Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Chapter 2 - Grammatical Foundations: Structure

Obviously, such movement processes determine aspects of the distribution of an
element: an element which can be moved from one position to another must be able to
occupy both positions. Turning this the other way round, something which moves has
a certain distribution and we know that anything that has a distribution is a constituent.
It therefore follows that anything that moves is a constituent, and we can use
movement phenomena to test assumptions about the structure of a sentence. For
example, the movement involved in topicalising the object in (98) can be taken as
support that the object is a constituent of this sentence.
In the following sentence we see that the VP can also undergo a similar movement,
supporting the claim that the verb and its object form a constituent:

(99) I thought the policeman would search the bishop, and
[search the bishop], he did –

Thus these movement facts support the following analysis of the structure of this
sentence:

(100) S

DP VP

the policeman searched DP

the bishop

There are many instances of movements to be found in language. One of the most
obvious is found in certain questions. Many English questions involve a word like
which, what, where, why, etc. at the beginning of the sentence. However, these words
have a dual function, being associated with some function within the clause as well as
indicating the interrogative status of the clause by appearing at its beginning. For
example, in the following the word what is interpreted not only as an interrogative but
also as the object of the sentence:

(101) what did they find

One way to account for this interpretation is to claim that the wh-element does not start
in the clauseinitial position, but is moved to this position from the object position. In
this way we can claim that what IS the object and hence account for its interpretation.
The movement may be indicated thus:

(102) what did they find –

These interrogative elements are called wh-elements as they tend to be spelled with
the letters w and h at the beginning, though this does not reflect the current
pronunciation of these words. In the above example, the wh-element can be
categorised as a DP, originating from object position, which is a DP position. We can
also find wh-APs and PPs: