1 Wondering about Concealed Questions Ilaria Frana ilaria@linguist.umass.edu The underlined DPs in (1a) and (2a) are known in the literature as ‘concealed questions’ (CQ) because they can be paraphrased as the corresponding embedded questions in b. (Examples from Heim (1979)): 1a. Kim knows the governor of California . b. Kim knows who the governor of California is. 2a. She revealed the winner of the contest . b. She revealed who the winner of the contest was. In this paper, I argue that the DPs in 1(a) and 2(a) are not concealed questions in the literal sense. Instead, I propose that they are definite descriptions denoting properties, and that the so-called CQ-reading derives from independently motivated semantic selection properties of the embedding predicates. An important fact about DPs with CQ-readings is their restricted distribution. As noted by Grimshaw (1979), not every attitude verb can take a DP with a CQ-reading as its comple- ment. This is shown by (3)-(4) below: 3. *Meg believed/thought the capital of Italy. 4. *I wonder the answer he gave. I argue that CQ-readings only arise with factive predicates because they select for an argu- ment that characterizes both the external (res, Lewis (1979)) and the internal (descriptive) content of the attitude (see also Kratzer 2000). Intuitively: 5. Kim knows the governor of California = Kim knows of Arnold Schwarzenegger that he is the governor of California. External content Internal content There is an actual x of which P holds in w 0 . Kim believes de re of x that it has property P. Since ‘Believe’ and ‘wonder’ are not factives, they do not lexically select a res argument, and consequently, they cannot appear with direct objects that are interpreted as CQs. My account assumes that definite descriptions can denote properties (Heim (1982), Partee (1986)). Mikkelsen (2004) argued that subjects of specificational clauses denote properties. In contrast to (6), which has a referential subject, the use of ‘it’ in (7) indicates a property in- terpretation for the definite description. This carries over to the CQ in (8): 6. The winner of the contest is Iranian. Isn’t she/ *it? PREDICATIONAL 7. The winner of the contest is Susan. Isn’t it/ *she? SPECIFICATIONAL 8. I know the winner of the contest. It’s Susan/ *She is Susan. CQ If property-denoting DPs can trigger CQ-readings, we predict that indefinite-descriptions can too. Intuitively, this seems correct, as shown by (9) and its paraphrase (10): 9. John knows a doctor who can treat your illness. 10. John knows of a certain person that he is a doctor who can treat your illness.