A constraint advanced by N.Chomsky for movement transformations whereby a constituent may not be moved over more than one (i.e. S or NP) node ( principle of cyclic rule application). Subjacency means that transformations may only operate on one or at...

The optional movement of a NP or PP containing the item which is affected by a movement rule, described by Ross (1967). For example, normally, a relative pronoun is the first word in the relative clause, e.g. the lady, whom I saw pictures of. In a...

n. 1. (also WH-Fronting, WH-Preposing, WH-Raising) The phenomenon by which a WH-item appears in sentence-initial or clause-initial position, rather than in the ‘logical’ position typical of non-WH-items of the same category. Examples...

A constraint proposed by N.Chomsky on the use of transformational rules. In a structure such as […X… [s…Y…] …X…] no rules can refer to both X and Y, if S contains a finite verb, unless X is in the COMP position...

Wh-movement (or wh-fronting or wh-extraction) is a syntactic phenomenon whereby interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) appear at the beginning of an interrogative sentence. The term wh-movement is due to the fact that most English interrogative...