Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
 Wh-Whx

WH-CLEFT

  1. (Syntax) In English, a wh-clause that is employed as the subject of a cleft sentence.
    1. What he wanted to eat was pizza.
     | Teflpedia, 2023
  2. (Grammar) Example of a "wh-cleft" sentence:
    1. The one who wrote the book is me.
     | Rosanna Sornicola, 2008
  3. (Syntax) Weinert and Miller (1996) suggest that English "wh-clefts" are a heterogeneous class in that they can have varied degrees of structural integration; see the examples below (from Weinert and Miller 1996):
    1. now what you want to do is curve round that wood
    2. what you're going to do is you're going to continue your downward line for about another inch
     (1) is a classic wh-cleft with a cleft constituent or focus phrase (curve round that wood) that complements the wh-clause (what you want to do). The cleft constituent contains a bare verbal stem (curve) and has a form appropriate to its syntactic function, i.e. it is a phrasal complement of the wh-clause. Thus it is fully integrated. Also, prosodically, there is typically no pause between the two clauses, and the entire utterance has a single pitch pattern.
     In contrast, example (2) departs from this classic pattern in that the cleft constituent (you're going to continue ...) is less integrated into the wh-cleft. Firstly, Weinert and Miller report pauses and pitch markers separating the two parts of the sentence; therefore, utterances such as (2) have a bipartite prosodic structure. Secondly, the cleft constituent in (2) is an independent clause acting as the copula complement. The independent clause—complete with a subject and finite verb—contrasts with the copula complements of classic wh-clefts, which, for the verb do, include bare infinitives, to-infinitives and -ing forms. Compare the following three options (after Quirk et al. 1985):
    1. What he does is spoil the whole thing.
    2. What he does is to spoil the whole thing.
    3. What he's doing is spoiling the whole thing.
     Beyond the three types of complements in (3)-(5), Quirk et al. (1985) make an allowance for the occasional occurrence of matching verb forms similar to that in (5) but extended to perfective aspect, e.g. What he's done is spoilt the whole thing, although the authors mark this type with doubtful acceptability and suggest that the structure may be seen as an ellipsis of an appositional construction (What he's done is ((this): he's) spoilt the whole thing). | Wojciech Guz, 2015

WH-FRONTING
See WH-MOVEMENT.

WH-IN-SITU

  1. (Syntax) Though the term "wh-in-situ" was not coined until the 1980s (Aoun et al. 1981), properties of wh-in-situ have been investigated since the 1960s. It is by now a familiar fact that Chinese wh-questions, as well as multiple questions in English, contain in-situ wh-words, i.e., wh-words that do not undergo overt wh-movement, as in (1) and (2), in contrast with (3).
    1. Who bought what?
    2. Mandarin Chinese
      Hufei
      Hufei
      mai-le
      buy-PERF
      shenme
      what
      'What did Hufei buy?'
    3. What did John buy?
     The wh-words what and shenme 'what' in (1) and (2) stay in-situ in contrast with the moved wh-word what in (3). Note that wh-elements are in-situ in echo questions in English. | L. L. Cheng, 2003
  2. (Syntax) 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. In (1), what cannot move because its landing site is taken by who.
    1. I wonder who has bought what?
     (Chomsky 1981, 1986) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

WH-IN-SITU LANGUAGE
(Syntax) A language without wh-movement. | ?

WH-INFINITIVE

  1. (Syntax) A clause where a wh-phrase occurs in the left periphery of an infinitival clause. An example of this is the English sentence I don't know [what to buy]. A wh-phrase has moved to a left periphery position in the infinitival clause, indicated by brackets in this sentence. While some Germanic languages, namely English and Dutch, allow for wh-infinitives, the construction is ungrammatical in modern German and mainland Scandinavian languages. | Kane Wheelock, 2015
  2. (Syntax) The availability of embedded infinitival wh-questions and embedded infinitival polar questions is subject to cross-linguistic variation: These infinitival interrogatives are possible in English but not in German, as shown in (1) and (2).
    1. a. Lisa has decided [who to visit t ].
      b. Lisa has decided [whether to visit him or not].
    2. a.
       
      * Lisa
      Lisa
      hat
      has
      entschieden
      decided
      [ was
      what
      Tom
      Tom.DAT
      t
       
      zu
      to
      sagen ].
      say
        'Lisa has decided what to say to Tom.'
      b.
       
