University of Tripoli

Faculty of languages
Department of English language

Chapter six Summary

Wh-Movement

By Aya Mustafa Ben Al Haj

Autumn 2022-2023
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1. Overview:
In this chapter, we look at a very different kind of movement operation traditionally
termed wh-movement, by which a wh-expression like who or what languages moves
into the specifier position within CP. We begin by looking at the syntax of wh-
questions, and then go on to probe the syntax of other types of wh-clause, including
exclamative clauses and relative clauses.
- Wh- expression :
It is an expression containing the interrogative word with (wh- )like :what,when,
where, why, who,which and how.
2. Wh- Questions :.
It has been implicitly assumed that CP comprises a head C constituent (which can be
filled by a complementiser or a preposed auxiliary) and a TP complement. However,
we need to look at the root interrogative of wh-expression such as (1):
below:
(1) (a) What languages can you speak?
(b) Which one would you like?
(c) Who was she dating?
What position is occupied by the the bold printed constituent which precedes the
italicized auxiliary?
Each of the wh-expressions in (1) functions as the complement of the verb at the end
of the sentence
Note: (Note that how in questions like How are you? How well did he behave? etc. is
also treated as a wh-word because it exhibits the same syntactic behaviour as
interrogative words beginning with wh-.)
- Wh-in-situ Questions:
(2) (a) You can speak what languages?
(b) You would like which one?
(c) She was dating who?
(d) You are going where?
Structures like (2) are termed wh-in-situ questions, since the bold-printed wh-
expression does not get preposed, but rather remains in situ (i.e. ‘in place’) in the
canonical position associated with its grammatical function (e.g. what languages in

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(2a) is the direct object complement of speak, and complements are normally
positioned after their verbs, so what languages is positioned after the verb speak).

- Echo Questions:
In English, wh-in-situ questions are used primarily as echo questions, to echo and
question something previously said by someone else – as we can illustrate in terms of
the following dialogue:
(3) speaker a: I just met Lord Lancelot Humpalot
speaker b: You just met who?
Echo questions such as that produced by speaker B in (3) suggest that the wh-
expressions in (1) originate as complements of the relevant verbs, and subsequently
get moved to the front of the overall clause. The position that they are moved into
some position preceding the inverted auxiliary.

Two different kinds

of movement
operation (indicated
by the numbered
arrows) are
involved in (4): the
movement arrowed
in (1) involves
the familiar
operation of head
movement by which the bold-printed auxiliary was moves from the head T position
of TP into the head C position of CP; by contrast, (2) involves movement of an
italicised wh-expression from the complement position within VP into the specifier
position in CP, and this very different kind of movement operation is known as wh-
movement.
Note: that unlike head movement (which, as its name suggests,moves only heads
which are minimal projections), wh-movement moves maximal projections; for
instance, in (1a) What languages can you speak? wh-movement moves the quantifier
phrase what languages which is the maximal projection of the interrogative quantifier
what? By virtue of being the largest expression headed by the word what; and in (1c)

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Who was she dating? it moves the interrogative Q-pronoun who (which is a maximal
projection by virtue of being the largest expression headed by the word who).

3. Wh- movement as copying and deletion:

A moved wh-expression leaves behind a copy at its extraction site (i.e. in the position
out of which it is extracted/moved). A moved constituent and its trace(s) were
together said to form a (movement) chain, with the highest member of the chain
being the head and the lowest trace being the foot of the chain.
Within the framework of Chomsky’s more recent copy theory of movement, a trace
is taken to be a full copy (rather than a pronominal copy) of a moved constituent. The
assumption that moved wh-expressions leave a copy behind can be defended not only
on theoretical grounds, but also on empirical grounds. One such empirical argument
comes from a phenomenon known as wanna-contraction.
In colloquial English, the sequence want to can sometimes contract to wanna, as in
(6) below:
(6) (a) I want to go home (b) I wanna go home
control infinitive clauses are CPs headed by a null complementiser, the complement
clause in (6a) will have the skeletal structure shown in (7) below:
(7) I want [CP [C o] [TP PRO [T to] go home]]
The fact that wanna-contraction is possible in (6b) suggests that neither the
intervening null complementiser o nor the intervening null subject PRO prevents to
from cliticising onto want in the phonological component, forming want+to – which
is ultimately spelled out as wanta or wanna.
Note: (in non-sloppy speech styles) the sequence want to cannot contract to wanna in
sentences like (8) below:
(a) Who don’t you want to win the game? (b) ∗Who don’t you wanna win the game?
Why should this be?
Well, let’s assume that who in (8) originates as the subject of the infinitive clause to
win the game – as seems plausible in view of the fact that (8a) has the echo-question
counterpart:
(9) You don’t want who to win the game?

