23 WH- Movement

Dr. Chhaya Jain

Learning outcome

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to understand about

Wh-movement
Wh-Phrases
Its various constraints
How it works in other languages

Introduction

In linguistic there are various types of movement which affects either heads or maximal projections. Wh-movement is an important phenomenon in a language. It is based on government and binding theory. This is a transformational approach of the theory of universal

grammar which was developed by Noam Chomsky in 1980s. It is also called as Principles and Parameters theory as it accepts that all languages have universal structural principles together with various parameters on a language-specific basis. According to this theory Universal grammar has two components that are levels of representation and system of constrains. A language can be represented by different levels. First one is mental lexicon which stores different words then predicates which encode their semantic relationship by assigning theta-roles. The lexical items are arranged at D-structure. X-bar theory regulates the position of specifiers adjuncts and complements around a head X within a phrase XP.(cf. Carnie 2007:188)

The term Wh-movement originates from early Generative Grammar of 1960s and 1970s and used as reference to the transformational analysis. The Wh-expression appeared in its canonical position at deep structure and then moved leftward out of that position to land its derived position at the front of the sentence/clause at surface structure.

Wh-words and Wh-Phrase

In English, words which start with the letters ‘wh’ like what, which, who etc are called wh-words. Technically the term is applied to words that have these meanings in any language. It doesn’t matter what is their sound.

A phrase which has wh-word is called wh-phrase. It is somehow characterized as a question operator. For exa mple: in what way, of what size etc. Wh-words can either form a phrase or be the part of a phrase. For example:

What novel did she read?
IYou wonder where he is gone.

In first sentence wh-word what is part of the NP ‘what book’ and in second it is a part of a phrase.

What is wh-movement?

Wh-movement which is also referred as wh-fronting or wh-extraction is a special rules of syntax by which interrogative words can be placed at the beginning of an interrogative sentence or clause. These interrogative words are also called as wh-words. They can be used direct as well as indirect questions. For example:

Which is your book?
I asked what she is doing.

Wh-movement is also a syntactic process. The term Wh-movement is applied universally even when the interrogative words do not start with ‘wh’. This type of movement is also called as A-movement because the landing site of the movement is an A-bar movement.(Culicover 1997:179)

According to Radford (2004:153) wh-expression originally occupy a complement position at the end of the sentence.

What languages do they speak?
They can speak what languages?

Borsley says that wh-expression can also have different functions in the sentences.

Who did Raj see? -Object of a verb
Who did he give the pen to?- Object of a preposition

Wh-words can also be used in relative clauses. A sentence or clause which contains wh-words shows a special word order as it appears at the front of the sentence or clause.

Example: What is your name?

According to GB theory, wh-movement is studied as constituent movement, where the wh-phrase originates in D structure, moves up to a higher position in the sentence and leaves behind a silent trace.

Chomsky defines that wh-movement must have the following features [+WH] under COMP. It attracts a wh-phrase to join it in the specifier position. The rule of wh-movement has the following characteristics:

It leaves a gap
Where there is a bridge, there is an apparent violation of subjacency, PIC and SSC
It observes CNPC
It observes wh-island constraints.

Most of the modern syntax theories do not admit any kind of movement in the transformative sense even so the term wh-movement is used to a great extent to denote the observed phenomenon. Those theories that do not admit the wh-movement also used the term.

Typology of wh-movement– There are different types of wh-movement are present in language.

Overt wh-movement– It is also called as ‘obligatory’ which contains the movement of all wh- phrases at S-structure. Bulgarian language has this kind of movement. Example

Kakvo koj e kupil? ‘What did who buy?’

Covert wh-movement– This type of movement is also called non-existent which contains that S- structure no wh-phrases move at all but stay in their original syntactic position. In Japanese language this kind of movement present. Example:

Taroo-ga dare-ni-nani-o ageta no?

Taroo-NOM who-DAT what-ACC gave-Q

‘Who did Taroo give what?’( from Richards 2002:1)

Partly overt movement- In this movement at S-structure one wh-phrase is moved and other is remained in situ. English language is the example of this movement.

Examples of Wh-movement

Given examples show wh-movement. In each pair, first sentence has the canonical word order of a declarative sentence and second sentence shows wh-movement. The related words are bold.

