Wh-Question Typology

Mohamed·

Linguistics

Preview

At a Glance

Grade LevelHigher Education

SubjectLinguistics

Original Prompt

CAS LX 500 B1 Topics in Linguistics: Questions Spring 2009, January 22 2a. The formation of wh-questions What are the different ways languages can form wh-questions? First steps toward a typology. For today, let’s concentrate on a subclass of questions, those questions formed with a “wh-word” (e.g., what, who, how, . . . ) and which have a sincere “information-seeking” meaning (as distinct from “quiz questions” or “echo questions”). We take them to be basic. First, in English. And, actually, fir...

This learning resource focuses on the foundations of question formation in different languages, particularly analyzing wh-question structures and comparing various linguistic strategies. It introduces two types of questions in English: Yes/No questions and Wh-questions, both emphasizing structural movement for their formation. The document outlines critical concepts like Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (SAI) and Wh-movement with examples and syntactic tree representations. It engages students through guided analyses and retrieval practices, alongside cross-linguistic comparisons involving languages like Japanese and Bulgarian. Students explore the complexities of wh-question formation, feature-checking, and typological patterns, culminating in exercises that encourage the analysis of a fictional language's data and the creation of a decision tree for classifying linguistic strategies.