Video 12.4 Wh-movement in Embedded Clauses

Andrew Carnie presents Syntax: A Generative Introduction 4E. Wiley Blackwell.

Video 12.4 Wh-movement in Embedded Clauses

Carnie runs through the derivation of a sentence where there is wh-movement to the specifier of an embedded CP.

[alexmark]

Thank you very much for all the amazing videos! Truly invaluable for laymen such as myself!


There's something I'm not completely clear on:

I wonder if the wh-phrase in constructions such as the ones discussed in this video is necessarily in the SpecCP position and as a result of wh-movement.

A verb like "wonder" always takes a CP complement, and so it makes sense that in a sentence like "I wonder what she did, " the "what she did" is a CP, with "what" in SpecCP position as a result of wh-movement.

However, constructions that (at least on the surface) look identical to this one can also be found with verbs that never take CP complements, as in "I will eat what you give me."

It seems to me that "eat" cannot (semantically) be understood as taking a CP complement, but only a DP one, and so "what you give me" should instead be a DP, with "what" as the head, and "you give me" a CP adjunct (relative clause) with a null operator and a null complementizer, as in "what (which) (that) you give me."

Is my intuition here correct, or am I missing something?