This investigation reveals the unacceptability of in-situ wh-the-hell in single wh-questions, indicating a need for movement to Spec-CP for clarity.
The unacceptability of in-situ wh-the-hell has been observed since Pesetsky (1987). We investigate the acceptability of in-situ and partially-moved wh-the-hell in Colloquial Singapore English through an acceptability judgment experiment. The results reveal that in-situ wh-the-hell in single wh-questions is unacceptable, but partial wh-movement is able to host the-hell. We argue that this pattern follows from two independently supported components: 1. wh-the-hell needs to move to the Spec-CP so that the negative attitude bearer can be identified (see Chou (2012)); 2. Partial wh-movement in Singlish involves covert movement to Spec-CP while wh-in-situ is interpreted via unselective binding (Sato and Ngui, 2017).
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Chan et al. (2026) studied this question.
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