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Лингвистика и перевод
ЛИНГВИСТИКА И ПЕРЕВОД
WH-MOVEMENTIN WH-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN
Etleva Kondi
The aim of this paper is to analyse the structural position of the wh-ele-ments in wh-questions in English and Albanian. Viewedfrom the perspective of Generative grammar, it analyses the structure of the wh-question after movement of the the wh-word and provides knowledge about the application of this rule in English and Albanian language. The existence of a universal grammatical transformational rule, i.e. wh-movement in both languages, provides evidence in favor of the principle of the structure-dependency. Thus, while defining wh-movement which is crucial in the generation of the wh-questions in English and Albanian, we draw conclusions about the simmilarities and differences between these languages.
Keywords: binding theory, d-structure, s-structure, structure-dependency, trace, wh-movement
Abbreviations: t = trace, CP = Complement Phrase, C = Complement, NP = Noun Phrase, TP = Tense Phrase, VP = Verb Phrase, IP = Inversion Phrase, I = Inversion, ForceP = Force Phrase, TopP = Topic Phrase, Foc= Focus, Spec = Specifier, UG = Universal Grammar.
The concept of wh-movement plays an important role and it is employed to describe the construction of wh-questions. The presence of the wh-movement in English language is strictly related to the principle of the structure-dependency since questions in this languages are structure dependent in that they involve structural constituents, not the linear order of the word (Radford, 1988). This principle applies to the Albanian language as well. The concept of movement according to the Binding theory requires two levels of syntactic representations: d-structure and s-structure. The d-structure is related to the form of the sentence before movement takes place while the s-structure is the derived form of the sentence after the elements in that sentence have been moved (Cook, 1988).
The theory of wh-movement is a property of Universal Grammar.
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According to this theory the wh-element cannot be moved anywhere. They move to certain locations leaving a trace t behind it and they may not move more than a distance. Restrictions apply not only on what may be moved and where but also on the route that movement has to follow.
We find a high degree of syntactic similarity between English and Albanian in the use of the wh-word to form wh-questions. In order to ask a wh-question in Albanian and English language as opposed to a rhetorical question or an echo question, these two languages move a wh-phrase to a sentence-initial position.
(1) a. ?fare tha vёllai yt? (Albanian)
What said brother your?
b. What did your brother say? (English)
This is known as wh-movement and it involves the movement of a wh-phrase. A wh- phrase in Albanian and English contains a wh word like ?fare (what), kush (who), кё (whom), kujt (whom), i/e kujt (whose), rili/rila/tilet/cilat (which), kur (when), ku (where), si (how). As a result of this movement, the subject in the Albanian language occupies the end position, after the verb phrase ‘tha’ (said) while in English it has midposition, between the auxiliary verb and main verb.
Structures where the wh-expression does not get preposed, but rather remains in-situ (i.e. ‘in place’) in the position associated with its grammatical function (e.g. £fare/what in 1 a/b is the direct object complement of the verb tha/said and complements are normally positioned after their verbs, so £fare/what is positioned after the verb tha/said) are called wh-in-situ questions. In English and Albanian, wh-in-situ questions are used primarily as echo questions, to echo and question something previously said by someone else - as we can illustrate in terms of the following dialogue:
(2) Speaker A: Sapo takova drejtorin e shkoltes. Speaker A: I just met the headmaster.
Speaker B: Sapo takove кё? Speaker B: You just met whom?
Echo questions such as those produced by speaker B in (2) in both languages suggest that the wh-expressions in (1) originate as complements of the relevant verbs, and subsequently get moved to the front of the overall clause. But what position do they get moved into?
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They are moved into some position preceding the inverted auxiliary. Since inverted auxiliaries occupy the head C position of CP, let’s suppose that preposed wh-expressions are moved into a position preceding the head C of CP. Given that specifiers are positioned before heads, a plausible suggestion to make is that preposed wh-expressions move into the specifier position within CP (= spec-CP) (Radford, 2004).
According to the transformation rules, a wh-movement is necessary in derivations, i.e. when we transform a statement into a question. Thus, if the question word ?fare (what) in the sentence £fare tha vёllai yt? /What did your brother say? moves out of the position it occupies, the object, to the front of the sentence, we should expect to find a trace (t). This type of trace is consequently a wh trace (Cook, 1988).
Deep structure VёПai yt tha ?fare?
Your brother said what?
Surface structure £fare tha (t) vёПai yt?
