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A BBC reporter, Melissa Hogenboom, talks about her father in this BBC article "The part of my dad that dementia can't take":

My dad does not fall into any of the risk categories for dementia. There is no family history of it. He’s always been slim, healthy and active. This is part of why the disease is so devastating – it can affect anyone and we still do not understand why.

Is this 'why' a fused relative word or an interrogative word?

EDIT

This question does NOT have an answer in the earlier question fused relatives versus interrogatives.

There, the answer by John Lawler cites, and is solely based on, Haj Ross's paper "Conjunctive and Disjunctive Wh-clauses."

The paper, however, is irrelevant in that both conjunctive and disjunctive wh-clauses are interrogative clauses.

In fact, more than a month ago, I posted a comment to John Lawler's answer and asked about his opinion on the alleged misquoting of the paper and the writing up of an answer based on the misquoted paper. But unfortunately, I have not heard from him ever since.

So, whoever cited John Lawler's answer there as an answer to my question should go to that earlier question/answer and "read" the answer, the paper, and my comment there, although I think they should have done all that before marking this question as a "duplicate," whatever that means.

JK2
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    "Why" is not used as a fused relative word, but only as an interrogative. See GCEL p1072. – BillJ Jun 07 '18 at 09:54
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    There's no fused relative here. Why get worried? – Kris Jun 07 '18 at 11:58
  • @EdwinAshworth Please see the EDIT – JK2 Jun 07 '18 at 12:46
  • @BillJ If I could've found an answer in CGEL, I would have. This particular sentence is not mentioned in CGEL and I'm specifically asking this question because CGEL's blanket statement that 'why' is not used as a fused relative word fails to explain this particular sentence, I think. – JK2 Jun 07 '18 at 12:48
  • If you actually look at the close-vote reason, it states that the question is a duplicate of the other ("[H]ow to distinguish fused relatives from interrogative complements ('embedded questions')". – Edwin Ashworth Jun 07 '18 at 13:24
  • @JK2: If you have some good syntactic tests to distinguish the construction you call a "fused relative" from the construction you call an "interrogative", please describe them. Until then, all I can go on is what you say it seems like to you, which is certainly true but not really the answer, or you wouldn't've asked the question in the first place. So I don't have much to say about your distinction. If you do have tests, they should be applied. If you don't, what are you asking about? – John Lawler Jun 07 '18 at 14:42
  • @EdwinAshworth I'm no newbie here, but I don't know how to "look at the close-vote reason". Where should I look? – JK2 Jun 07 '18 at 14:53
  • @JohnLawler Sorry, but I don't understand what you're talking about. If I had such tests, why do you think I would be asking this question? More importantly, why don't you say anything about my opinion that Haj Ross's paper is irrelevant in determining between 'fused relatives' and 'interrogatives'? – JK2 Jun 07 '18 at 15:04
  • @JK2: Because I still don't understand the difference you claim exists between the two terms. Aside from the differences pointed out in the paper, I don't know of any other syntactic tests that distinguish two other types of constituent both introduced by Wh-words. So I doubt their existence as separate entities, since they can't be distinguished. I don't know what else you want. – John Lawler Jun 07 '18 at 15:11
  • @JohnLawler Did you know the paper was neither here nor there when it comes to distinguishing 'fused relatives' and 'interrogatives', and still posted an irrelevant answer based solely on the paper? Or did you misinterpret the paper when posting the answer? Also, I don't know how you could claim you can't distinguish 'fused relatives' and 'interrogatives' when there are huge amounts of discussions distinguishing the two in virtually every decent grammar, including The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. – JK2 Jun 07 '18 at 16:01
  • The distinction I make is this, which, as I understand it, follows Ross's perspective. Relative clauses are factive: This is part of why the disease is so devastating (the speaker makes a factual statement; "why" as relative pronoun); interrogative clauses are unknown: I don't understand why the disease is so devastating (the speaker is stating an unknown; "why" as interrogative pronoun). I wonder if my distinction makes sense, as a linguistic explanation. – Puzzled Jun 07 '18 at 16:29
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    in other words, the presence of a "verb of questioning" makes a difference. – Puzzled Jun 07 '18 at 16:36
  • There's a big difference between fused relatives and subordinate interrogatives (embedded questions). Importantly, the latter are clauses functioning as complements, while the former are NPs. For example, "I've eaten [what you gave me]" is a fused relative construction, where the bracketed element is an NP. The meaning is comparable to that of the non-fused "I've eaten that which you gave me". By contrast, "I know where he is" is a subordinate interrogative, a clause meaning "I know the answer to the question 'Where is he?'" – BillJ Jun 07 '18 at 16:45
