Wh-movement

by Cheng, Lisa Lai Shen; Corver, Norbert

• ISBN13: 9780262532792
• ISBN10: 0262532794
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Wh-movement--the phenomenon by which interrogative words appear at the beginning of interrogative sentences--is one of the central displacement operations of human language. Noam Chomsky's 1977 paper "On Wh-Movement," a landmark in the study of wh-movement (and movement in general), showed that this computational operation is the basis of a variety of syntactic constructions that had previously been described in terms of construction-specific rules. Taking Chomsky's paper as a starting point, the contributors to this collection reconsider a number of the issues raised in "On Wh-Movement" from the perspective of contemporary Minimalist syntactic theory (which explores the thesis that human language is a system optimally designed to meet certain interface conditions imposed by other cognitive systems with which the language faculty interacts). They discuss such wh-movement issues as wh-phrases and pied-piping, the formation of A-bar chains and the copy theory of movement, cyclicity and locality of wh-movement, and the typology of wh-constructions. By reconsidering core characteristics of the wh-movement operation first systematically discussed by Chomsky from the Minimalist perspective, this volume contributes to the further development of the theory of wh-movement and to the general theory of movement. Contributors: Brian Agbayani, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Sandra Chung, Norbert Corver, Caterina Donati, Kleanthes K. Grohmann, Toru Ishii, Heejeong Ko, Howard Lasnik, Philip LeSourd, Chris H. Reintges, Luigi Rizzi, Balázs Surányi, Akira Watanabe, Henrietta Yang

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii
Foreword	ix
Noam Chomsky
Acknowledgments	xiii
Chapter 1 Lines of Inquiry into Wh-Movement	1	(18)
Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and Norbert Corver
PART I Wh-Phrases and Pied-Piping	19	(76)
Chapter 2 On Wh-Head Movement	21	(26)
Caterina Donati
Chapter 3 The Pied-Piper Feature	47	(24)
Akira Watanabe
Chapter 4 Pied-Piping, Feature Movement, and Wh-Subjects	71	(24)
Brian Agbayani
PART II A-Chains and Copy Theory	95	(100)
Chapter 5 On the Form of Chains: Criterial Positions and ECP Effects	97	(38)
Luigi Rizzi
Chapter 6 On Overt and Covert Wh- and Relative Movement in Hindi and Punjabi	135	(30)
Henrietta Yang
Chapter 7 Movement, Wh-Agreement, and Apparent Wh-in-situ	165	(30)
Chris H. Reintges, Philip LeSourd, and Sandra Chung
PART III Cyclicity and Locality	195	(52)
Chapter 8 Conceptions of the Cycle	197	(20)
Howard Lasnik
Chapter 9 On the Relaxation of Intervention Effects	217	(30)
Toru Ishii
PART IV Wh-Constructions	247	(104)
Chapter 10 Top Issues in Questions: Topics–Topicalization–Topicalizability	249	(40)
Kleanthes K. Grohmann
Chapter 11 Mechanisms of Wh-Saturation and Interpretation in Multiple Wh- Movement	289	(30)
Balázs Surányi
Chapter 12 On the Structural Height of Reason Wh-Adverbials: Acquisition and Consequences	319	(32)
Heejeong Ko
Index	351