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تسجيل

On Overt and Covert Wh and Relative Movement in Hindi and Punjabi

المؤلف:  Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and Norbert Corver

المصدر:  Wh-Movement Moving on

الجزء والصفحة:  C6-P135

2026-10-15

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On Overt and Covert Wh and Relative Movement in Hindi and Punjabi

Since the publication of ‘‘On Wh-Movement’’ (Chomsky 1977), movement operations in syntax have been studied intensively (Huang 1982; Rudin 1988; Cheng 1991; Dayal 1996; Richards 1997; Bosˇkovic´ 2001, among many others). Movement operations appear to fall into two general types: covert movement and overt movement. If question or relative phrases stay in their base position in overt syntax, they are assumed to undergo covert movement. This kind of movement is illustrated in the following examples from Hindi:

In contrast, when question or relative phrases are displaced from their base position in overt syntax, they are assumed to have undergone overt movement, as in English.

Basing his argument on the homophony of relative and question phrases and the similar syntax of questions and relative clauses in English, Chomsky (1977) proposed a unified treatment of wh-movement and rel movement. However, the differences between these constructions found in two closely related modern Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi and Punjabi, raise the question of whether a unified treatment is appropriate. The goal of this chapter is twofold: (1) to argue that apparently related constructions do not necessarily entail an identical movement operation; however, a unified analysis can be reached when some additional assumptions are taken into account, and (2) to o¤er empirical evidence that both the PF and LF interfaces constrain the overt realization of question and relative phrases in overt syntax; this finding will provide support for the copy theory (single-output syntax) as argued for by Bobaljik (1995, 2002).