among the wh-phrases.As Ginzburg & Sag (2000) and an anonymous reviewer point out, there seem to be examples where the wh-the-hell phrase, defined as non-D-linking by Pesetsky (1987), introduces a set of salient possible individuals for the argument role which the phrase is linked to.In these two possible B's responses, B can be aware of the potential referential answers to this question.Oguro (2017: 117-118) also offers similar examples where the wh-the-hell phrase can be D-linked: (ii) (a) Who the hell has the card?(When playing Old Maid, a card game.)(b) What the hell is the right answer?(When trying to answer a multiple choice question, like the one in MVA/DMV law test, or in a quiz show.)(c) Who the hell is the fastest runner on our team?
In these examples, the interlocutors have in mind a salient set of individuals as possible answers.
One possible way to defend the need for the D-linking distinction for such examples is to follow the suggestion set forth by Martin (2020).That is, the use of the wh-the-hell-phrase is a discourse move to declare the speaker's lack of belief in the provided answer set.That is, the speaker is suggesting that it is implausible to choose any of the salient answers as a licit answer.In this sense, the uses of the wh-the-hell phrase given here can still be taken to be non-D-linked.
Despite such an issue, as noted by Ginzburg & Sag (2000: 142, 248), D-linked which-phrases differ from non-D-linked what-phrases in that the former carry a uniqueness presupposition while the latter do not (e.g.Which author does every English woman admire most? vs. Who does every English woman admire most?).To reflect such a clear difference among wh-phrases, we adopt the D-linking distinction in this paper, leaving open further refinement for the definition of D-linking.
(12) (a) What did you buy in the store?(b) Who did you meet in the store?
(13) (a) What the hell did you buy in the store?(b) Who the hell did you meet in the store?(c) When the heck did you buy the item in the store?
In unmarked situations, the interlocutors of these interrogatives do not need to share a particular set of individuals in the discourse to make a felicitous answer.That is, no previous discourse is necessary with respect to the referent of a what-or whophrase, as opposed to a which-phrase.This is why it is rather infelicitous to utter *What do you like most/more?while it is fine to say sentences like Which one do you like most/more?This discourse property of having no salient set in the discourse also seems to lead to a difference in the following examples (Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002;Huang & Ochi 2004): (14) (a) I know who left the party.
(b) *I know who the hell left the party.(c) I don't know who the hell left the party.
The badness of (14b), in contrast to (14c), can be attributed to the contradiction that the wh-the-hell phrase inherently involves no knowledge of the referent for the non-D-linked wh-expression who, but the speaker says that she knows who that person is.Observing such a contrast, Den Dikken & Giannakidou (2002) suggest the parallelism between the wh-the-hell phrase and NPIs (negative polarity items): (15) (a) He didn't {tell me/confirm/realize} who the hell had spread those horrible rumors about me.(b) *He {told me/confirmed/realized} who the hell had spread those horrible rumors about me.
The contrast here indicates that the wh-the-hell phrase appears only in nonveridical contexts, like NPI licensing items like not.This fact is also related to the non-Dlinking constraint.Both the nonveridicality and wh-the-hell phrase contexts do not express certainty about, or commitment to, the truth of a sentence.That is, the whthe-hell phrase implies that the referent of the wh-expression is unavailable to the speaker.
Another prominent discourse property of the ANDC, as briefly noted above, is that the construction with the wh-the-hell phrase expresses the speaker's negative attitude toward the possible value of the wh-the-hell phrase, as seen from the following data: The examples in (17), just like those in ( 16), can be information-asking in that they ask for a value of the variable introduced by the wh-phrase.However, those in (17) at the same time convey the speaker's negative attitude (frustration, anger, or surprise) toward the proposition evoked by the question.
In addition, the wh-the-hell phrase gives rise to only a wide scope reading with respect to a quantifier unlike normal wh-phrases (Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002): (18) (a) What did everyone buy for Max?(b) What the hell did everyone buy for Max?
In the example in (18a) with a normal wh-phrase what, either a wide or narrow scope reading of what is available with respect to the universal quantifier everyone.On the other hand, in the example in (18b) with its wh-the-hell phrase counterpart, only a wide scope reading of what the hell is available with respect to the universal quantifier.Similar to this scope restriction, no non-local reading is available to the wh-the-hell phrase (Ochi 2004(Ochi , 2015)): (19) (a) Why did you say that Kim is mad?(b) Why the hell did you say that Kim is mad?
In the example in (19a), the normal wh-phrase why can be related to either the event of saying in the matrix clause or the event of Kim's being mad in the embedded clause.In other words, it is ambiguous in that the normal wh-phrase why allows both a local reading and a non-local reading.However, in the example in (19b), its corresponding wh-the-hell phrase can only be related to the event of saying in the matrix clause, not the event of Kim's being mad in the embedded clause, disallowing a non-local reading.
As discussed so far, the ANDC introduced by a wh-the-hell phrase shows several intriguing morphosyntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties, which distinguish the construction from other related constructions.In the next section, we discuss our corpus findings for its uses in real life situations.

Corpus used and search methods
In order to investigate the authentic uses and grammatical properties of the ANDC, we performed a corpus investigation using COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English).To extract ANDC examples from COCA, we first used simple string searches with some regular expressions as given in ( 20 In (21a), which on Earth has a literal meaning with the relative pronoun use of which rather than functioning as a wh-the-hell phrase.In (21b), the devil is not used as an emotive expression in a wh-the-hell phrase but it functions as the subject of the verb looks.After manually filtering out such irrelevant examples from the extracted data, we have identified a total of 15,651 tokens with the wh-the-hell phrase, for which we have performed a quantitative and qualitative investigation, as discussed in what follows.

