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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 26, No. 0, pp.1197-1213
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Oct 2026
Received 05 Aug 2026 Revised 17 Aug 2026 Accepted 15 Sep 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.26..202610.1197

Resolving the Multiple-Wh Puzzle without Movement: Box Theory and Interface Dissociation

Haewon Jeon
Visiting Professor, Department of English Education Silla University 140 Baegyang-daero 700beon-gil(Rd.), Sasang-Gu Busan, Korea, Tel: +82-51-999-5224 hwJeon@kmou.ac.kr


© 2026 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Within Chomsky’s (2024) Miracle Creed framework, which replaces successive-cyclic movement with in-situ access by higher phase heads, this paper derives two classical puzzles of multiple wh-questions—Superiority amelioration (the third-wh effect) and Baker’s (1970) scope ambiguity—from a divergent read-off system at the interfaces. Under the Box theory, the Sensory-Motor (SM) and Conceptual-Intentional (CI) interfaces evaluate a single syntactic object under asymmetric locality conditions: SM externalization is strictly local and subject to phase opacity, whereas CI interpretation accesses structures across clausal boundaries to establish feature valuation and assign long-distance scope. Coupling this differential read-off with the Clausal Typing Hypothesis and the choice of which CQ head accesses the redundant wh-phrase, we derive the full multiple-wh paradigm—naturally capturing Baker’s scope ambiguity, the rescue of intra-clausal Superiority violations, and the interpretive rigidity of rescued configurations. This divergent SM/CI read-off over a stationary boxed wh-phrase provides a unified, principled account for the complex syntactic and semantic behaviors of multiple interrogatives without invoking covert movement or LF absorption.

Keywords:

multiple wh-questions, superiority amelioration, the third-wh effect, scope ambiguity, Miracle Creed, divergent read-off, Box system, externalization

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2023S1A5B5A17088523).

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