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Let’s also assume that the complement of want in structures like (8) and (9) is a CP
headed by a null complementiser (perhaps a null variant of for). On this view, (9) will
have the skeletal structure (10) below:
(10) You don’t want [CP [C o] [TP who [T to] win the game]].
Movement of who to the front of the overall sentence (together with auxiliary
inversion) will result in the structure shown below (simplified, inter alia, by not
showing the trace of the inverted auxiliary):
(11) Who don’t you want [CP [C o] [TP who [T to] win the game]]
Consider the following examples:
(15) (a) What hope of finding survivors could there be?
(b) What hope could there be of finding survivors?

in (15b), it would seem as if only part of this QP (= the string what hope) undergoes
wh-movement, leaving behind the PP of finding survivors. The problem with this is
that the string what hope is not a constituent, only a subpart of the overall QP what
hope of finding survivors.
Copy theory provides us with an answer, if we suppose that wh-movement places a
copy of the complete QP what hope of finding survivors at the front of the overall
sentence, so deriving the structure shown in skeletal form in (17) below:
(17) What hope of finding survivors could there be what hope of finding survivors?
If we further suppose that the PP of finding survivors is spelled out in its original
position (i.e. in the italicized position it occupied before wh-movement applied) but
the remaining constituents of the QP (the quantifier what and the noun hope) are
spelled out in the superficial (bold-printed) position in which they end up after wh-
movement, (15b) will have the superficial structure shown in simplified form below
after copy-deletion has applied.
4- Wh-movement, EPP and the Attract Closest Principle
As Chomsky suggested [epp] feature is the mechanism which drives movement of
wh-expressions to spec-CP. He maintains that just as T in finite clauses carries an
[epp] feature requiring it to be extended into a TP projection containing a subject as
its specifier, so too C in wh-questions carries an [epp] feature requiring it to be
extended into a CP projection containing a wh-expression as its specifier.
We can illustrate how the EPP analysis of wh-movement works by looking at the
derivation of the bracketed interrogative complement clause in (26) below:

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 (26) He wants to know [where you are going]

On the assumption that the wh-pronoun

where carries a [wh] feature, this means that
C will attract the wh-pronoun where to move
from the VP-complement position which it
occupies in (27) above to CP-specifier
position. If we suppose that the [wh] and [epp] features carried by C are deleted (and
thereby inactivated) once their requirements are satisfied (deletion being indicated by
strikethrough), we derive the structure (28) below (assuming, too, that the
phonological features of the trace of the moved wh-constituent where are also deleted
(28):

- Wh-question involving auxiliary inversion as well as wh-movement :

The tense feature of C attracts the tense
auxiliary to move to C.The (WH, EPP)
[TNS, EF, EPP] features of C require C to have wh-
ɵ
expression as its specifier ,hence , trigger
movement of the wh- pronoun "who" to
Sspec-C.

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 - Attract Closest Principle/ACP

- The EPP analysis of wh-movement has interesting implications for the syntax
of multiple wh-questions which contain two or more separate wh-expressions.
- A salient syntactic property of such questions in English is that only one of the
wh-expressions can be preposed – as we see from the fact that in the bracketed
interrogative clauses in (29) below, only who can be preposed and not what:

Attract Closest
Principle/ACP
A head which attracts a given
kind of constituent attracts the
closest
constituent of the relevant
kind

(a) I wonder [who he might think has done what].

)b) ∗I wonder [who what he might think has done].
)c) ∗I wonder [what who he might think has done].
)d) ∗I wonder [what might he think who has done].
In order to get a clearer picture of what is going on in the bracketed complement
clause here.
5- Explaining what moves where
C in main-clause wh-questions carries not only [WH, EPP] features but also a [TNS]
feature.

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Why the [TNS] feature of C attracts movement of T rather than TP, and the answer
is: that movement of TP is ruled out by a Remerger Constraint which bars a head
from being merged with the same constituent more than once; we argued that
movement of an inverted auxiliary from T to C rather than to spec-CP is the
consequence of a Constituent Structure Constraint to the effect that only a head
can occupy a head position, and only a maximal projection can occupy a specifier
position.
Why does the [wh] feature of C attracts movement of a wh-max (i.e. a maximal
projection containing a wh-word) rather than a minimal projection?
This is because the [EPP] feature of C requires C to project a specifier, and the
Constituent Structure Constraint will only allow a maximal projection to occupy a
specifier position.We looked briefly at an alternative account developed by Chomsky
under which the [TNS] feature of C is an affixal feature which triggers head
movement in the PF component, whereas the [WH] feature of C is a syntactic feature
which triggers movement of a wh-max to spec-CP.

