Syntax Group 10.docx

SYNTAX “ Wh – Question”

Arranged by : Group 10

Kurnia Saputri

: 1510231063

Linda Mega M

:1510231043

Armeenee Abutadsa :1510231066

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH JEMBER 2017

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Wh – question is a question that asked for information by using the Question words. Wh – questions usually start with a word beginning with wh-, but “how” is also included. The wh- words are : what, when, where, who, whom, which, whose, why, and how. A. Clausal Typse and Interrogatives Like other language , English also distinguishes a set of clause typse that are characteristically used to perform different kinds of speech acts : a. Declarative clause : Is a sentence used to provide information and declaratives can be affirmative or negative. Formula : S + V + X  X : is any other element in the clause (e.g. object, predicative complement). 

Ex. Affirmative : I saw them last week.



Ex. Negative

: I didn’t see them last week.

b. Interrogative clause : Is a sentence used to request information and can be affirmative or negative. Formula : WH/QW + AUX + S + V + X 

Ex. Affirmative : Why did he tell me ?



Ex. Negative

: Why didn’t he tell me ?

c. Imperrative clause : Is a sentence used in the command and no subject because it is understood that the subject is you. Formula : Aux + X 

Ex. Affirmative : Be happy.



Ex. Negative

: Don’t be sad.

d. Exclamative clause : Is a sentence used to express surprise or shock. In writing we use an exclamation work. Formula : a. What + noun + subject + verb. b. How + adjective or adverb + subject + verb c. Auxiliary or modal verb + subject + verb (i.e. interrogative word order) 

Ex. Affirmative : What a lovely sister you are ! How beautiful that house was !



Ex. Negative

: Wasn’t she great ! Didn’t he sing well !

B. Non-subject Wh-question Is a question sentence that the subject is not Wh- words. One thing to note here is that in English only complements can be realized as a GAP value. Unlike languages like Korean and Japanese where both subject and object can be extracted, Indo-European language including English exhibit subject-object asymmetry in various phenomena. For examples : a. *What did [that Jonh bought]__upset jack ? b. What did Julia think [that Jonh bought__] ? The data here indicate that an element from the subject is less extractable than one from the complement. Reflecting this subject/object asymmatry, we can assume the Argument Realization Constraint as following : Argument Realization Constraint : The non-initial argument can be realized either as a COMPS element or as a GAP element.

C. Subject Wh – Question Subject wh – question is the question sentence that use question word as the subject. Now consider examples in which the subject is wh-question : a. Who put the book in the box ? b. Who can put the book in the box ? 

When the subject is wh – question, the presence of an auxiliary verb is optional, hinting that there may not even an extraction.



These are called “subject questions”because the question word is the “subject” of the sentence.

Look at these two questions. a.

Who does Romeo love? Romeo loves Juliet.

b.

Who love Romeo ? Juliet loves Romeo



In the first question, Romeo is the subject.



In the second question ‘who’ is the subject and Romeo is the object. We can assume several structures for such subject wh-questioned sentences. The

first structure we can think of is to allow the subject to be gapped and have a structure like the following for :

*S NP

Who

VP[GAP{NP}

V

put

NP

the book

PP

in the box

One obvious problem of this structure is that no grammar rules that we have seen so far will license the combination of the VP with the filler NP who : the head-filler rules in requires its had to be an S. If we license this kind of combination, we may generate an ill-formed example like *We Fido like in which Fido is the object.

D. Non-Wh Indirect Question There is no question words in it. Indirect questions headed by complementizer whether and if Examples : a. I don’t know [whether/if I should agree]. b. She gets upset [whether/if I exclude her from anything] c. I wonder [whether/if you’d be kind enought to give us information]. The inner sentence of the indirect question here is a complete sentence with no missing element,different from indirect question I wonder who John met yesterday. This means that be complementizer whether or if will have at least the following lexical entry:

Whether HEAD POS comp SYN

VAL COMPS S QUE +

According to the lexical information,whether selects a finite S with the [ QUE+] value generating a structure like the following: CP[ QUE + ]

C[ QUE + ]

Whether/if

S[fin]

I should agree

One thing to note here is that if and weather are slightly even though they both carry the possitive QUE features Just like indirect question, the clauses headed by whether can serve as an prepositional object. a. I am not certain about when he will come. b. I am not certain about whether he will go or not. However, if cannot function as the prepositional object. a. *I am not certain about if he will come. b. *I am not certain about if he will come or not. There is also a difference between if and whether in infinitival constructions : 1. a. I don’t know where to go. b. I don’t know what to do. c. I don’t know how to do it. d. I don’t know whether to agree with him or not. 2. a. *I don’t know if to agree with him or not. b. *I don’t know that to agree with him or not.

This means that whether and if can both bear the feature QUE (Projecting an indirect question), but different with respect to the fact that only whether behaves like a whelement.