What did your brother say (t)?
The wh-word needs an empty position in the d-structure at the beginning of the sentence in both languages. The position which is unfilled is that of the specifier of the C’’. Thus, the abbreviated d-structure of Vellai yt tha ?fare can be given in the following tree diagram (Cook, 1988) :
- C’’
(specifier)
C’
C
I’’
^ C’ ^
(specifier) C’-^
C I’’
Vёllai yt tha ?fare your brother past
say what
While the s-structure after the movement of the wh-word would have the following tree diagram:
C’
-C’’
N ____ ^ C’^ N _-C’-.^
C I’’ C I’’
?fare 1 tha vёllai yt what | your brother past say
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The relationship between the s-structure and d-structure depends on the rules of movement. It is a property of UG that only certain elements may be moved, that they may only be moved to certain locations, and that they may not move more than a certain distance (Cook, 1988). This means that ‘move-а’ is restricted. Thus, we cannot move every element everywhere we want to.
For example in Albanian,
(a) Ёshtё ne klase [NP babai i kujt]
Is in the classroom [ NP father whose]
Babai i kujt ёshtё ne klase t Father whose is in the classroom t (c)* I kujt babai ёshtё ne klase
Whose father is in the classroom
the question element ‘ kujt''’(whose) moves before the main verb ‘eshte ’ (is) and after the noun phrase ‘babai’ (father). The grammatically correct derivation of the transformed sentence would be (b), while derived sentences in (a) and (c) are ungrammatical. This means that the theory of movement explores the restrictions that specific languages place on movement. In our case the restriction to this movement has to do with the principle of structure dependency which means that ‘all known formal operations in the grammar of any language are structure dependent’ (Chomsky, 1972). The movement of the words in Albanian or English has to take account of the syntactic constituents and the structural relationships of the sentence. A common way of describing questions in Albanian is inversion of the verb phrase, intonation and moving the wh-word at the beginning of the sentence. Even in the English language, when describing the structure of the question, involves inversion, but in contrast to Albanian language it involves the inversion of the auxiliary verb. To form the wh-question, English requires the movement of the wh-word from an original position as well.
1
Ai
2
do te largohet
3
neser.
Kur do te largohet ai? When will leave he?
1
He
2
will
3
leave
4
tomorrow.
When will he leave?
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Most of the transformations we have looked at so far seem to be bounded in the sense that constituents move to a limited distance. For example, in Albanian the verb phrase moves before the subject, while in English it is the auxiliary verb that moves before the subject. This is related to the theory of bounding which implies that ‘no constituent can be moved out of more than one containing bounding node in any single movement (Radford, 1988). However, it seems that wh-movement in some interrogative sentences can be a counterexample to this theory. Let us consider the structure of the following sentence in Albanian and English:
Кё [C][VPmendon [Cse [TP[ VPtelefonoi Aron t]]]?
Whom think that called Aron
Whom [IPdo you thinkt [IP Aron called t]] ?
It seems clear that in complex sentences in Albanian and English the wh-phrase can move out of more than one boundary. The wh- NP кё/ whom originates as the d-structure direct object of the verb telefonoi/ called. It ends up in the C-specifier position, to the left of the main clause C. We might therefore suppose that the wh-element is moved from the dependent clause to the main one, occupying an empty NP position, the specifier of C in the main clause. So that the wh-movement applies in the manner shown schematically below:
[NP ][C] [VP mendon [Cse] [TP[ VPtelefonoi Aron кё]]]?
^---------Wh-movement-------------------1
[NP] do [IP you think [IP Aron called whom]]?
t----------Wh-movement------------
Under this analysis, there seems to be no limit on the number of boundaries a wh-phrase can move across. Wh-movement, as shown on the scheme above, seems a single step. Radford explains that there is an alternative derivation we could consider for sentences like Кё mendon se telefonoi Aron/Whom do you think Aron called. This is to assume that wh-movement applies in successive steps. This second analysis is referred to as the successive cyclic analysis (Radford, 1988). According to this analysis, the NP кё/whom is first moved into an empty NP C-specifier po-
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sition in the dependent clause, and then is moved from this position into the empty NP C-specifier position in the main clause.
