11
votes
Accepted
Do there exist languages with wh-prepositions?
German does have something like this:
(list of abbreviations see below)
Wo-r-auf hast du ein Spielzeug gelegt?
where-ITF-on have you a toy put.PSTPTCP
Where did you put a toy on?
Wo-von ...
- 6,560
5
votes
Why isn't this sentence in a passive form?
There's a common feature in English known as the "ergative construction", "middle construction", or "labile construction", though it's not quite the same as an actual ergative case (as found in Basque)...
- 68.2k
5
votes
Do there exist languages with wh-prepositions?
My assumption from Turkish is that agglutinative languages have this property.
For example:
Oyuncağı nereye koydun?
Word by word:
TheToy whon youput
In Turkish "Ne" means What, but also is used ...
- 492
4
votes
Accepted
Why we do not usually say "who did eat the apples" while "What did she eat" is perfect to use?
I don't know how much background in syntax you (or later readers) have, so I'm going to start with some basics (the complementizer layer, do-support, and object Wh-questions) before going into subject ...
- 4,495
4
votes
Accepted
Why do 'wonder' and 'think' act differently in wh-movement?
Wonder takes an embedded interrogative complement with its own internal trace:
You wonder who John saw t.
You wonder who t saw John.
You wonder why I left t.
When you front that wh- you're ...
- 1,490
2
votes
Do there exist languages with wh-prepositions?
Hindi kind of has this feature:
किस (चीज़) पे खिलौना रखा?
kis (cIz) pe khilonA rakhA?
What did you put the toy on?
किसने किया?
kisne kiyA?
Who did it?
किस is the oblique form ...
- 1,144
2
votes
"To whom" in pied-piped infinitive relative clauses
As pointed out by sumelic in the comments, my corpus is woefully incomplete, and I missed the important generalization. The preposition doesn't matter: "I already told you about the man to/with/about *...
- 2,645
2
votes
Why isn't this sentence in a passive form?
The word "sells" here in the English language of today has a different meaning from "is sold", and Draconis' answer does not apply here (even if it may have historically ...
- 183
2
votes
Accepted
Why can interrogatives so often be used-as/made-into intensifier adverbs?
I'm not sure how universal the use of interrogative words as intensifiers is, but one possibility comes to mind:
People will often spontaneously exclaim "What!?" or "How?!" when something unexpected ...
- 256
2
votes
Wh-movement Question
The original sentence for the question “Which canvas appears to have been painted with a red paint?” is “This/That canvas appears to have been painted with a red paint”, and the answer would be “This ...
- 18.6k
1
vote
Possessive vs non possesive WH-pronouns
You are right. There only 'whose' is possessive:
The tag for WHOSE is WPRO$.
he_PRO asked_VBD hir_PRO ... whos_WPRO$ was_BED the_D child_N within_P
her_PRO$ body_N
and_CONJ by_P whoos_WPRO$ ...
- 446
1
vote
Allowed surface locations of [+wh] phrases apparently depend on semantics—if so, how and why?
I think you have to be more careful with the examples you're using here. Your parallelism seems odd (at least to me). There are issues of transformation (passivization), surface PP order, and argument ...
- 1,068
1
vote
Accepted
Why is it that the wh-word as a subject in the spec position cannot raise over an auxiliary verb like 'did'?
First of all, it is not the case that "who" cannot raise over "did" in T (or more precisely - over the tense affix), because it does so when moving from Spec-VP to Spec-TP anyway (under the VP-...
- 400
1
vote
Why is *"Where did you move from Paris to?" ungrammatical?
The example is okay if you get the stress right. There is some tendency to put the main sentence stress on "Paris", taking the focus to be "Paris", but that gives a bad result:
*Where did you move ...
- 12.5k
1
vote
What is the difference between successive-cyclic wh-movement and long-distance wh-movement?
Well, compare TG ( Transformational Grammar) and GPSG (Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar). TG allows the formulation of rules that perform long distance movement, using the variables of a ...
- 12.5k
1
vote
Do there exist languages with wh-prepositions?
Not only do many languages have wh-prepositions, English itself has at least two wh-prepositions. These are the words when and where, which, although classified as adverbs in traditional grammars, are ...
- 4,050
1
vote
Do there exist languages with wh-prepositions?
Preposition by definition means that it is a functional word put in front of another word (typically nominal in nature) that it modifies in some way.
The wh- type words are pronominal (or more ...
- 2,363
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