Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

11.3.1. Wh-questions

quickinfo

This section discusses wh-movement in so-called wh-questions. Section 11.3.1.1 starts with a discussion of wh-questions such as given in (91), in which the wh-phrase is moved into the initial position of its own clause. We will show that this movement is motivated by the need to form operator-variable chains in the sense of predicate calculus.

a.	Wati	leest	Peter ti?
	what	reads	Peter
	'What is Peter reading?'

b.	Marie vraagt	[wati	Peter ti	leest].
	Marie asks	what	Peter	reads
	'Marie asks what Peter is reading.'

Other issues that will be discussed in Section 11.3.1.1 are the obligatoriness of wh-movement in wh-questions, pied piping (the fact that wh-movement sometimes also affects non-interrogative material that is part of the clausal constituent that includes the wh-element), and stranding (the fact that wh-movement sometimes does not affect non-interrogative material that is part of the clausal constituent that includes the wh-element).

a.	*	Peter leest	wat?	wh-movement is obligatory
		Peter reads	what

b.	[Welk boek]i leest ti	Peter?	pied piping of non-interrogative material
	which book reads	Peter
	'Which book is Peter reading?'

c.	Wati leest	Peter [ti	voor een boek]?	stranding of non-interrogative material
	what reads	Peter	for a book
	'What kind of book is Peter reading?'

Section 11.3.1.2 continues with a discussion of so-called long wh-movement, that is, cases in which a wh-phrase is extracted from an embedded clause, as in (93a). There are several restrictions on this type of wh-extraction. For example, while long wh-movement is fully acceptable from object clauses selected by a verb of saying, it gives rise to a degraded result if the object clause is selected by a factive verb such as betreuren'to regret;' see the contrast between the examples in (93a&b). Furthermore, long wh-movement is completely impossible from adverbial clauses such as (93c). We will discuss a number of factors that may affect the acceptability of this type of long wh-movement.

a.	Wati	zei	Jan	[dat	Peter ti	gekocht	had]?	non-factive object clause
	what	said	Jan	that	Peter	bought	had
	'What did Jan say that Peter had bought?'

b.	??	Wati	betreurde	Jan	[dat	Peter ti	gekocht	had]?	factive object clause
		what	regretted	Jan	that	Peter	bought	had
		Compare: '??What did Jan regret that Peter had bought?'

c.	*	Wat	lachte	Jan	[nadat	Peter ti	gekocht	had]?	adverbial clause
		what	laughed	Jan	after	Peter	bought	had
		Compare: '*What did Jan laugh after Peter had bought?'

It should be noted that examples like (93c) cannot be saved by pied piping of the adverbial clause: sentence (94a) is infelicitous as a wh-question despite the fact that the same sentence is fully acceptable (with a different intonation contour) if wat is interpreted as an existential pronoun, as in (94b).

a.	*	[Nadat	Peter wat	gekocht	had]	lachte Jan?
		after	Peter what	bought	had	laughed Jan

b.	[Nadat	Peter wat	gekocht	had]	lachte Jan.
	after	Peter something	bought	had	laughed Jan
	'After Jan had bought something, Jan laughed.'

The unacceptability of both (93c) and (94a) thus shows that in certain syntactic environments a wh-element may be inaccessible for wh-movement, as a result of which certain questions which can easily be expressed in predicate calculus simply cannot be formulated in natural language by run-of-the-mill wh-movement. Section 11.3.1.3 will briefly discuss a set of such syntactic environments in which a wh-elements are inaccessible for wh-movement, which are often referred to as islands.
Section 11.3.1.4 concludes with a discussion of so-called multiple wh-questions, that is, questions with more that one wh-phrase. We will discuss the semantics of such constructions as well as a number of restrictions on their form.

a.	Wie	heeft	wie	geholpen?
	who	has	who	helped
	'Who has helped who?'

b.	Wie	heeft	wat	waar	verstopt?
	who	has	what	where	hidden
	'Who has hidden what where?'

References:

⇑ Back to top

About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver

Category: Dutch Syntax

Publication date: 22 November 2023

Keywords: Verb-SecondWh-movementWh-question

report errorprintcite

Jump to:

introduction
references
related articles