[cp [NP e] [C e][VP mendon [CP [NP e][ C se] [TP [ VPtelefonoi Aron кё]Ш]?
t_
Wh-movement
Wh-movement
J
(2) (1)
[CP [NP e] [C e] [IPyou do think [CP[NP e][C] [IP Aron called whomWtf!
t--- Wh-movement -----It___Wh-movement 1
(2) (1)
Despite the number of boundaries the wh-word has to cross, the conclusion is that when transforming a statement into a wh-question in Albanian and English, it requires the wh movement. Through this movement, the wh-word has to move from its original place to an empty position to the left of the derivational structure, i.e. to the front of the interrogative sentence.
But, in contrast to the English language, in Albanian, we can see that it is not only the wh-element that can undergo movement to the clause periphery.
Aron, кё telefonoi? Aron, whom called?
In the example above, the NP Aron has moved from its position in the VP to the position of the specifier of the CP. It is quite obvious that both elements, Aron and the wh-word кё (whom) are moved to the left periphery of the clause.
[CP[NP Aron] [NP кё [TP [VP telefonoi [NP Aro«]]]]]?
4_______________________________I
What is the position the two moved elements occupy? We know that the bounding node CP has only one empty position for the specifier, and this positioned is occupied by the wh-word through the wh-movement. What about the NP Aron, what is the position it takes after moving out from the VP?
In fact, in order to analyze these syntactic structures it is best to take into consideration the Split CP hypothesis (Luigi Rizzi, 1997). This suggests that there must be more than one type of CP projection ‘above’ TP in clauses: more specifically, there must be one type of projection which
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hosts preposed focused constituents (Radford, 2004). In the case of our example in Albanian the NP Aron is the focused/focalised constituent which is moved to the front of the sentence to be focused.
More specifically, this hypothesis includes other elements like Topic and Focus.1 According to Rizzi (1997) the CP layer of clause structure should be split into a number of separate projections (Force Phrase, Topic Phrase, Focus Phrase and Finiteness Phrase). The highest projection is Force Phrase headed by Force.
On this view, the structure Aron, kё telefonoi? would have the following diagram:
ForceP
Force
TopP
Spec
Aron
Top’
Topo
FocP
Spec
кё
Foc TP
telefonoi Aron
The question is: What position do the wh-phrases occupy? According to Rizzi (1997), the preposed wh-phrase ends up in the position of Spec of FocP while the focalized phrase which has moved to the left periphery, occupies the position of the Spec of the TopP.
* kush LIBRIN lexoi?
The ungrammaticality of the above example is explained through the fact that two different constituents occupy the same position, position which needs to be taken by one constituent only. This makes us come to the conclusion that the wh-phrase in Albanian moves from the VP to the Spec of FocP (Turano, 2011).
1 Radford explains that from a discourse perspective, focus represents new information (i.e.information not previously mentioned in the discourse and assumed to be unfamiliar to the hearer). In this respect, focused constituents differ from another class of preposed expressions which serve as the topic of the clause immediately containing them. Topics typically represent old information (i.e. information which has already been mentioned in the discourse and hence is assumed to be known to the hearer).
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Conclusion
While analyzing the movement of the wh-element in the wh-questions in English and Albanian language, we started with the ‘basic’ pattern, i.e. both languages require the movement of the question element to the front position of the sentence. All the evidence presented in this paper should serve to prove that English and Albanian have similarities concerning the wh-movement. The typical position of the wh-word in both languages is the front position in the sentence. As this is always true in English, there are exceptions in Albanian language. For the sake of emphasis, a wh-question in Albanian language may start with other elements apart from the wh-word. The preposed element, other than the wh-element, is a focalized element. Wh-movement in both languages share almost the same properties which can support the UG theory. The central concept of this theory holds that the ‘system of principles, conditions, rules are elements or properties of all human languages’ (Chomsky, 1976). These principles may vary within clearly defined limits from one language to another.
References
1. Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and Mind (enlarged edition). N. Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
2. Chomsky, N. (1976). Reflections on language. London: Temple Smith.
3. Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht.
4. Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass.
5. Cook, V. J. (1988). Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction. Oxford. Basil Blackwell.
6. Koleci, F. Turano, G. (2011). An Introduction to the Albanian generative Syntax. Tira^: Shblu
7. Memushaj, R. (2008). Generative Grammar. Tira^: Shblu.
8. Radford, A. (1988). Transformational Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9. Radford, A. (2004). English Syntax: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10. Rizzi, L. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery in L Haegeman (ed) Elements of Grammar. Kluwer, Dordrecht.
11. Turano, G. (1995). Dipendenze sintatiche in Albanese. Padova: Unipress.
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