Basic English Syntax with Exercises

wh-question

7.3.1 Basic positions within the CP

So far we have looked mainly at declarative CPs. In this section we will turn our attention to interrogatives. There are a number of different types of interrogatives and most of them seem to make use of the CP in one way or another. The two most obvious ones are wh-questions and yes–no questions.

7.3.1 Basic positions within the CP

A wh-question is formed with the use of an interrogative pronoun, usually called a wh-element as in English they mostly begin with the letters ‘wh’, as in who, why, which, what, where, etc. How is an exception to this spelling convention, though from a linguistic point of view, the spelling is uninteresting and it is syntactic and semantic behaviour that are more important. From these points of view, how is just like the other ‘wh’-elements. In a wh-interrogative, the sentence begins with the wh-element:

7.3.1 Basic positions within the CP

Apart from (18a) where the wh-element replaces the subject, all other instances of wh-questions involve the wh-element being in front of the subject. Given that the subject’s surface position is the specifier of the IP, this indicates that the wh-element sits in a position outside the IP. Above the IP is the CP, so we may assume that the wh-element is situated in the CP. As wh-elements are phrases, probably DPs, though some of them have underlying distributions similar to PPs and therefore are either PPs or perhaps DPs non-canonically realising the prepositional role, they must occupy a phrasal position in the CP and the most obvious choice would be the specifier of the CP:

7.3.1 Basic positions within the CP

It makes perfect sense that wh-questions and yes–no questions involve the complementiser system as complementisers contribute the semantics of force to the sentence, but there is independent evidence for the validity of these analyses. To start, that inverted auxiliaries occupy the C position is supported by the observation that inverted auxiliaries and complementisers are in complementary distribution. The best evidence for this involves not interrogative clauses, though it is also true that we never get inverted auxiliaries and complementisers together in an interrogative, but conditional clauses. In English there are two types of conditional clause, one formed with an if complementiser and one formed with an inverted auxiliary:

7.3.2 Wh-movement

B’s response involves what is known as an echo question, in which a previously uttered sentence is more or less repeated and a part of it that was either not heard or not believed replaced by a wh-element. The meaning is quite clear: it is a request for someone to repeat or confirm the previous statement. This is very different from the meaning of a wh-question which is asking for information about a particular aspect of the sentence. Compare:

7.3.4 The interaction between wh-movement and inversion

But whether is not linked to any position inside the IP from which it has moved. This, I think, is understandable in terms of the functions of wh-elements. Most wh-elements are used in wh-questions and their function is to mark the clause as an interrogative and to indicate what the focus of the question is. (60a), for example is a question about the object, which is the position from which the wh-element derives. As we said, the function of whether is to mark a yes–no question and these questions focus on the truth of the sentence rather than on any particular piece of information it may carry. For this reason, then, whether does not need to hold a position in the clause, it merely indicates the clause’s question status. We may assume therefore that whether is a wh-element that is generated directly in the specifier of CP as a general interrogative operator. As it appears in embedded contexts, it will be accompanied by an interrogative complementiser Q with which it agrees:

7.3.5 Subject questions

The last issue concerning interrogatives we will discuss concerns the difference between wh-questions which focus on the main clause subject and all other kinds of wh-questions. With most wh-questions it is fairly easy to see that movements take place as elements such as objects and adjuncts do not appear in their expected positions, but at the beginning of the clause:

7.5.2 Focus fronting

If we want to have a focus and a wh-question in the same clause, we have to indicate the focus by stress alone rather than by movement: