WH-

wh-

The usual abbreviation for a wh-word - a question word (interrogative word) or relative item, such as what, who, which, when, why, how, etc. It is used generally in linguistics with reference to wh-complements, wh-movement, questions (wh-questions) and relative clauses (wh-relatives). A wh-question is a term used in the grammatical subclassification of question types to refer to a question beginning with a question word. These ‘particular’ or ‘question word’ questions are contrasted with yes-no questions. A wh-NP is a noun phrase introduced by a wh-word (e.g. which car, what interest). Wh-movement (wh-fronting or wh-preposing) is used to refer to a transformational rule which moves a wh-phrase (wh-XP) to initial position in the sentence. For example, given a deep structure of the sentence Who did you see? As ‘You past see who’, applying wh-movement would result in ‘Who you past see’. Wh-islands are constructions beginning with a wh-phrase, out of which it is not possible to move a constituent through a transformational rule (the wh-island constraint). In later generative linguistics, several other types of construction are analysed in a way similar to wh-questions, such as that-relatives and comparatives; they are known as unbounded dependencies.

通常作wh-word（wh-词）的缩写，即指提问词（疑问词）或关系语项，如what“什么；所…的事物”，who“谁；…的人”，which“哪一个；那一个”，when“什么时候；那时候”，why“为什么”，how“怎样”等。语言学一般用于wh-补语，wh-移位，疑问句（wh-问句）和关系小句（wh-关系小句）。wh-问句是语法对问句作细分类的术语，指用疑问词起头的问句。这种“特殊的”或“疑问词”问句与是非问句对立。这个术语常用于生成语法的有关论述。wh-名词短语是由一个wh-词引出的名词短语（例如which car“哪一辆车”，what interest“什么兴趣”）。wh-移位（wh-前置）用来指一条转换规则将一个wh-短语移至句子的首位置。例如，设问句子Who did you see？“你看见了谁？”的深层结构为“You过去时see who”，应用wh-移位规则后得出“Who you过去时 see”。最近的生成语言学将几种其他转换也归入wh-移位。wh-岛是以wh-短语起头的结构，但不能用转换规则将其中的任一成分移出（wh-岛制约）。最近的生成语言学还用类似于wh-问句的分析方式来分析几种其他类型的构式，例如that-关系小句和比较句；他们被称为无界依存关系。