The purpose of this thesis is to describe the syntactic characteristics of wh-interrogatives in English and to explain wh-movement from the Question Movement Rule in the development of Chomsky's Generative Grammar.
Chomsky's Standard Theory was developed to Extended Standard Theory, Revised Extended Standard Theory, Government and Binding Theory and finally Minimalist Theory. Thus far, there have been many attempts to discover a general principle that can explain the phenomena of wh-movement and there have been many revisions and changes in the wh-movement. The types of wh-constituent which undergo the movement operation are not only wh-words like who, what, when, where, why, which, or how but also phrasal constituents containing wh-phrases like wh-NP, wh-PP, wh-AP, or wh-ADVP. wh-movement, however, does not apply to wh-VP, and to clausal constituents, such as S', S, or SC(small clause) containing wh-XP. Even though Move-a was a generalized rule for various transformation rules, it needed some kinds of constraints. Throughout this paper, I will examine details on wh-movement rules and constraints in English and ultimately I will show Minimalist Analysis on wh-movement constraints.
This study is conducted as follows: Section 1 is the introduction and purpose of this thesis; a brief theoretical overview of Chomsky's Grammar from Transformational Generative Grammar to Minimalist Theory is introduced in 2 section; in second 3, I will verify theoretical backgrounds on wh-movement; syntactic, morphologic and semantic evidence; in section 4, I will illustrate wh-movement constraints including Ross' Island Constraints and Chomsky's Conditions previous to Minimalist Theory; then, Minimalist Analysis on wh-movement which is the ultimate proposal of this thesis is presented and analyzed in section 5; finally, summary and conclusion follow in section 6.