      * Lisa
      Lisa
      hat
      has
      entschieden
      decided
      [ ob
      whether
      Tom
      Tom.DAT
      etwas
      something.ACC
      zu
      to
      sagen ].
      say
        'Lisa has decided whether to say something to Tom.' (Sabel 2015)
     | Koji Sugisaki, 2022
  3. (Syntax) English and Norwegian exist in complementary distribution with regard to the licensing of wh-infinitives. Whereas English licenses these structures (1a), they are not possible in homeland Norwegian (1b), where they must be expressed with a finite complement clause (1c). Homeland Norwegian is illustrated with the written standard, Bokmål.
    1. a. I don't know [ what to do. ] [English]
      b.
       
      * Jeg
      I
      veit
      know
      ikke
      not
      [ hva
      what
      å
      INF
      gjøre. ]
      do
        'I don't know what to do.' [Norwegian Bokmål]
      c.
       
      Jeg
      I
      veit
      know
      ikke
      not
      hva
      what
      jeg
      I
      skal/kan/må
      shall/can/must
      gjøre.
      do
        'I don't know what I should do.'
     In this study we show that American Norwegian (AmNo) seems to have largely adopted the English-like strategy of licensing wh-infinitives; see the examples in (2).
    1. a.
       
      i
      I
      læRde
      learnt
      i
      in
      skuR'n
      school.DEF
      håsst
      how
      å
      INF
      snakke
      speak
      enngelst
      English
        'I learnt how to speak English in school.' (Hatton-01gm)
      b.
       
      menn
      but
      e
      I
      leRde
      learnt
      aller
      never
      åss'n
      how
      å
      INF
      læsa
      read
      nåssjt
      Norwegian
        'But I never learnt how to read Norwegian.' (CoonValley-08gm)
     The data above in (2), extracted from the open access Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS), housed at the University of Oslo (Johannessen 2015), evince that wh-infinitives appear to be acceptable in AmNo. | Michael Putnam and Åshild Søfteland, 2022

WH-INFINITIVE-GENERALIZATION
(Syntax) The languages of the world differ with respect as to whether they allow for infinitival interrogatives and infinitival relative clauses. In order to explain this variation, I postulate the "Wh-Infinitive-Generalization" that links the (non-) availability of infinitival interrogatives and infinitival relatives to morphological properties of the infinitival C-system.
 For all languages the existence of operator movement that may end up in an infinitival Spec CP as a final landing site implies the existence of overt infinitival complementizers:

  1. The Wh-Infinitive-Generalization (WHIG)
    Wh-movement may terminate in the Spec CP of an infinitive in a language iff this language possesses the option of filling the C-system of this (type of) infinitive with an overt complementizer.
  2. i. [+Op-in-SpecCPInf, +CompInf]
    ii. [−Op-in-SpecCPInf, −CompInf]
    iii. [+Op-in-SpecCPInf, −CompInf]
    iv. [−Op-in-SpecCPInf, +CompInf]
 According to (1), no languages of the kind (2iii-iv) should exist. However, to include diachronic facts, a formulation of (1) as an implicational generalization is adequate.
  1. The Wh-Infinitive-Generalization (WHIG) (revised)
    If wh-movement may terminate in the Spec CP of an infinitive in a language then this language possesses the option of filling the C-system of this (type of) infinitive with an overt complementizer.
 | Joachim Sabel, 2015

WH-MOVEMENT

  1. (Syntax) Or, wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising. The formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words.
     In languages with wh-movement, sentences or clauses with a wh-word show a noncanonical word order that places the wh-word (or phrase containing the wh-word) at or near the front of the sentence or clause (Who are you thinking about?) instead of the canonical position later in the sentence (I am thinking about you). | Wikipedia, 2022
  2. (Syntax) Syntactic theory in the early 1970s widely assumed that wh-questions were derived from a rule displacing a wh-phrase to the COMP position at the front of the clause proposed in Bresnan (1970). In On Wh-Movement (1977), Chomsky observes that this wh-movement rule, in addition to involving COMP, is also characterized by a certain set of other properties. First, the wh-movement transformation abides by the Complex NP and wh-island constraints explored in Ross (1967) and Chomsky (1973). Second, it can violate other locality constraints (such as the Specified Subject constraint and Subjacency), though only when there is a certain kind of embedding environment, known as a bridge. Finally, the wh-movement transformation has the property of leaving a gap. | Richard Kayne, Raffaella Zanuttini, and Thomas Leu, eds., 2014

