ABSTRACT
Interrogative wh-movement in Caribbean varieties of Spanish (CS) exhibits a distinctive syntactic characteristic regarding the position of subjects. By contrast to General Spanish (GS), CS allows the occurrence of preverbal subjects. This chapter reviews previous approaches to the position and nature of subjects in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRSp) interrogative wh-movement. In order to do so, an experiment aimed at eliciting knowledge of non-pronominal subject positions in argumental and non-argumental wh-questions was conducted with native speakers of PRSp living in San Juan. The chapter then describes the methodology employed in the experiment and also provides the results. Next, the chapter accounts for the attested data in an analysis couched within the Minimalist Program. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the discourse effects associated with preverbal and postverbal subjects in PRSp wh-questions. It concludes with final remarks and directions for further research.