6- Wh-subject questions:
The [wh, epp] features of C trigger movement of a wh-expression to spec-CP; and the
affixal [tns] feature carried by C in main-clause questions triggers movement of an
auxiliary or tense affix from T to C (with a moved tense affix requiring concomitant
do-support. However, these assumptions made raise interesting questions about how
we account for the contrast in (42) below:
(42) (a) Who’d the police call? (’d = did) (b) ∗Who the police called?
(c) Who called the police? (d) ∗Who’d call the police? (’d = did)
The syntax of wh-subject questions like Who called the police? which contain a wh-
word which is the subject of the interrogative clause. We noted that such questions do
not involve auxiliary inversion, and outlined Pesetsky and Torrego’s account under
which the relevant clauses are CPs, with the [wh] and [tns] features of C jointly
attracting the wh-subject to move from spec-TP to spec-CP (the relevant wh-subject
being assumed to carry a copy of the tense feature carried by T).
7- Pied-piping
A C carrying [WH, EPP] features attracts a constituent headed by a wh-word to move
to spec-CP. An interesting problem posed by this assumption is how we account for
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what happens in clauses like those bracketed in (49) below where an (italicised) wh-
expression is the complement of a (bold-printed) preposition:
(49) (a) They asked [who he was referring to]
(b) They asked [to whom he was referring]
complement clause in (49a) will be derived as follows. The preposition to merges
with its pronoun complement who to form the PP to who. This in turn is merged with
the verb referring to form the VP referring to who. This VP is then merged with the
past-tense auxiliary was, forming the T-bar was referring to who whichin turn is
merged with its subject he to form the TP he was referring to who. Merging the
resulting TP with a null interrogative complementiser carrying [wh,epp] features will
derive the structure shown in (50) below:

8- Yes–no questions:
yes–no questions are CPs containing an interrogative specifier. But what kind of specifier
could yes–no questions contain? The answer suggested in Grimshaw (1993) and Roberts
(1993) is that they contain a null question operator which is directly generated in spec-
CP (i.e. which is positioned in spec-CP by simple merger rather than movement).
Evidence 1:
in Elizabethan English we found main-clause yes–no questions introducedby the overt
question word whether, as illustrated below:
(70) (a) Whether had you rather lead mine eyes or eye your master’s heels? (Mrs Page,
The Merry Wives of Windsor, III.ii)
(b) Whether dost thou profess thyself a knave or a fool? (Lafeu, All’s Well That Ends
Well, IV.v)
Evidence 2:
A second piece of evidence in support of the null-operator analysis comes from the fact
that yes–no questions can be introduced by whether when they are transposed into

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reported speech (and so occur in a complement clause), as we see from the examples
below:
(71) (a) ‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked
(b) He asked whether I was feeling better
Evidence 3:
A third piece of evidence is that yes–no questions with auxiliary inversion resemble
whether questions in that in both cases yes/no are appropriate answers:
(72) (a) When he asked ‘Did you vote for Larry Loudmouth?’, I said ‘Yes’ and you said
‘No’
(b) When he asked whether we voted for Larry Loudmouth, I said ‘Yes’ and you said
‘No’
Evidence4:
A fourth argument is that main-clause yes–no questions can be tagged by or not in
precisely the same way as complement-clause whether questions:
(73) (a) Has he finished or not?
(b) I can’t say whether he has finished or not
9- Wh-exclamatives:
One of these are exclamative clauses like (75) :
(a) What fun we have had!
(b) What a pain in the neck he must be!
(c) How badly he is behaving!
(d) How he longed to see her again!
These show wh-movement of an (italicised) exclamative wh-expression (containing
what! or how!) but no auxiliary inversion.
These are CPs in which the head C constituent carries [wh, epp] features, but no [tns]
feature: hence, exclamative clauses involve wh-movement without auxiliary
inversion.
The [wh] feature of C attracts the
closest maximal projection with a
wh-word (i.e. the QP what fun) and
moves it into spec-CP,simultaneously
deleting the [wh, epp] features on C.
The resulting derived structure is that
shown in simplified
form below:

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The auxiliary have remains in situ in the head T position of TP, since C in (76) and
(77) does not have a [tns] feature and hence cannot attract have to movefrom T to C.

10- Relative clauses:

These involves movement of a wh-expression containing a relative pronoun to spec-
CP, with a relative pronoun receiving a null spellout when occupying spec-CP –
optionally in finite clauses, obligatorily in infinitival clauses.
(82) (a) It’s hard to find people [who you can trust]
(b) It’s hard to find people [you can trust]
(83) (a) This is something [which I will treasure]
(b) This is something [I will treasure]
11- That Relatives:
A type of relative clause which we have not so far looked at are that relatives (i.e.
relative clauses introduced by that) like those bracketed below:
(109) (a) It’s hard to find people [that you can trust]
(b) There is little [that anyone can do]
(c) We now have computers [that even a child
These too involve movement of a wh-pronoun to spec-CP, with the wh-pronoun
obligatorily receiving a null spellout in consequence of the Multiply Filled COMP
Filter. We explored typological similarities between null relative pronouns and other
types of null pronoun
(including null pro and
PRO subjects and null
topics).
Overall, the main point of
this chapter has been to
look at the syntax of
preposed (interrogative,
exclamative and relative)
wh-expressions. All three types of expression end up (via movement) in an A-bar
position – i.e. a specifier position which can be occupied by either an argument or an
adjunct. Because it moves whexpressions into spec-CP and spec-CP is an A-bar

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position, wh-movement can be regarded as a particular instance of a more general A-
bar movement operation.
(As should be obvious, the term A-bar here is used in an entirely different manner
from thewaywe employed it in §3.5, when we claimed that in an adjectival phrase like
very proud of him, the string proud of him is an A-bar constituent and thus an
intermediate projection of the adjective proud.)

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