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, 1988
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):
   3.  What he does is spoil the whole thing.
   4.  What he does is to spoil the whole thing.
   5.  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. | Lisa Lai-Shen 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

1. (Syntax) A language without wh-movement. | ?
2. (Examples)
    ○ The paradigm example of a wh-in-situ language is (Mandarin) Chinese. An example of a wh-question in this language appears in (1). The wh-word appears in the same position as a non-wh object, and it is not fronted as in English.
   1.  
       

      Hufei
      Hufei

      chi-le
      eat-ASP

      shenme
      what

      ne?
      Q

        'What did Hufei eat?' (Cheng 1991)
   
    | Benjamin Bruening, 2007
    ○ Bangla (Indo-Aryan; Bangladesh, West Bengal) has commonly been assumed to be an SOV wh-in-situ language. Here it is suggested that both of these characterizations are incorrect and that Bangla actually has obligatory overt wh-movement from a basic SVO word order. This is disguised by a conspiracy of factors but revealed in restrictions on wh-scope and certain apparently optional word order possibilities with complement clauses. Adopting a different perspective on the SOV status of Bangla allows for a simple explanation of the patterns observed and raises the possibility that other wh-in-situ languages may also have (obligatory) overt wh-movement. | Andrew Simpson, Tanmoy Bhattacharya, 2003
    ○ Huang's (1982) LF movement approach to wh-in-situ in languages like Chinese makes it possible to directly compare wh-in-situ languages with English-type languages where wh-phrases are overtly displaced. | Akira Watanabe, 2001

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. ] Norwegian Bokmål
      do

        'I don't know what to do.'
      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).
   2. 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-SpecCP_Inf, +Comp_Inf]
   ii. [−Op-in-SpecCP_Inf, −Comp_Inf]
   iii. [+Op-in-SpecCP_Inf, −Comp_Inf]
   iv. [−Op-in-SpecCP_Inf, +Comp_Inf]

3. 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.

WH-ISLAND
(Syntax) The extraction island created by an embedded sentence which is introduced by a wh-word.
 The complement of wonder in (1b) is a wh-island. The contrast with (1a) serves to show that it is the wh-element to whom which blocks the extraction of what.

1. a. what_i did you think [ Bert gave t_i to Bobje ]
   b. * what_i did you wonder [ to whom_j Bert gave t_i t_j ]

WH-ISLAND CONSTRAINT

1. (Syntax) Ross (1967) proposed that there are many syntactic structures out of which it is not possible to move. Such structures are traditionally called islands. Complex NP Constraint, Sentential Subject Constraint, and Coordinate Structure Constraint are some of the island structures defined by him. In the following years, the number of the island constraints was extended through the works of the scholars such as Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1970), Chomsky (1973), Ross (1984), Schafer (1995). Wh-island Constraint is one of the island structures proposed by Chomsky (1973). According to this constraint, wh-elements cannot cross a CP which has already been filled with another wh-element. That is to say, wh-extraction is prohibited out of another wh-clause. For instance:
   1.  * Who did George claim when he saw?
   
    | Sinan Çakır, 2017
2. (Syntax) It is well-known that wh-movement must obey locality constraints. One of them is the Wh-Island Constraint (WhIC), which prohibits wh-movement across [Spec, CP] filled with another wh-element, as illustrated in (1).
   1.  ?* [_CP1 Which book₁ do you wonder [_CP2 to whom₂ [_TP John gave t₁ t₂] ] ]?
   
    Since Chomskyʼs (1973) first formulation of this constraint, a lot of work has contributed to the understanding of the nature of this constraint as to why such a constraint exists, when and where it applies, and how it works. | Sato Hideshi, 2013

WH-MOVEMENT

1. (Syntax) Or, wh-fronting, or, wh-extraction, or, wh-raising. In languages with wh-movement, sentences or clauses with a wh-word show a non-canonical word order that places the wh-word (or phrase containing the wh-word) at or near the front of the sentence or clause (Whom are you thinking about?) instead of the canonical position later in the sentence (I am thinking about you). Leaving the wh-word in its canonical position is called wh-in-situ and in English occurs in echo questions and polar questions in informal speech.
    The term wh-movement stemmed from early generative grammar in the 1960s and 1970s and was a reference to the theory of transformational grammar, in which the interrogative expression always appears in its canonical position in the deep structure of a sentence but can move leftward from that position to the front of the sentence / clause in the surface structure. Although other theories of syntax do not use the mechanism of movement in the transformative sense, the term wh-movement is widely used to denote the phenomenon, even in theories that do not model long-distance dependencies as a movement.
    Basic examples:
   1. Wh-fronting of whom, which corresponds to the direct object Tesnière.
      a. Tom has been reading Tesnière.
      b. Whom has Tom been reading?
   2. Wh-fronting of what, which corresponds to the prepositional object syntax.
      a. She should stop talking about syntax.
      b. What should she stop talking about?
   3. Wh-fronting of when, which corresponds to the temporal adjunct tomorrow.
      a. They want to visit us tomorrow.
      b. When do they want to visit us?
   4. Wh-fronting of what, which corresponds to the predicative adjective happy.
      a. She is happy.
      b. What is she?
   5. Wh-fronting of where, which corresponds to the prepositional phrase to school.
      a. She is going to school.
      b. Where is she going?
   6. Wh-fronting of how, which corresponds to the adverb phrase well.
      a. They are doing well.
      b. How are they doing?
   
