The evolution of degree wh-exclamatives in catalan

Abstract: This article discusses the evolution of degree wh-exclamatives from Old Catalan to Modern and Contemporary Catalan. Two major changes can be identified which transformed these constructions from a general pattern common to most Romance languages without obligatory inversion or a complementizer in the 16th century, to a less common one with obligatory inversion already in the 18th century and a complementizer in the 19th century. To account for this process, we argue that obligatory inversion is a general phenomenon related to the checking of [wh]/[focus] features, affecting also interrogatives and focus preposing, whereas the emergence of the complementizer is a result of the lexicalization of the exclamative Force head, and hence a specific and restricted phenomenon. Key words: exclamatives, subject-verb inversion, conjunction, Force, focus