What is WH in situ?

Definition. Wh-in-situ is a wh-element which has not been moved overtly. In some languages (Japanese for instance), all wh-elements appear in situ; in languages with overt movement of one wh-element (like English), the other wh-elements stay in situ.

What does wh-movement mean?

In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. Interrogative forms are known within English linguistics as wh-words such as what, when, where, who, and why, but also include interrogative words like how.

What WH traces?

Definition. trace of wh-movement. If the moved element is an argument, its trace will be case-marked (see case assignment). Since wh-movement is A-bar movement, a wh-trace behaves as a variable and is subject to Principle C of the binding theory.

What are island constraints?

Island constraints are restrictions of movement rules by which some words or constructions or structures can’t be moved out from islands. Ross (1967) develops the notion of syntactic “islands” whose constituents cannot be questioned or extraposed.

How WH questions are formed?

Forming wh-questions We usually form wh-questions with wh- + an auxiliary verb (be, do or have) + subject + main verb or with wh- + a modal verb + subject + main verb: Modal: Who would she stay with?

Are WH words Complementizers?

Similarly, “wh-” questions always begin with a complementizer, including such words as who, whom, whose, what, which, why, when, where, and how. The important difference between these and adverbial clauses lies in the complementizers themselves.

Does Chinese have wh-movement?

Putting these facts together, wh-adjuncts both in Chinese and Japanese undergo movement as illustrated in (4). On the other hand, wh-arguments are different between two languages. Chinese wh-arguments are subject to unselective binding as shown in (5a) and Japanese wh-arguments involve movement as in (5b).

Does Spanish have wh-movement?

AGR system among languages appear to give rise to different syntactic behaviors. Chinese, which lacks AGR, does not have wh-movement and needs a scope marker to transmit the [+wh] feature to the predicate. English and Spanish have AGR, which allows a wh-phrase to transmit its [+ wh] feature under Spec-head agreement.

What are syntactic Islands?

The phenomenon of the syntactic ‘island’ – a clause or structure from which a word cannot be moved – is central to research and study in syntactic theory.

What is a complex NP?

A complex or heavy NP is one with a noun head and a modifying clause.