|
Wh-fronting
In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position of ''doing'' in "What are you doing?" Interrogative forms are sometimes known within English linguistics as ''wh-words'', such as ''what, when, where, who'', and ''why'', but also include other interrogative words, such as ''how''. This dependency has been used as a diagnostic tool in syntactic studies as it can be observed to interact with other grammatical constraints. In languages with wh- movement, sentences or clauses with a wh-word show a non-canonical word order that places the wh-word (or phrase containing the wh-word) at or near the front of the sentence or clause ("''Who'' are you thinking about?") instead of the canonical position later in the sentence ("I am thinking about ''you''"). Leaving the wh-word in its canonical positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discontinuity (linguistics)
In linguistics, a discontinuity occurs when a given word or phrase is separated from another word or phrase that it modifies in such a manner that a direct connection cannot be established between the two without incurring crossing lines in the tree structure. The terminology that is employed to denote discontinuities varies depending on the theory of syntax at hand. The terms ''discontinuous constituent'', ''displacement'', ''long distance dependency'', ''unbounded dependency'', and ''projectivity violation'' are largely synonymous with the term ''discontinuity''. There are various types of discontinuities, the most prominent and widely studied of these being topicalization, wh-fronting, scrambling, and extraposition. Natural languages vary with respect to the types of discontinuities that they permit. The fixed word order of English allows for relatively few discontinuities compared to, for instance, the Slavic languages, which are much more permissive. Even compared to a cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Echo Questions
An echo question is a question that seeks to confirm or clarify another speaker's utterance (the ''stimulus''), by repeating it back in some form. For example: A: I'm moving to Greenland. B: You're moving ''where''?? In English, echo questions have a distinctive prosody, featuring a rising intonation. A speaker may use an echo question to seek confirmation because they find the stimulus surprising, or simply because they did not hear it clearly. Echo questions have unusual syntactic properties (including a lack of wh-movement), which have made them a challenge to account for in linguistic theories of questions. Function Echo questions are primarily used to seek a confirmation or repetition of some portion of the stimulus, either because the listener finds what they thought they heard surprising or was unable to hear the speaker clearly. The ''Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' identifies another use, where the listener seeks a reformulation of some part of the stimu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
