Lecture Five: WH-Movement

Lecture Five: WH-Movement Ian Roberts igr20@cam.ac.uk

PS-Rules/X’-Theory • Generate well-formed structural descriptions • “create” trees/labelled bracketings • More (X’) or less (PS-rules) abstract • Can create infinite structures

Another type of rule Movement rules: • Don’t create structures but manipulate them • Technically, they map phrase markers into other phrase markers • Informally, constituents “move” from one place in the structure to another

Types of movement • Head-movement, as in English subject-auxiliary inversion in questions: John can leave.  Can John t leave? • CP • | • C’ • ru • C TP • Can ru • NP T’ • John ru • T VP • t | • V • win

“NP-movement” • as in the English passive: The policeman arrested the student  The student was arrested t TP ru NP T’ ru ru D N T VP The studentwas ru V NP arrested t

WH-Movement • The most important and interesting type of movement for various reasons. • Moves (almost) any XP to the beginning of the sentence to form, in the simplest case, a question.

Examples of WH-movement • Which man will John see t ? -- object NP • Who should John talk to t ? – indirect object NP (“preposition stranding”) • To whom can John talk t ? – indirect object PP (“pied-piping”) • How angry is Alex t ? -- AP • What does John believe t ? – CP • TP and VP do not undergo WH-movement

Echo questions “Echo-questions” show where the wh-phrase originates: Bill bought WHAT?! You talked to WHO?!

Where does the WH-phrase move to? CP ru NP C’ ru ru D N C TP Which man will ru NP T’ | ru N T VP John t ru V NP seet

Indirect questions I wonder .. • which man John will see t ?-- object NP • who John talk should to t ? – indirect object NP (“preposition stranding”) • to whom John can talk t ? – indirect object PP (“pied-piping”) • how angry Alex is t ? -- AP • what John believes t ? – CP • Just like direct questions except no subject-aux inversion. • C must be empty here (no that/if/whether)

Subject questions • Who t saw John? • “vacuous movement”: CP ru NP C’ | ru N C TP Who ru NP T’ t ru T VP ru V NP sawJohn

Indirect subject questions • I wonder who t saw John ? • *I wonder who did t t see John ? • *I wonder who that/if t saw John ? • *I wonder that/if who saw John ? C must always be empty in indirect subject questions like all other indirect questions.  Movement to SpecC’ always, accompanied by a zero [+wh] C.

“Long-distance” WH-movement • Which man did you say (that) John will see t ? -- object NP • Who did you say (that) John will talk to t ? – indirect object NP (“preposition stranding”) • To whom did you say (that) John will talk t ? – indirect object PP (“pied-piping”) • How angry did you say (that) Alex is t ?-- AP • What did you say (that) John believes t ? – CP

WH-movement is an unbounded dependency • Who did you say [ that Mary believes [ that John saw t ]] ? • Who did you say [ that Mary believes [ that Fred knows [ that John saw t ]]] ? • Who did you say [ that Mary believes [ that Fred knows [ that I asserted [ that John saw t ]]] ? • .. and so on.

Movement and PS-rules • The unbounded nature of WH-islands poses a problem for PS-rules/X’theory because • PS-rules/X’-theory are local: they define little bits of the tree at a time, e.g. VP  V CP How does VP “know” it’s part of a wh-dependency as in: • Who did you say [ that Mary [VP believes [CPthat John saw t ]] ?

So.. • Either we complicate the PS-rules/X’-theory hugely (this can be and has been done) or we have two relatively simple rule types: • PS-rules/X’-theory build structure (create phrase markers) • Movement/transformational rules manipulate structure (map phrase markers into other phrase markers)

Movement rules • WH-movement: Move a WH-phrase to the specifier of a [+wh] C. • “NP-movement”: move the object to the subject position (passive) • Head-movement: move T to C (subject-aux inversion) (The last two can be generalised; WH-movement is already in quite a general form here).

Locality • Although WH-movement is unbounded, it doesn’t apply just anywhere, but is subject to stringent locality conditions, cf.: • my guitar, John’s cat – possessor NP in Spec of higher NP: NP1 ru NP2 N’1 | | N’2 N1 | cat N2 guitar John’s my • And similarly for whose cat

But • If you want to know whose cat you’re talking about: • Whose cat did you feed t ? – object NP • *Whose did you feed [NP t cat ] ? – can’t apply WH-movement directly to the possessor, but must “pied-pipe” the whole object.

A Locality Condition • The Left Branch Constraint (LBC): WH-movement can’t apply to a left-branch, or to part of a left branch. • So, whose can’t move on its own. Cf also: How angry is Alex t ? -- AP-movement *How is Alex [AP t angry ] ? – no movement just of Spec of AP.

Resumptive pronouns Sometimes a pronoun appears where a gap could be: John, I like (him). John, I like {him/t}. Pronouns don’t obey island constraints: *Whose did you say that you like [NP t cat ]? Whose cat did you say that you like t ? ?Who did you say that you like his cat ? Marginally (in English) a resumptive can link to a WH, but only in an island.

Three properties of WH-movement • The LBC is one of several constraints on WH-movement called “island constraints” (islands are things that are difficult move off). In general, WH-movement: • Leaves a gap • Is unbounded • Obeys the LBC (and other island constraints)

Clefting again • Recall the constituency test clefting: John wrote the book  It was John that wrote the book.

Clefting as WH-movement: • It leaves a gap *It was John that he wrote the letter. • It can be unbounded It was John that Mary said that Bill thinks t wrote the letter. • It obeys LBC: *It was John’s that I saw [NP t cat ].

Conclusion • We need movement rules alongside PS-rules/X’-theory • Three types of movement • WH-movement involves unbounded dependency • WH-movement leaves a gap, obeys LBC • Clefting is a type of WH-movement (albeit a bit hidden)

Lecture Five: WH-Movement