General distributions of the ANDC examples
As for the data extracted from COCA, we first looked into the registers of the identified tokens.Figure 1 shows the uses of the construction by registers.As seen from Figure 1, the ANDC is mainly used in informal, colloquial contexts such as fiction and spoken registers and it is less preferably used in formal contexts like academic register.This seems to support the discourse uses of the construction to express the speaker's negative attitude toward the proposition associated with the interrogative.

Figure 1
Frequencies of the ANDC by registers in COCA.
We also identified that the predominant wh-expression used in the wh-the-hell phrase is what, followed by how, why, who, and where.Figure 2 shows the distribution of the identified ANDC examples from COCA by wh-words.
As seen in Figure 2, the frequencies of how, why, who, and where are quite similar.In the meantime, the frequency of when and that of whom in the construction are quite low, compared to the other wh-expressions.The corpus yielded no token of the wh-the-hell phrase with which, supporting the traditional dichotomy between D-linked and non-D-linked wh-expressions.The following include some examples of the construction we identified from the corpus: (22) (a) What on earth did you do to make them so angry?(b) And how the heck did they get there?(c) Why on Earth have I had this conversation?(d) Who the hell gets married during football season?(e) Shoot you?Where in the world did you get an idea like that?(f) When the hell is this show getting a soundtrack release?(g) I asked him whom the hell he was yelling at?
The corpus data also include tokens where the wh-the-hell phrase is used as part of a complex phrase:  In the examples in (24) modifiers like bloody and doggone are used in the wh-thehell phrase to emphasize the negative connotation inherent in the construction.
In terms of syntactic combination, the data show us that the wh-the-hell phrase can combine with either a finite or a nonfinite dependent.In most cases, the wh-thehell phrase combines with a finite sentence (13,126 instances), but it can also combine with a nonfinite sentence or XP: In ( 25), the wh-the-hell phrase combines with a nonfinite sentence.One may take the examples in (25a-d) to involve the absence of a finite auxiliary verb, but an example like (25e) indicates that the wh-the-hell phrase can combine with an infinitival VP, as does a regular wh-phrase.
We have also checked the variations of the ANDC in matrix and embedded environments.The ANDC can occur in both matrix and embedded environments, but it is dominantly used in the former.A total of 13,390 instances of the ANDC (85.6%) occur in matrix environments while only 2,261 instances (14.4%) occur in embedded environments, some of which are given in ( 26 As shown in (26a-d), the ANDC can occur as the complement clause of a verb, adjective, noun, and preposition.It can even occur as a sentential subject as in (26e).Related to this, Den Dikken & Giannakidou (2002), as mentioned earlier, noted that the wh-the-hell phrase is only used in nonveridical contexts.However, our corpus search yields examples of the wh-the-hell phrase in veridical contexts, as illustrated in ( 27 Within the assumption that NPIs occur only in nonveridical environments (Giannakidou 2002), such examples imply either the extended uses of the whthe-hell phrase or a need to revise the claim that the wh-the-hell phrase occurs only in NPI environments.

Uses in elliptical environments
As noted in the beginning, the wh-the-hell phrase displays several unexpected properties in elliptical constructions including Sluicing.We have identified a total of 2,290 tokens of the wh-the-hell phrase (about 15% of total 15,651 tokens) in the elliptical environments.The tokens are distributed over the three main types, whose frequencies are given in Figure 3.As represented in Figure 3, the most predominant elliptical environment for the wh-the-hell phrase is Sluicing.The frequency of the wh-the-hell phrase in Stripping and Swiping is significantly low, but is consistently observed.

Sluicing
One unexpected finding from the corpus data, as in Figure 3, is a significant number of tokens with the wh-the-hell phrase in matrix and embedded Sluicing: 7

Figure 3
Frequencies of the wh-the-hell phrase in ellipsis.
[7] French is another language that allows an emotive expression in wh-questions as well as Sluicing environments.See Smirnova & Abeillé (2021: 241) for details.
267 Much of the prior literature has noted that Sluicing introduced by the wh-the-hell phrase is unacceptable in matrix environments (Ginzburg & Sag 2000;Merchant 2002).Consider the following example provided by Ginzburg & Sag (2000: 314): (31) A: A friend of mine came in.
The example indicates that the wh-the-hell phrase cannot refer to an overt antecedent or correlate in the previous discourse, reflecting the non-D-linking property of the wh-the-hell phrase.This contrasts with examples like the following: (32) (Context: A arrives at home to find his house covered with toilet paper.)What the hell/the heck?(Ginzburg & Sag 2000: 314) [8] Following Pesetsky (1989), Den Dikken & Giannakidou (2002) argue that in English the whexpression occupies [Spec, FocP] in matrix environments while it occupies [Spec, CP] in embedded environments.With the assumption that the nonveridical Q operator in C licenses a wh-the-hell phrase, it licenses a wh-the-hell phrase in matrix environments, but not in embedded ones, since the phrase is already in [Spec, CP].It can be licensed only by an external nonveridical licensor in the matrix clause.
The key difference from (31) is that this example has no overt correlate or antecedent introduced by the discourse.The wh-the-hell phrase is used as a nonsentential utterance referring to the situation in question.This discourse constraint, as we discussed earlier in (4), also holds in the embedded environment.Examples like (33) belong to the so-called merger type of Sluicing in that the antecedent clause includes an overt correlate someone linked to the wh-remnant who in the second clause. 9The ungrammaticality of these merger examples is rather expected when considering the non-D-linking nature of the wh-the-hell phrase.Just like the wh-the-hell phrase in (31), the wh-the-hell phrase here is linked to an overt correlate introduced by the previous discourse.
Observing these discourse factors, we classified the identified Sluicing examples into three different groups, depending on the correlate/antecedent type, as in ( 34 The example in (34a) is taken to be pragmatically controlled (or exophoric) in the sense that the context with no linguistic antecedent can provide a key to the intended meaning of who on earth?Hearing the doorbell ring at 10 p.m., the speaker utters the nonsentential utterance (NSU), who on earth?There can be more than one putative source sentence for this NSU, such as Who on earth is visiting me at this time?and Who on earth is ringing the bell at this time?The sprouting example in (34b) is a case where the correlate is implicit but the previous antecedent clause provides a basis for the intended meaning of [9] Chung, Ladusaw & McCloskey (1995) classify Sluicing into two types: merger and sprouting.In the merger type of Sluicing, the wh-remnant has an overt correlate in the antecedent clause such as someone or something while in the sprouting type of Sluicing, there is no overt correlate.See Chung et al. (1995) for further discussion of the differences between the two types of Sluicing. 269 the remnant, as in How on earth is being a vegetarian a positive one?Lastly, the type involved in (34c) is referred to as 'pseudo-merger' in that it is the same as merger in terms of having an overt antecedent clause and an overt correlate but their correlate types and functions are different.For instance, in (34c) the antecedent clause is a wh-question Where did you put her? and the correlate is the wh-expression where, not a simple indefinite expression like somewhere, as in He put her somewhere but I don't know where.The pseudo-merger example in (34c) is specifically used to emphasize the previously uttered antecedent/correlate. Since it is different from merger in these respects, it is termed 'pseudo-merger' here.The frequencies of these three types are given in Figure 4.As given in Figure 4, the pragmatically controlled type is the most dominant one used in Sluicing with the wh-the-hell phrase, possibly due to the main discourse functions of the construction.That is, the key function of the wh-thehell phrase is to add the speaker's negative attitude toward the situation evoked from the wh-question.For instance, (34a) could ask himself who is the one knocking the doorbell, but at the same time expresses the speaker's negative attitude such that no one should knock the doorbell at that time.Further, since the wh-the-hell phrase is non-D-linked, the discourse does not need to provide a discourse referent of the wh-expression.This non-D-linking property seems to result in the high frequency of the pragmatically controlled type followed by the sprouting type, but no instances of the true merger type that has an overt correlate in the discourse.

Stripping and Swiping
Stripping or bare argument ellipsis (BAE) is an ellipsis that elides everything from a clause except one constituent.Since the wh-the-hell phrase must involve a whexpression, we investigated Stripping with the wh-the-hell phrase where the whthe-hell phrase has one remaining constituent.First, consider the following Why-Stripping as in (35a) and wh-Stripping as in (35b) differ in that the former is only introduced by why while the latter is by a wh-expression other than why. 10 From these, we would expect examples like Why the hell about syntax?and Who the hell about phonology?Among the identified examples from COCA, 130 tokens involve these kinds of Stripping as shown in Figure 3.We classified these Stripping tokens with the wh-the-hell phrase on the basis of wh-words and the categories of the stripped remnant and Table 1 shows their distribution.
Of these 130 Stripping tokens with the wh-the-hell phrase, 117 belong to why-Stripping while the remaining 13 tokens involve what (12 tokens) and how (1 token).The categories of the stripped remnant with the wh-the-hell phrase vary, including NP, VP, AdvP, PP, and the negation marker not: 11 (36) (a) So they end up in Arkansas.Of all possible places, [why on earth] [Arkansas] where so many turtles are to be seen squished on the roads?(COCA 1992 FIC) (b) The Super Bowl is the greatest event in the world.[ Frequencies of Stripping with the wh-the-hell phrase based on wh-words and the categories of the stripped remnant.
[10] Examples like (35b) can be analyzed as gapping, and these differ from why-Stripping in several respects including locality, islandhood, and preposition stranding.271 Some key observations from the corpus data include the following.First, the ANDC is dominantly used in informal contexts such as fiction and spoken registers.Second, its uses are more diverse than observed in previous literature.Third, most notably, contrary to the previous observations, the wh-the-hell phrase can be used in a variety of elliptical constructions.When the wh-the-hell phrase is used to introduce the elliptical constructions, it occurs more frequently in sprouting or pragmatically controlled contexts than in merger contexts, which seems to be related to the non-anaphoric (non-D-linking) properties of the wh-the-hell phrase.In what follows, we try to offer a non-derivational analysis for the construction in general as well as in elliptical environments.

Licensing the wh-the-hell phrase
Let us first discuss the formation of wh-the-hell phrases.In licensing wh-the-hell phrases, as noted earlier, the grammar needs to allow only a limited set of emotive expressions like the hell, the heck, and on earth to modify a whexpression.

(41)
what who where when why how + the hell, the heck, the blaze, the deuce, the devil, the Dickens, on earth, in the world, in blue blazes, in tarnation, etc.
The possible emotive expressions that can occur in the wh-the-hell phase are quite idiosyncratic, as demonstrated in ( 42): (42) (a) {What the hell/*What a hell} does it mean?(b) {What the devil/*What the devils} is he doing?(c) What the holy hell happened to my country?
As shown here, the emotive expression disallows the indefinite article a/an and must be definite as in (42a).The emotive noun cannot be plural as in (42b), but can host an internal modifier (e.g. the bloody hell), as discussed earlier in ( 24) and illustrated here in (42c).
Another basic property of the wh-the-hell phrase is that it is only acceptable in contexts with question-orientation (Huddleston 1993;Ginzburg & Sag 2000: 9, 230 The example in (44a) is grammatical since the embedded clause introduced by the wh-the-hell phrase is selected for by a verb with question-orientation wonder; however, the example in ( 44b) is ungrammatical as it is selected for by a verb with answer-orientation recall.
To capture such unique combinatorial properties of the wh-the-hell phrase, we first accept Ginzburg & Sag's (2000) suggestion that wh-words have nonempty specifications for the feature WH, as in the following feature structure specifications: [12] As a reviewer points out, the uses of What the hell/heck!seem to be exclamatory with no question-orientation.Nonetheless, such examples can also be interpreted as the speaker's surprise or frustration toward the possible value of a contextually provided wh-question like What the hell (is happening)? or What the heck (are you doing)?In this sense, we could say that the construction is a type of 'exclamatory question' (P.Collins 2005).The focus of this research, leaving out the instances of pure exclamative meaning, is also for instances with a certain interrogative meaning in addition.Also, see Ginzburg (2019) for a corpus-based study on exclamative Sluicing in English.
The lexical specifications here ensure that the interrogative wh-word who bears a nonempty WH feature value which is a parameter referring to a person with an index value x.The emotive expression then modifies the preceding wh-word with a nonempty WH value.As noted earlier, the emotive phrase cannot modify the whphrase with a nonempty WH value: ( Further, we have seen that only a limited set of wh-words and emotive expressions can participate in the combination.Considering these peculiarities, we suggest that English has an idiosyncratic construction, as given in the following: (48) Wh-the-hell Construction (↑hd-functor-cxt) This construction rule licenses the combination of a non-D-linked wh-word with an emotive expression which is also predetermined in the grammar of English.
The syntactic cohesion of the resulting expression, as noted earlier and further suggested by a reviewer, behaves like a lexical expression (marked with [LIGHT þ]) with respect to syntactic distributions (see Section 4.3 also). 13The specification of the feature LIGHT is to reflect that the construction is a light, quasi-lexical constituent.Within this system, words as well as the combination of two words are thus [LIGHT þ], while phrases are typically [LIGHT -].However, the combination of a wh-word with the emotive phrase results in a [LIGHT þ] expression. 14Note also that the emotive expression is a functor that combines with a wh-word via the feature SEL in accordance with the Head-Functor Construction, which is independently motivated for treating specifiers and modifiers in a uniform [13] The feature LIGHT has been widely used to license complex predicates in French, Korean, and English where two lexical expressions are combined to yield a quasi-lexical expression (Abeillé & Godard 1997, 2000;Bonami & Webelhuth 2013;J.-B. Kim 2018;Kim & Michaelis 2020).It is also used to account for the possible prenominal modifiers in English (Abeillé & Godard 2000).
[14] The emotive phrase could be specified to be [LIGHT þ], but there are many instances where it can occur as a phrasal expression, as in I went through the hell of hating my body in a swimsuit.As represented in the structure, the NP emotive expression the hell is a functor and selects the interrogative wh-word what.This eventually results in the formation of a well-formed wh-the-hell construct bearing the feature [LIGHT þ] so that it can behave like a lexical expression.As we will see in what follows, this LIGHT feature allows Swiping to be possible only with a [LIGHT þ] expression (wh-word and wh-the-hell phrase) and a limited set of prepositions.
In the construction, the wh-word also needs to have a nonempty parameter value for the feature WH, which bars the emotive phrase from combining with a noninterrogative wh-word as in (43) and as in *the student who the hell we met last night and *I ate what the hell Kim ate.The requirement for the nonempty WH value could also block examples like the following: (50) (a) *I wondered whether in the world/blue blazes/tarnation they were real.
(b) *I wondered whether the devil/deuce they were real.
The complementizer whether can introduce an interrogative clause, but inherently lacks a parameter value of the feature WH, as suggested by Ginzburg & Sag (2000: 214). 16  [15] The Head-Functor Construction thus licenses the combinations of predeterminer constructions (e.g.all the students, both those books), big mess constructions (e.g.so big a mess, such a big mess), and correlative constructions (e.g.The fewer mistakes you make, the better your mark is).
[16] There seem to be some variations in the use of whose in the construction.Most speakers do not allow whose to combine with the emotive phrase, as in *whose the hell books, *whose books the hell, etc.However, there are also attested examples such as Whose the hell's bright idea is it to make them?, Whose the hell (job) is it if it's not the president's?, and Whose the hell dog?For such variations, we may need to add a case-marking constraint on the wh-word.
The present analysis can also make other predictions, accounting for the grammaticality and ungrammaticality of the following examples: (51) (a) [Who the hell]'s idea was this?(b) [Who the hell]'s fault is that?
(52) (a) *What did he buy the hell?(b) *I wonder what he is talking about the hell.
The wh-the-hell phrase can be an NP constituent and occur as the specifier of the possessive marker, as in (51).The ungrammaticality of the examples in ( 52) is expected as well, because the head wh-word and the emotive modifier phrase are in discontinuous positions so that the emotive phrase cannot select the head wh-word.