Priya has been reading Adiga.
Who has been Priya reading?

Here the direct object corresponding to Adiga has been wh-movement as the wh-word who.

My parents want to visit us today.
When do my parents want to visit us?

In this sentence the adjunct corresponding to today has been confronted as the wh-word when. Both the sentences show that wh-movement takes place when a constituent is questioned that appears to the right of the finite verb in the corresponding declarative sentence.

In English language wh-movement takes place to form a question but there are three types of questions in which this movement does not occur even when the question word serves as a subject.

Echo questions (She bought what?)
Quiz questions (Mahatma Gandhi was born in which country?)
Multiple questions (who went where?)

Pied-piping

The term Pied piping was first used by John R. Ross in 1967. When a fronted wh-word pulls the whole wh-phrase to the front of the clause it is called pied piping. This can be both obligatory and optional. Obligatory pied piping means the whole encircled phrase must be fronted with wh- expression. Example:

Jimmy is writing a story book?

What book is Jimmy writing?- pied piping of book. What is Jimmy writing a book? pied piping not occurred.

It can be said that when the wh-word is inside a NP or Ap pied piping becomes necessary.

Sometimes pied piping can be optional as it occurs with PPs. When wh-word is the object of the preposition, pied piping is not compulsory, it makes a sentence artificial. Example:

She is sitting behind the brown gate.

Behind which gate is she sitting? Pied piping with a formal register. Which gate is she hiding behind? No pied piping.

Wh-movement in direct and indirect questions

There are two types of questions direct and indirect. Direct question is expressed with main clause and indirect question with subordinate clause. Wh-movement takes place in both questions. There is a key word order differences that differentiate the both.

Ravi will ask Mohan to go.
Who1 will2 Ravi ask to go?- Direct question
I wonder who1 Ravi2 will3 ask to go.- Indirect question
John likes to hear news about planets.
What1 does2 John like to hear news about?- Direct question
They asked what1 John2 likes3 to hear news about.-Indirect Question

In above sentences the subscripts denote a central word order difference across direct and indirect questions. When wh-movement takes place in main clause, finite verb presents in second position and in indirect questions infinite verb present in third position.

Constraints on wh-movement

The island constraints

In direct and indirect questions wh-phrases have their position as a result of movement. When wh-phrase moves out of the CP where it arises are called long distance wh-movement. It is also known as long or nonlocal movement. Example

In 1967 Ross argued that wh-movement is not actually unbounded. He introduced the term island to refer to frameworks that do not allow a wh-phrase to ‘escape’ from them. There are different types of islands:

Adjunct islands
Wh-islands
Subject islands
Left branch islands
Coordinate islands
Complex noun phrase islands
Non-bridge islands.

Adjunct islands

This is form from an adjunct clause. Wh-fronting is not possible out of an adjunct clause. Relative clause and clauses with because, if and when comes under adjunct clause. Some examples are:

John likes the woman who wears sari?
What does John like the woman who wears….?
The attempt to extract out of an adjunct clause fails.

Wh-islands

It is form by an extraction of wh-phrase from a declarative clause in an embedded sentence in which wh-word is present. It is weaker than Adjunct Island. Examples:

Jimmy asked why Ravi was waiting for John.
Who did asked Jimmy ask why Ravi was waiting for….?

Subject islands

In English wh-fronting is not possible out of subjects but it is quite possible in object clause and phrases. Examples:

The myth about the king was funny.
?? Who was the story about….funny?

Left branch islands

Ross has introduced the term in1967. The left branch constraints are modifiers that precede the noun that they modify. They carry the fact that possessive determiners and attributive adjectives inevitably pied-pipe the entire NP when they are moved.

Example:

Jonny bought a costly car.
How costly did Jonny buy a …car? Extraction from left branch under a noun fails.
How costly a car did Jonny buy? if NP is pied piped, extraction succeeds.

Coordinate structure islands A conjunct in a coordinate structure may not be moved out of that coordinate structure .If extraction affects the conjuncts of the coordinate structure equally then extraction out of a conjunct of a coordinate structure takes place. It is also called across the board (ATB) extraction.

Example:

Susan (gave a book to me) and (loaned a pen to her).
What did Susan (give….to me) and (loan…to her) ATB extraction succeeds.