    These examples illustrate that wh-movement occurs when a constituent is questioned that appears to the right of the finite verb in the corresponding declarative sentence. The main clause remains in V2 word order, with the interrogative fronted to first position while the finite verb stays in second position. | Wikipedia, 2025
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. | Raffaella Zanuttini, Thomas Leu, and Richard Kayne, 2013

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:
   2. 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

1. raam
   Ram

   kyaa
   what

   maantaa
   believes

   hai
   be

   ki
   that

   siitaa
   Sita

   kisko
   who-ACC

   pyaar
   love

   karti
   does

   hai?
   be

   Matrix Question: 'Who does Ram believe that Sita loves?'

   * Embedded question: 'Ram believes who Sita loves'
2. raam
   Ram

   maantaa
   believes

   hai
   be

   ki
   that

   siitaa
   Sita

   kisko
   who-ACC

   pyaar
   love

   karti
   does

   hai
   be

   * Matrix Question: 'Who does Ram believe that Sita loves?'

   Embedded question: 'Ram believes who Sita loves'

WH-STRANDING
(Syntax) Wh-stranding, a construction similar to relative stranding, is discussed in Fanselow (1987), Webelhuth (1992), Müller (1996), Pafel (1995) and most recently De Kuthy (2000, 2001), De Kuthy and Meurers (1999), among others. In these constructions, an adnominal PP attribute is stranded under wh-movement of its head noun:

1. a.
    

   Was
   what

   für
   for

   eine
   an

   Wirkung
   effect

   hatten
   had

   diese
   these

   Bilder
   picture

   auf
   on

   die
   the

   Kinder?
   children

     'What kind of an effect did these pictures have on the children?'
   b.
    

   Welche
   which

   Informationen
   informations

   hat
   has

   sie
   she

   über
   about

   die
   the

   Männer
   men

   erhalten?
   gotten

     'What (kind of) information did she receive about the men?'
   c.
    

   Wieviele
   how_many

   Argumente
   arguments

   hat
   has

   man
   one

   gegen
   against

   die
   the

   Initiative
   initiative

   vorgebracht?
   advanced

     'How many arguments were advanced against the initiative?'

WH-STRANDING ELLIPSIS
See SLUICING.

WH-STRIPPING

1. (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 mismo_x?
      himself_x

        'And when will he/one of these guys sell pictures of himself?'
    | Iván Ortega-Santos, Masaya Yoshida, and Chizuru Nakao, 2013
2. (Examples)
    ○ The Hebrew example in (1), from Landau (2020), illustrates one subcase of Sluicing + Stripping that Ortega-Santos et al (2014) and Yoshida et al (2015) name wh-stripping.
   1. A:
       

      Ani
      I

      ekax
      will.take.1SG

      et
      ACC

      Ronit
      Ronit

      la-rofe
      to.the-doctor

      be-yom
      in-day

      sšeni.
      second

         'I'll take Ronit to the doctor on Monday.'
      B:
       

      Ve-matay
      and-when

      et
      ACC

      axot-a?
      sister-her

      /
       

      Ve-et
      and-ACC

      axot-a
      sister-her

      matay?
      when

         'And when will you take her sister to the doctor?'
    | Ur Shlonsky, 2022
    ○ Wh-stripping (Ortega-Santos et al. 2014) is a construction in which sluicing and stripping (or gapping) appear to have taken place simultaneously, which explains why one of the remnants is a wh-operator, whereas the other one is not:
   1.  A: One of the professors talked to Peter.
       B: And which one talked to Susan?
   
    | Javier Fernández Sanchez, 2016

WH-TRACE

1. (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
2. (Examples)
    ○ It is well-known that aux-contraction is not possible when the aux is followed by a wh-trace (e.g. Kaisse 1983; in work in preparation I show that this holds when the auxiliary and the wh-trace are located in the same phase).
   1. a. I know where_i John is t_i (tonight).
      b. * I know where_i John's t_i (tonight).
   
    | Željko Bošković, 2024
    ○ The object gap in (1) is occupied by a wh-trace:
   1. yr
      the

      olygfa
      view

      a
      REL

      welai
      saw-IMPF

      ___
      ___

      o
      from

      ben
      top

      y
      the

      mynydd
      mountain

      'the view that he had from the top of the mountain' (Richards 1938)
   
    | David Willis, 2000
    ○ The bulk of the chapter will be concerned with the evidence of acquisition of one major type of empty category, namely the one left behind when a wh-question is moved to the front of a sentence: wh-trace. | Jill de Villiers, 1996
    ○ There are four empty categories in Thai: PRO, pro, NP trace and wh-trace. | W. Kobsiriphat, 1989

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