Licensing the construction
With the constructional formation of the well-formed wh-the-hell phrase, let us now consider how the grammar licenses its occurrences in syntactic environments.The defining property of the wh-the-hell phrase in English, as we have noted, is that it cannot stay in situ, whose key data we repeat here: (53) (a) *Sandy visited who the heck/hell/devil?(b) Who the heck/hell/devil did Sandy visit _? (c) Who the heck/hell/devil do you think they visited _?(d) *Who visited who the heck/hell/devil?
The wh-the-hell phrase is illicit when staying in situ, as in (53a, d).Considering that normal wh-phrases in English can appear in situ as in (54), this positional requirement is rather a constructional one. 17Another motivation for a construction-based approach, as we have noted earlier, comes from its independent discourse constraint.As observed by Den Dikken & Giannakidou (2002) and others, the construction involving the wh-the-hell phrase occurs in NPI environments that trigger a widening effect.For instance, in (53b), the domain of who the heck is an open set including all the possible individuals that satisfy 'Sandy visited x'.In addition to this widening effect, we have seen that the construction evokes a negative inference in (53b) such that Sandy should visit nobody or such that the speaker does not have any knowledge of the individual 'x' that Sandy visited.This kind of negative inference does not come from any individual expression in the sentence in (53b), but arises only when the wh-the-hell phrase occurs in a specific construction.
As a way to address these syntactic and pragmatic peculiarities, we suggest that English employs the following independent construction involving a wh-the-hell phrase: 18 (55) Aggressively non-D-linked Construction (↑hd-filler-cxt): The construction has two daughters: a wh-the-hell phrase and a head sentence which has this wh-the-hell as its gap (GAP) value. 19In addition, its constructional constraint also includes the contextual background information such that the speaker has a negative attitude toward the situation (s 0 ) in question.Since this information refers to a discourse structure, it can be identified even when this head is elided as in How the hell?.The constructional rule thus allows a non-D-linked whthe-hell phrase to combine with an incomplete S, which yields a head-filler unbounded construction: (56) (a) Who the hell would you call _ ?(b) What the heck did Kim need _ ?
(57) (a) Who the hell do you think you're talking to _ ?(b) Who the hell do you think _ recommended you?
In (56), the wh-the-hell phrase serves as a filler and combines with a sentence with a gap whose grammatical function corresponds to the direct object of the verb call or need. 20The examples in (57) even show a long distance dependency between the wh-the-hell phrase and the putative gap in the embedded clause.This becomes clear when considering a simplified structure of (56b): [18] This construction-based approach departs from the analysis sketched by Ginzburg & Sag (2000) in a few respects.The gist of their analysis is to claim that the emotive expression modifies a wh-word with the nonempty WH specification, which is required by the so-called WH-Constraint such that 'Any non-initial element of a lexeme's ARG-ST (argument-structure) list must be [WH { }]' (Ginzburg & Sag 2000: 189).This constraint would specify all in situ occurrences of interrogative wh-words as [WH { }], blocking the in situ occurrence of the wh-the-hell phrase.Despite such merits, this direction also raises several key problems such as allowing examples like *which the hell but not licensing those like why the hell or how the hell: in this system, which selected by a lexeme would be WH-specified while why would be either WH-specified or not since it would not be in the ARG-ST.
[19] See Ginzburg & Sag (2000) and Kim & Michaelis (2020) for the function of the feature GAP.[20] This implies that the present analysis allows an adverbial extraction for examples like When the hell does Kim need it?See Hukari & Levine (1995) and Levine & Hukari (2006) for the syntactic nature of adjunct extraction in English.The head S has an NP gap (GAP) which is linked to the filler, the wh-the-hell phrase.
The gap value can be in a long distance relation with the filler, as in (57).
The construction has a contextual background that evokes a pragmatic inference conveying the speaker's negative attitude toward the situation (denoted by the head S) in question. 21For instance, the examples in (56) allow us to infer that the addressee should not call anyone and Kim should not need anything.Even in information-seeking examples like (59), discussed by Güneş & Lipták (2021), there is a negative inference: The contrast here tells us that we cannot simply disallow double wh-the-hell phrases in a sentence.The present system blocks examples like (60a) because the second wh-the-hell phrase is not licensed by the construction rule in (55).However, the rule licenses both wh-the-hell phrases in (60b) as the non-D-linked nonhead daughter. 23  [21] An anonymous reviewer questions if this negative attitude applies to potential answers.However, we believe that the negative attitude has to do with the speaker of the wh-the-hell sentence in question since answers can be positive or even neutral as in What the hell is going on?Nothing.
[22] To some speakers including an anonymous reviewer, there is no clear contrast between (60a) and (60b).See Güneş & Lipták (2021) for contributing this difference to a phonological factor.
[23] One remaining issue we need to discuss concerns scope properties of the wh-the-hell phrase in the ANDC.As noted in Section 2, the wh-the-hell phrase has a wide scope reading and allows only a local reading, which could be expected from the uniqueness of the construction.These If we take the wh-the-hell phrase as an NPI as claimed by Den Dikken & Giannakidou (2002), such examples would not be expected since the wh-the-hell phrase is in the embedded clause selected for by verbs like know, figure out, and find out.To make such sentences acceptable, there needs to be a licensor like not or a question operator as suggested by Den Dikken & Giannakidou (2002), but there exists none here.Instead, the present system can attribute the possibility of such examples to a discourse factor of the construction.What we can observe here is that the veridical predicate is further embedded by a construction like want to, need to, and try to.These contexts imply that the speaker seeks a value for the wh-expression (which is a nonveridical environment) and expresses his or her negative attitude toward the situation in question.

