Ling 111						Spring 2012
Assignment 15						Due Wednesday May 30

WH Questions

0.  We are familiar with Yes-No Questions, the kind that can be answered
'yes' or 'no'.  This problem deals with another kind of question, as
exemplified in (1)-(5):

(1)   Who did Harvey see?

(2)   Where did you get that hat?

(3)   What have you been feeding my monkey?

(4)   Which spoon shall I stir the soup with?

(5)   Whose pet turtle did you put on the teacher's desk?

These are called WH-Questions, or WHQs.  Our task will be to revise our
grammar so that it generates them.

1.  Before we tackle that, though, let's recall what we learned about German
main clause word order.  In German root clauses, the finite V moves to the
front of the sentence (presumably, based on the Structure-Preserving Principle
we discussed in class, a C position):

(6)   Hat der Professor das Buch gelesen?
     "Has the professor read the book?"

(Which makes a Yes-No Question)

and then, in statements, some XP moves to the left of the fronted V:

(7)   Das Buch hat der Professor gelesen.
     "The professor has read the book."

But only one XP can move:

(8)  *Das Buch der Professor hat gelesen.

To what position does the fronted XP move?  (It has to be one of the four:
head, complement, adjunct, specifier.)  You have before you enough evidence
to answer this question.

2.  German WHQs look like this:

(9)   Was hat der Professor gelesen?
     "What has the professor read?"

(10)  Welches Buch hat der Professor gelesen?
     "Which book has the professor read?"

(12)  Wann hat der Professor das Buch gelesen?
     "When has the professor read the book?"

(13)  Wer hat das Buch gelesen?
     "Who has read the book?"

The following are ungrammatical:

(14) *Was der Professor hat gelesen?

(10) *Welches Buch der Professor hat gelesen?

(12) *Wann der Professor hat das Buch gelesen?

(13) *Wer das Buch hat gelesen?

What does this tell you about where the Wh-phrases move to in German WHQs?
Remember your answer to Part 1.

3.  Now go back to English WHQs.

a.  Give at least one argument that a movement transformation is involved.

b.  Describe, as well as you can, what moves.  (This is devilishly hard
    to get exactly right, but do what you can.)

c.  Where does it move to?

    This is the core of the problem, and you should *make sure* you answer
    it thoughtfully.  Remember everything, especially the Structure Preserving
    Principle, and the fact that German and English are not very different.

d.  State, as explicitly as you can, a transformation to generate WHQs
    in English.

e.  Test it.  This will be open-ended, but do some testing and report what
    you find.