WH-PARAMETER

  1. (Syntax) This parameter states that constituent questions are uniformly formed by an application of A'-movement, which accounts for their scope properties and interrogative semantics. Languages may differ, however, regarding the derivational timing or the linguistic level where the movement process is operative. | Chris Reintges, 2022
  2. (Syntax) Huang (1982) argued that languages vary in the level at which wh-movement applies. In many languages, including English, Italian, Russian, etc., at least one wh-phrasal movement occurs at overt syntax. In the wh-in-situ languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, etc., LF is the sole level at which wh-movement takes place. This proposal, which is largely assumed today, provided the first important attempt at a solution to the "wh-parameter" problem. | Shigeru Miyagawa, 1999

WH-QUESTION

  1. (Grammar) Questions can be divided into yes-no questions (also known as polar questions) and wh-questions (also known as constituent questions), according to the expected answer. As the name implies, the answer to a yes-no question is either yes or no. The answer to a wh-question is expressed by a constituent that corresponds to the wh-phrase in the question. Wh-phrases are so called because they generally begin with wh- in English (who, what, which, where, when, why). How counts as a wh-expression by virtue of its meaning, even though it doesn't begin with wh-. The term "wh-phrase" is standardly used even for languages other than English.
    1. Q: Who just came in?
      A: The boy from next door.
    2. Q: Who(m) did you invite?
      A: All my friends.
    3. Q: When did she call?
      A: After dinner.
    4. Q: Why did he do that?
      A: Out of ignorance.
    5. Q: How did you fix it?
      A: With the right tool.
     | Beatrice Santorini and Anthony Kroch, 2007
  2. (Grammar) A question that contains an interrogative pro-form, e.g., who, what, when, where, why, how. | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
  3. (Grammar) In a language with overt wh-movement, a question introduced by a wh-phrase: what have they bought? Otherwise, a question containing a wh-element. Distinguished from yes-no question. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
  4. (Grammar) English wh-questions contain a wh-word as a pronoun. Each of these start with the digraph wh, except how. The main wh-words are how, when, which, what, where, who, whose and why. How can also be used with adjectives and some adverbs, e.g. how much, how far, how often, etc.
     Four of these—who, what, which, and whose— can be used with a hidden do, but the others can't. E.g., Who wrote the book = Who did write the book?
     Wh-questions usually have falling intonation. | Teflpedia, 2023

WH-REMNANT

  1. (Syntax) Sluicing is ellipsis with a "wh-remnant". | Iván Ortega-Santos, Masaya Yoshida, and Chizuru Nakao, 2013
  2. (Syntax) 
    1. a. He is writing something, but you can't imagine [what he is writing].
      b. He is writing something, but you can't imagine [what]. (Ross 1969)
     The embedded clause in (1a), indicated by the brackets, contains a wh-question, which is reduced to only contain a wh-phrase in (1b). The full-fledged wh-question and the reduced wh-question have the same interpretation (Ross 1969, Lasnik 2001, Merchant 2001). The remaining wh-phrase in (1b), namely, what, is called a "wh-remnant", which has a corresponding part in the preceding clause, i.e., something, that is called a correlate.
     The type of sluicing configuration that appears in embedded clauses, as in (1b), is called embedded sluicing. Sluicing can also appear in matrix clauses, called matrix sluicing (Lasnik 1999). Consider example (2), where two speakers, A and B, engage in conversation:
    1. A: Mary will see someone.
      B: Who? (Lasnik 1999)
     The wh-remnant who in B's utterance has an overt correlate, someone, in A's utterance. | Xue Bai, 2023

WH-STRIPPING
(Syntax) A type of sluice-stripping that involves a wh-remnant other than why and a non-wh-remnant which contrasts with its antecedent in the antecedent clause.

  1. Wh-Stripping
    Spanish
    [Speaker A points at pictures of somebody other than the seller.]
    A:
     
    [Uno
    [one
    de
    of
    estos
    these
    tíos]x
    guys]x
    va
    will
    a
    to
    vender
    sell
    estas
    these
    fotos.
    pictures
      'One of these guys will sell these pictures.'
    B:
     
    Y
    and
    cuándo
    when
    fotos
    pictures
    de
    of
    sí mismox?
    himselfx
      'And when will he/one of these guys sell pictures of himself?'
 | Iván Ortega-Santos, Masaya Yoshida, and Chizuru Nakao, 2013

WH-TRACE
(Syntax) A trace of wh-movement. If the moved element is an argument, its trace will be case-marked. Since wh-movement is A-bar movement, a wh-trace behaves as a variable and is subject to Principle C of the binding theory. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

 

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