ANDC in ellipsis
Let us now discuss the distribution of wh-the-hell phrases in ellipsis.In accounting for ellipsis in general, there have been two main strands: movement and PF-deletion and Direct Interpretation (DI) approaches.The movement and PF-deletion approach basically assumes that fragments are canonical utterances of the type S (see, among others, Ross 1969;Merchant 2001Merchant , 2002Merchant , 2004;;Weir 2014;Yoshida, Nakao & Ortega-Santos 2015).Within this kind of movement and PF-deletion view, an ellipsis site has internally structured material through derivation and PFdeletion renders some of it unpronounced under some kind of identity and the meaning composition is dependent upon the derivational source.For instance, according to the movement and PF-deletion approach, the Sluicing example in (62a) would be derived from (62b) (Merchant 2001): (62) (a) We cannot syntactically bar the clausal ellipsis after the wh-the-hell phrase as we have seen from the attested, possible Sluicing data in matrix as well as embedded environments.The existence of such attested examples also casts doubt on the assumption that the ungrammaticality of such examples is due to the lack of a phonological accent on the emotive expression, as suggested by Sprouse (2006) and Güneş & Lipták (2021).Meanwhile, the Direct Interpretation (DI) approach for ellipsis, which we adopt in this paper, directly generates ellipsis with no clausal source and that allows the resolution of the elided part by structured discourse (Ginzburg & Sag 2000 Kim 2022).Within the DI approach, there is no syntactic structure at the ellipsis site and the fragment is the sole daughter of an S-node, directly generated from a construction rule like the following (Ginzburg & Sag 2000): (64) Head-Fragment Construction Any category can be projected into an NSU (nonsentential utterance) when it matches a SAL-UTT (salient utterance).
All the attested NSUs with the wh-the-hell phrase belong to this Head-Fragment Construction.For instance, consider the following attested example: (65) A nasty, insistent hotel phone ring that demanded to be picked up.'Who the hell?'I muttered.(COCA 1995 FIC) This naturally occurring fragment would have a simple structure like the following: Here, the interrogative wh-word who combines with the emotive expression the hell in accordance with the wh-the-hell Construction, forming an NP first, and then this NP is projected into an NSU (nonsentential utterance) S on its own as a type of the Head-Fragment Construction.This S can serve at the same time as an instance of the ANDC whose head S is unexpressed but supplied by the discourse (e.g.Who the hell is calling me?). 24 To be more precise, as the resolution of this kind of fragment into a propositional meaning, the DI approach relies on the discourse structure, rather than on the putative clausal source.The resolution of the NSU is achieved by discourse-based machinery.That is, the interpretation of a fragment depends on the notion of 'question-under-discussion' (QUD) in the dialogue.Dialogues are described via a Dialogue Game Board (DGB) where the contextual parameters are anchored and where there is a record of who said what to whom, and what/who they were referring to (see Ginzburg 2012).DGB monitors which questions are under discussion, what answers have been provided by whom, etc.The conversational events are tracked by various conversational 'moves' that have specific preconditions and effects.The main claim is that NSUs, corresponding to salient utterances, are resolved to the contextual parameters of the DGB.Since the value of QUD is constantly being updated as the dialogue progresses, the relevant context offers the basis for the interpretation of fragments.In this system, DGB is part of the contextual information and has at least the attributes SAL-UTT (salient-utterance) and MAX-QUD (maximal-question-underdiscussion), given in ( 67): (67) DGB SAL-UTT ... MAX-QUD ... The feature MAX-QUD, representing the question currently under discussion, takes as its value questions.Meanwhile, the feature SAL-UTT, taking as its value syntactic as well as semantic information, represents the utterance which receives the widest scope within MAX-QUD.
To see how this discourse-based system works, consider the following sprouting example: (68) They survived.How the hell?(COCA 2014 FIC) Uttering the declarative sentence They survived can also introduce a QUD, activating the appropriate DGB information, as given in (69): [24] To be more precise, this construction is also Sluicing (e.g.They were arguing about something, but I don't know what).As in Ginzburg & Sag (2000), this Sluicing (slu-int-cl, sluice-interrogative-clause) is a subtype of hd-frag-cxt (head-fragment-cxt).See J.-B.Kim (2015) for a DI approach to Sluicing.As represented here, the declarative sentence can introduce a QUD questioning how (the manner x) they survived. 25The fragment question How the hell? is basically asking a value for the variable x.The Head-Fragment Construction allows any phrase matching the focal or salient utterance (SAL-UTT) to be projected into a sentential expression S. The remnant wh-the-hell phrase matches the SAL-UTT, which is the manner they survived in the context (Ginzburg & Sag 2000), as shown in the following: The evoked QUD is that the speaker asserts that they survived and she asks herself the manner for this, in particular, with the focus on the adverb wh-word how.
(76) (a) He hangs around the office.[What the hell for]?(b) And the only thing he asked in return was to talk to you.Is that so? [What the hell about]?(c) 'He was headed for the site.Says they're going to test the rollers today.' '[What on earth with]?' Swiping could be dealt with by movement and deletion operations, as suggested by Merchant (2002), Hartman &Ai (2009), andRadford &Iwasaki (2015).For instance, Merchant (2002) introduces operations such as pied-piping wh-movement followed by PF-deletion of the remaining clausal material and then an additional head-movement of a wh-word to a preposition.For instance, the Swiping example Mary was talking, but I don't know who to would be generated by the following processes: (77) Mary was talking, but I don't know she was talking to who ) [to who] [she was talking] (Wh-movement and pied-piping) ) to who [she was talking] (Sluicing = deletion) ) who to (PF head-movement) However, the application of such complex syntactic operations must be quite restrictive since a limited set of wh-words and prepositions can participate in Swiping, as illustrated by the following: As also noted by Merchant (2002) and Culicover & Jackendoff (2005), prepositions such as about, after, as, at, by, for, from, in, near(?), of, on, till, to, and with are possible in Swiping, but not those like above, before, between, despite, during, into, and so forth.The corpus investigation of Kim & Kim (2020) also shows the idiomatic combinations of wh-words and prepositions in Swiping, as shown in Table 2.The limit of Swiping with a restricted set of wh-expression and preposition combinations suggests that it is more plausible to assume that English speakers acquire the possible forms of Swiping directly, without reconstructing a derivation from a regular sentential underlying structure, as suggested by Culicover & Jackendoff (2005).This eventually supports the postulation of the Swiping Construction in the grammar of English.
Adopting Ginzburg & Sag (2000), Kim & Kim (2020) define the Swiping Construction as a subtype of slu-int-cl (sluice-interrogative-clause), which is in turn a subtype of hd-frag-cxt, as represented in the following: The construction specifies that the combination of a wh-expression and a preposition can be projected into a sentential utterance with a special formfunction mapping relation in The construction is a subtype of Sluicing since it occurs only in Sluicing environments, as can be observed from the contrast between I got a date.Who with? and *Who with did you get a date?The constructional constraint in (79) also indicates that the preposition functions as the SAL-UTT in the discourse and belongs to the type of strandable (str syntactic unit, as illustrated in the following examples(Ginzburg & Sag 2000: 229;Merchant 2002;Huang & Ochi 2004): 4 (6) (a) How (the hell) potent (*the hell) do you think this is?(b) *What did he buy the hell?(c) *I wonder what he is talking about the hell.As the data tell us, the emotive phrase like the hell forms a tight syntactic unit with the preceding wh-expression.This syntactic cohesion is further evidenced from attested examples like the following: (7) (a) [Who the hell]'s in charge of Texas?(COCA 2012 FIC) (b) [What the hell]'re those for?(COCA 2009 FIC) (8) (a) [Who the hell]'s side are you on, here?(COCA 2000 TV) (b) [Who the hell]'s idea was this? (COCA 2010 FIC)

