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Do your question words move or stay put?

Take a look at these Japanese and English examples of a question and its answer.

Mamori-san wa nani go o hanashimasu ka?
What languages does Mamori speak? (lit., Mamori what languages speaks?)

Mamori-san wa Eego to Nihongo o hanashimasu.
Mamori speaks English and Japanese. (lit., Mamori English and Japanese speaks.)

What do you notice about the word order?

First, the relative order of Subject, Verb, and Object is different. In Japanese it's SOV, and in English it's SVO. But notice also that these two languages differ in where they put their question words.

In Japanese, the question phrase (nani go, what languages) is in the same position as the answer (Eego to Nihongo, English and Japanese), between the subject and verb. However, in English, the phrase is in its "normal" place in the declarative answer, but it shows up as the first phrase in the question.

Syntacticians, the linguists who specialize in explaining the structure of phrases and sentences, are very interested in differences such as this one. A concept that comes up a lot in explaining syntax is "movement." This theory states that words and phrases are often spoken in one place, but understood as if they were in another place.

For example, the normal place for direct objects in English is right after the verb. Think of this as a phrase's "base" position. That's where you understand the direct object to be, and that's also where it's expressed in speech.

I ate a bagel.
They saw a great film.

However, in questions, the direct object, in the form of an interrogative or "wh-phrase," moves from that base position to the front of the sentence, even though your mind still interprets it (understands it) to be in its base position after the verb eat or see.

What did you eat (what)?
Which film did they see (which film)?

This makes English a "wh-movement language," while Japanese is a "wh-in-situ language." In other words, Japanese is a language that leaves its wh-phrases in their base positions.

Question words aren't the only things that move around in syntax, and indeed syntacticians use the idea of movement to explain a great deal of cross-linguistic differences. You may find the idea of movement odd (the words are pronounced in one place, but "understood" to be in another?), and there are linguists who don't agree with the theory. But consider these facts. English, and other wh-movement languages, can sometimes leave question phrases in place, for example in echo questions.

What did he eat?
He ate an entire bag of jelly beans.
He ate WHAT??!?

So, there do seem to be at least two positions for wh-phrases in English sentences. Now take a look at these examples.

He said that he wanted all the jelly beans.
What did he say that he wanted?
He said what he wanted.
He said that he wanted WHAT??!?

If you put together all of the possible wh-positions from these examples, you get:

___ did he say ___ that he wanted ___ ?

Now, if you add all to the question phrase, you see that in some varieties of English all can follow what to the front of the question, as in:

What all did he say that he wanted?

And what's very interesting is that for some speakers of English, all can be stranded along the way, suggesting that when the wh-phrase moves from its base position, it leaves all behind in one of the possible positions it passes through on its way to the front of the sentence.

What did he say all that he wanted?

You see things like this not just in English, but across languages, suggesting that movement, wh and otherwise, is a linguistic phenomenon worth studying.

Tags: newsletter, syntax, wh-fronting, wh-in-situ, wh-movement
December 11, 2008