wh-movement

English

Examples

He buys bread.

When the word bread is replaced with a wh-word in order to form a question, wh-movement occurs:

What does he buy?

Etymology

Most English interrogative words start with wh-, for example, who, whom, whose, what, which, when, where, why, etc. (though how is an exception).

Pronunciation

(General American) IPA^(key): /ˌdʌbəlju ˈeɪtʃ ˌmuvmənt/

Noun

wh-movement (countable and uncountable, plural wh-movements)

(syntax) a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause.

Synonyms

wh-extraction
wh-fronting

Hypernyms

A-bar movement

Related terms

wh-in-situ
wh-island
wh-word

Translations

special order in interrogative sentences

Chinese:
Cantonese: 疑問詞移位, 疑问词移位 (ji⁴ man⁶ ci⁴ ji⁴ wai⁶)
Mandarin: 疑問詞移位／疑问词移位 (yíwèncí yíwèi)
French: mouvement qu- m
Russian: перемеще́ние вопроси́тельных сло́в n (peremeščénije voprosítelʹnyx slóv)