(
16) (a) What does Kim really want?(b) Who is going to attend the meeting?(c) Why should they trust him to do so?(17) (a) What the hell does Kim want?(b) Who the hell is going to attend the meeting?(c) Why on earth should they trust him to do so?
Exemplar search strings used in COCA (a) wh* | how* (in) the hell|heck|fuck|devil (13,618 tokens) (b) wh* | how* on earth (1,783 tokens) (c) wh* | how* in the world (1,848 tokens) Such string searches gave us a total of 17,249 tokens and we then manually excluded irrelevant examples like those in (21): (21) (a) The sample contained smectite clay, which on Earth is found in alluvial plains and regions washed by monsoons.(COCA 2013 MAG) (b) Come back here, you wetback prick, I'll show you what the devil looks like.(COCA 2007 FIC)

(
23) (a) [[What the hell] rule] did he break?(COCA 2007 NEWS) (b) [[How the heck] long] were you in the crapper?(COCA 2009 FIC) (c) [[How the hell] much farther] do you want to drive on that miserable crapfest of a trail?(COCA 2015 FIC) Moreover, the identified tokens have examples where the emotive expression in the wh-the-hell phrase includes a pre-modifier as in (24), which is unnoticed by previous literature: (24) (a) [What [the bloody hell]] are you doing?(COCA 2016 FIC) (b) [What [in the doggone world]] really happened?Judy asked.(COCA 2001 FIC)

Figure 2
Figure 2Frequencies of the ANDC by wh-words in COCA.

(
25) (a) [How the hell] [you expect to call them out there]? (COCA FIC 2003) (b) [What the hell] [we supposed to do]? (COCA 1998 FIC) (c) [What in the world] [y'all doing]?(COCA 2009 NEWS) (d) [Where the hell] [you been]?(COCA 2000 FIC) (e) Harris sat and wondered [what on earth] [to do].(COCA 1994 FIC) ): (26) (a) I don't know [what the hell I'm talking about].(COCA 2011 SPOK) (b) He wasn't sure [what the hell his 'chakra' was], but he knew what he was focused on.(COCA 2003 FIC) (c) You have no clue [what the hell's going on], do you?(COCA 2008 SPOK) (d) I think I need to step away and think about [what the hell I did].(COCA 1994 SPOK) (e) [Why on earth anyone lives year-round in this forsaken wilderness] is beyond me.(COCA 1998 FIC) ): (27) (a) He knew [what the hell] he stood for.(COCA 2016 SPOK) (b) Watch while you still recognize [who the hell] is on it.(COCA 2003 MAG) (c) I was trying to find out [what the hell] the rules were.(COCA 2006 ACAD) J U N G S O O K I M A N D J O N G -B O K K I M https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226722000226Published online by Cambridge University Press Note, at this juncture, that predicates like know, recognize, and find out do not license an NPI, as seen from the following: (28) (a) He knew that he stood for something/*anything.(b) Watch while you still recognize that someone/*anyone is on it.(c) I was trying to find out something/*anything.
): (34) (a) Pragmatically controlled Settled at last, she hit the remote, dialed in her favorite channel, and heard the doorbell ring.'Damn,' she murmured, glancing at the digital clock on the set.It was just before ten p.m. [Who on earth]?(COCA 2010 FIC) (b) Sprouting Being a vegetarian is a positive one.[How on earth]?(COCA 1996 NEWS) (c) Pseudo-merger Ms-BOYD: (Voiceover) Where did he put her?I mean, I sit up at night, 2, 3, 4 AM, just thinking, [where on earth]?(COCA 2007 SPOK)

Figure 4
Figure 4Frequencies of the wh-the-hell phrase in Sluicing by the correlate/antecedent types.
See Ortega-Santos et al. (2014)   for the detailed discussion of various differences between why-Stripping and wh-Stripping.[11]In the examples like (36b) and (37a), the wh-the-hell phrase combines not with an argument, but with a base VP or an AdvP.Ortega-Santos et al. (2014) take such examples to involve Stripping in the sense that the remnant VP or AdvP moves to the focused position and the remaining clause is elided.
): 12 (43) (a) *Anyone [[who the hell] saw them].(b) *[What the hell] [a nice person she is]!The wh-word here has no interrogative use: the wh-word in (43a) is a relative pronoun and the one in (43b) is an exclamative pronoun.This requirement can also differentiate between the two examples below: (44) (a) I wonder how on earth you saved her.(b) *I recall how on earth you saved her.
46) (a) [Who the hell] did they visit?(b) [How the hell many books] did they read?(47) (a) *[Which book the hell] did they read?(b) *[How many books the hell] did they read?(c) *[How many the hell books] did they read?