Noun Phrase islands

From a NP, extractions are difficult; wh-movement cannot cross more than one CP at a time. It also cannot cross a DP and a CP in the same step. This constraint is called complex NP constraints. It has two forms, the banning extraction from the clausal complement of a noun and banning extraction from a relative clause which modifies a noun. Example

We hired a man who speaks a south Asian language.
What a south Asian language did we hire a man who speaks…..?

Extraction out of complex NP fails

Non-bridge verb islands

That clause which acts as complements (when extraction is possible out of object) to verb shows island like behavior if the matrix verb is a non-bridge verb. (Erteschik-Shir 1973). Example:

Mita thinks that she died in her sleep.
How does Mita thinks that she died….?(extraction out of object clause)
Mita shouts that she had died in her sleep.
How does Mita shouts that she had died….?(extraction across a non-bridge verb)

Relative clauses as instances of wh-movementWh-relative clause

In English both questions and wh-relative clauses are start with wh-phrase.

I. Where do you find him?(question)

II. The place where you find him. (clause)

In relative clause wh-movement is an idea that supported by the fact that wh-relative clauses show the whole range of island effects. It also shows the Comp-trace effect. The wh-relative pronoun moves to CPand the syntactic head of the clause is a silent complementizer. It is like an indirect question.

That relative clauses

That relative clause is parallel to wh-relative clause but in that relative clause complementizer is easily seen and wh-phrase that is silent.

That relative clause does not show the Comp trace effect which has agap in subject position.

Doubly marked relative clauses

In Middle English and in vernacular varities of other languages doubly marked indirect questions are authenticated. They are not accepted in Modern Standard English. There are some examples from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English

Thy freend which that thou has lorn(cmctmeli.m3,218.C131z) ‘your friend that you have lost’
The fire of angre and of wratthe, which that he sholde quenche (cmctpars.m3,308.C2859) ‘the fire of anger and wrath, which he should quench’

This shows that this construction is grammatical and wh-phrase and the overt complementizer are clausal subordination.

Zero relative clauses

There are some clauses that are not introduced by any overt element at all. Such clauses are also possible in English and known as Zero relative clause or contact relative clause. Examples:

The animal…..I saw

The place…you prefer.

The correct assessment of zero subject relative clauses is not exactly clear but it has been argued that such relative causes are grammatical but avoided for processing. Sometimes they are misinterpreted as the predicate of the matrix clause when they modify subjects. Example:

A person…..lives in the plains has a unique feature.

Henry 1995 claims that zero subject relative clauses are not real relative clause.

Wh-movements in other languages

In other languages of the world wh-movement is also found. German, Spanish and French are closely related to English and wh-fronting is a common phenomenon in these languages. In most of the languages wh-words are placed at the beginning of the sentences. The islands to wh-extraction are also found in different languages. It is true that there are variations but it is general process. Here are some examples of different languages.

Examples:

In Japanese and Chinese, wh-phrase are in situ position

John-wa dare-ni nani-o ageta ka?

John-top who-dat what-acc gave Q

‘who did John give what?’

In Bulgarian wh-phrase in a sentence is raised

Koj kogo vizda?

Who whom sees

‘who sees whom’

In French there is an alternate between moving the wh-phrase or leaving in situ

A qui a t-elle donne la montre?

‘To whom did she give the watch?’

Egyptian Arabic uses similar way as French

Seme9t eeh?

Hear.2.S.M.Past What ?

‘What did you hear?’

The following sentence shows wh-movement in Spanish

Juan compro carne

‘John bought meat’.

?Que compro Juan

‘What did John buy?

In German

Wen liest er jeden Abend?

‘Who does he read every evening?’

you can view video on WH- Movement

Reference

Borsley, R. D. (2015), Apparent filler–gap mismatches in Welsh, Linguistics 53, 995-1029.
Carnie, Andrew. 2012. Syntax: A Generative Introduction, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell. pg 188
Culicover, Peter W. Explaining Syntax. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2013
Radford, A. 2004. English syntax: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Riemsdijk, H. van and E. Williams. 1986. Introduction to the theory of grammar. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Roberts, I. 1997. Comparative syntax. London: Arnold.
Ross, J. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.