In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between what and the object position of doing in "What are you doing?". Interrogative forms are sometimes known within English linguistics as wh-words, such as what, when, where, who, and why, but also include other interrogative words, such as how. This dependency has been used as a diagnostic tool in syntactic studies as it can be observed to interact with other grammatical constraints. In languages with wh-movement, sentences or clauses with a wh-word show a non-canonical word order that places the wh-word (or phrase containing the wh-word) at or near the front of the sentence or clause ("Whom are you thinking about?") instead of the canonical position later in the sentence ("I am thinking about you"). Leaving the wh-word in its canonical position is called wh-in-situ and in English occurs in echo questions and polar questions in informal speech. Wh-movement is one of the most studied forms of linguistic discontinuity. It is observed in many languages and plays a key role in the theories of long-distance dependencies. The term wh-movement stemmed from early generative grammar in the 1960s and 1970s and was a reference to the theory of transformational grammar, in which the interrogative expression always appears in its canonical position in the deep structure of a sentence but can move leftward from that position to the front of the sentence/clause in the surface structure. Although other theories of syntax do not use the mechanism of movement in the transformative sense, the term wh-movement (or equivalent terms, such as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is widely used to denote the phenomenon, even in theories that do not model long-distance dependencies as a movement.
Basic examples The following examples of sentence pairs illustrate wh-movement in main clauses in English: each (a) example has the canonical word order of a declarative sentence in English, while each (b) sentence has undergone wh-movement, whereby the wh-word has been fronted in order to form a direct question. Wh-fronting of whom, which corresponds to the direct object Tesnière.
(1a) Tom has been reading Tesnière. (1b) Whom has Tom been reading? Wh-fronting of what, which corresponds to the prepositional object syntax.
(2a) She should stop talking about syntax. (2b) What should she stop talking about? Wh-fronting of when, which corresponds to the temporal adjunct tomorrow.
(3a) They want to visit us tomorrow. (3b) When do they want to visit us? Wh-fronting of what, which corresponds to the predicative adjective happy.
(4a) She is happy. (4b) What is she? Wh-fronting of where, which corresponds to the prepositional phrase to school.
(5a) She is going to school. (5b) Where is she going? Wh-fronting of how, which corresponds to the adverb phrase well.
(6a) They are doing well. (6b) How are they doing? These examples illustrate that wh-movement occurs when a constituent is questioned that appears to the right of the finite verb in the corresponding declarative sentence. The main clause remains in V2 word order, with the interrogative fronted to first position while the finite verb stays in second position. Do-support is often needed to enable wh-fronting in such cases, which are reliant on subject–auxiliary inversion.
Subject "fronting" When the subject is questioned, it is unclear whether wh-fronting has occurred because the default position of the subject is clause-initial. In the example sentence pair below, the subject Fred already appears at the front of the sentence where the interrogative is placed.
a. Fred is working hard. b. Who is working hard? Some theories of syntax maintain that this constitutes a wh-movement, and analyze such cases as if the interrogative subject has moved up the syntactic hierarchy; however, other theories observe that the surface string of words remains the same, and therefore, no movement has occurred.
Distance of movement In many cases, wh-fronting can occur regardless of how far away its canonical location is, as seen in the following set of examples:
a. Whom does Mary like __? b. Whom does Bob know that Mary likes __? c. Whom does Carl believe that Bob knows that Mary likes __? The interrogative whom is the direct object of the verb like in each of these examples. The dependency relation between the canonical, empty position and the wh-expression appears to be unbounded, in the sense that there is no upper bound on how deeply embedded within the given sentence the empty position may appear.
Wh-expressions without wh-movement Wh-movement typically occurs when forming questions in English. There are certain forms of questions in which wh-movement does not occur (aside from when the question word serves as the subject and so is already fronted):
Echo questions: Speaker confirming what they thought they've heard. You bought what? Quiz questions or specific questions: Asking for detailed specific information. George Orwell was born in which country? Multiple interrogatives in a single sentence. Who bought what? Expected questions: Occur when new information is expected. Other languages may leave wh-expressions in-situ (in base position) more often, such as Slavic languages. In French, for instance, wh-movement is often optional in certain matrix clauses. Mandarin and Russian also possess wh-expressions without obligatory wh-movement. In-situ questions are different from wh-fronted questions in that they result from no movement at all, which tends to be morphologically or pragmatically conditioned.
In subordinate clauses The basic examples above demonstrate wh-movement in main clauses in order to form a direct question. Wh-movement can also occur in subordinate clauses, although its behavior in subordinate clauses differs in word order.
In indirect questions In English, wh-movement occurs in subordinate clauses to form an indirect question. While wh-fronting occurs in both direct and indirect questions, there is a key word order difference, as illustrated with the following examples:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