(
54) (a) I wonder who has bought what?(b) You asked which book Sandy gave to who?

(
59) A: John has seen someone.B: Who the hell has he seen?The speaker B wonders about a value for the wh-expression ('I wonder who he has seen'), but at the same time has a negative attitude (unexpected surprise) or rhetorical question such as 'he shouldn't have seen anyone'.Another advantage of this construction-based account comes from examples like the following(Sprouse 2006: 350): 22 (60) (a) *Who the hell ate what the hell?(b) Who the hell knows what the hell he is doing?
R E S S I V E L Y N O N -D -L I N K E D C O N S T R U C T I O N A N D E L L I P S I S https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226722000226Published online by Cambridge University Press As discussed earlier, the construction typically occurs in nonveridical situations, but our corpus investigation yields examples that at first glance seem to be veridical: (61) (a) I want to know what the hell is happening here.(COCA 2018 SPOK) (b) Then we need to figure out what the hell we're going to do about this.(COCA 2017 NEWS) (c) I was trying to find out what the hell the rules were.(COCA 2006 ACAD) As shown here, the NSU is a stand-alone clause, following the Head-Fragment Construction.This NSU matching the SAL-UTT value refers to the QUD introduced by the preceding declarative assertion sentence They survived: x[survive(i,x)] SAL-UTT SEM IND x

(
78) (a) I know they were complaining, but I'm not sure [what about/*during].(b) A: I was arguing with John.B: [What about/*before]?
(79) Swiping Construction in English (↑sluice-int-cl ): 'My God,' he said.'They survived.[How the hell]?' (COCA 2010 FIC) (b) But of course she can't call.Michael would pick up the phone.He would wait for Rom to finish speaking and then he'd get back on, wanting to know [what the hell], and why Texas.(COCA 2012 FIC) L L I P S I S (29) (a) I handed Angelita a tray of empanadas and a bowl of dipping sauce.'Go on,' I said.'I am almost finished in here.Why don't you bring this out to the men?' I had earlier told Rafael that it was important to make Angelita feel sorry for him.'[Why on earth]?'The very idea made him bristle.(COCA 2003 FIC) (b) If he was to believe what he saw, he was looking at a ball of water, floating in space, within which chlorophyll reactions were proceeding.'My God,' he said.'They survived.[How the hell]?' (COCA 2000 FIC) (30) (a) Even when I first got here, the sunflowers were dead.The water view requires jimmying a lock, climbing the ricketiest attic stairs you've ever seen, and leaning out the window to spy a distant patch of harbor between bare branches and pine boughs.When I called the owner to ask [what the hell], he apologized and told me he hadn't been there in a while, then offered to sell me the cottage for what sounds to me like a song.(COCA 2008 FIC) (b) 'Oh, how I've missed your humor, Jones.' Phillips helped him lug his bags into the boot.He was in his late thirties now, his handlebar mustache as thick as ever but flecked with gray.'And less of the Bob, will you?I see you've brought your big bone as advertised.I don't know [why on earth].' (COCA 2012 FIC) Of these Sluicing tokens, 2,091 (99%) occur in matrix environments and only 21 (1%) occur in embedded environments.8

Table 1
L L I P S I S (c) It's just not gonna be that easy.[Why the hell] [not]?(COCA 2007 FIC) (d) 'What's up?' he asked.'I've decided to go now,' she said quickly.'Where to?' 'To fetch the books.' '[Why on earth] [now]?You can go tomorrow.'(COCA 1996 FIC) In these Swiping examples, the wh-the-hell phrase combines with a preposition.The wh-word and preposition combination patterns in the data are quite limited: of the total 48 tokens, 46 have the combination of what and for, and the remaining two are that of what and about as in (39b) and that of what and with as in (39c).In terms of the correlate/antecedent type in these Swiping examples, we could identify three tokens of the pragmatically controlled type and 45 tokens of the sprouting type, as 'Will you be needing a ride home from the police station?' '[Why the heck] [not]?Yes, please,' I said … (COCA 2017 FIC) (c) Pseudo-merger 'I'm out of here.For good.' 'What do you mean?What about Mom and Dad?' '[What the heck] [about Mom and Dad]?' he said.
They were arguing about something, but I don't know what.(b) They were arguing about something, but I don't know [ CP [what] i [they are arguing about t i ]] They were arguing about something, but I don't know what the hell.(b) They were arguing about something, but I don't know [ CP [what the hell] i [they are arguing about t i ]] semantic properties also could be attributed to the constructional constraints in(55).We leave open the specification of these in the construction here.

Table 2
(Merchant 2002;Hartman & Ai 2009;Radford & Iwasaki 2015)with nonstrandable prepositions as in (78) (cf.*What were they complaining during?) and *I know they fell out, but I don't know what because of (cf.*What did they fall out because of?).Furthermore, in Swiping Construction, only the preposition can bear stress (e.g.Mary is going to the prom, but I'm not sure who WITH/*WHO with)(Merchant 2002;Hartman & Ai 2009;Radford & Iwasaki 2015).The construction constraint thus ensures that in Swiping Construction, only a limited set of wh-expressions (lexical as well as phrasal) can combine with a restricted set of prepositions bearing focus.Frequencies of wh-expression and preposition combinations in Swiping in COCA (fromKim & Kim  2020: 498).