  • @Puzzled I wouldn't go along with that. In "This is part of [why the disease is so devastating]", "why" is not a relative word, but an interrogative one, so the bracketed element is a subordinate interrogative clause (embedded question). The meaning can be glossed as "This is part of the answer to the question 'Why is the disease so devastating?'" As JK2 correctly points out, the distinction is well-documented in modern grammars. Even learners are taught about embedded questions. – BillJ Jun 07 '18 at 17:01
  • @BillJ: Once again, you present definitions of what a particular word or construction is, according to you. Without any tests. I would ask more questions, but, as they keep reminding me, comments are not intended for extended discussion. I don't think there are any answers here. – John Lawler Jun 07 '18 at 21:20
  • The close-vote reason appears when you click to close vote as a duplicate; 'Possible duplicate of [nominated duplicate question]' appears automatically, not 'Fully answered to everyone's satisfaction at [nominated duplicate question]'. // Until your edit, you didn't even mention the previous and obviously hugely related question. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 07 '18 at 21:29
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    @JohnLawler As has been made abundantly clear in my comment to your answer citing Ross's paper, to which you have yet to reply, Ross's paper is not one bit about "fused relatives" or even "relatives". The paper doesn't even mention one word of "fused" or "relative", much less "fused relative". The paper is about distinguishing two types of "questions". Please read my comment first and answer to it there. I'm afraid the only answer that's got 6 votes there is not even about the call of the question. – JK2 Jun 08 '18 at 00:48
  • @EdwinAshworth No wonder I didn't know the feature. I haven't voted to close any question that I know of. And "previous and obviously hugely related question"? Really? When the only answer there fails to address the issue altogether? I'm sure you didn't even bother to read the answer when you decided to close-vote this question. What an "obviously hugely related question". – JK2 Jun 08 '18 at 00:57
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    @JohnLawler To answer the OP's specific question -- Fused relatives do not allow "why": *Why he did it is invalid ("the reason why ...") is ungrammatical, whereas "why" is allowed in interrogatives (I don't know why he did it) including governed exhaustive conditionals (No matter why she was late, they won't forgive her). – BillJ Jun 08 '18 at 05:52
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    In addition to the unacceptability of "Why he did it is unclear", fused relatives with "who" suffer the same fate: "Who steals my purse steals trash", and *"Who wrote this letter must have been mad" are both ungrammatical in Present-day English. – BillJ Jun 08 '18 at 08:51
  • @BillJ Just because your examples don't allow a fused relative 'why' doesn't mean there's no such thing as a fused relative 'why'. For example, it's a fused relative 'why' that's used in I was suspicious about why he did it, as shown by none other than GKP himself in his 2009 paper: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LTTCpaper.pdf – JK2 Jun 08 '18 at 12:44
  • It was noted above that "Why" is not used as a fused relative word, but only as an interrogative. See GCEL p1072 (BillJ's comment). But what CGEL says is that why is found in fused relatives "only under very restrictive conditions." Unfortunately, CGEL doesn't explain what they mean by that or how they arrive at that conclusion. Without clear guidance/solid criteria, I guess the acceptability of fused relative "why" is in the eye of the beholder. Either way (fused relative or interrogative), I wonder if it's better to say that "why" heads wh-complement clauses, and just leave it at that. – Puzzled Jun 08 '18 at 15:24
  • Update: It is on page 987 where CGEL says that fused relatives do not allow why. So now I read pages 987 and 1072 and I'm thinking that CGEL needs to make up its mind. – Puzzled Jun 08 '18 at 17:01
  • @JK2 More revealing is the table on p3, where fused "why" is marked as ?, where '' means ungrammatical and ‘?’ signals that the matter is in doubt but there is a tendency in the relevant direction. – BillJ Jun 08 '18 at 17:21
  • @Puzzled The bit in CGEL on p 1072 about "under strict conditions", I agree is not clear, but I'll do some research. I don't think we can say simply that "why" heads wh complement clauses because fused relatives are NPs in which the embedded relative clause is not a complement, but a modifier of the fused head. – BillJ Jun 08 '18 at 17:36
  • @BillJ The '?*' mark on the table is correct, statistically speaking, as the use of 'why' as a fused relative word is few and far between. My question is not about the use of 'why' as a fused relative "in general", but it's about a single sentence written by a BBC reporter. So, the mark on the table itself is not only not "more revealing" but actually is neither here nor there in my question. – JK2 Jun 11 '18 at 03:38

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