Whfrågespråk

Whfrågespråk is a term used in linguistics to describe languages that form questions with wh-words such as who, what, where, when, why, and how. The key distinction in this area concerns how the wh-phrase is positioned within the underlying sentence: in many languages the wh-phrase moves to the left edge of the clause (wh-fronting), while in others the wh-word stays in its base position (wh-in-situ). Some languages employ a mix of strategies depending on the syntactic environment.

In typology, wh-fronting languages include English, Swedish, and German, where the interrogative word typically appears at the beginning of the clause and, in many cases, auxiliary verbs invert with the subject. Wh-in-situ languages include Mandarin and many Bantu languages, where the wh-word may appear near the verb or within the clause without fronting, often accompanied by sentence-final particles or context cues to indicate a question. A further dimension is pied-piping versus preposition stranding: some languages require that a preposition accompany its wh-phrase when fronted (pied-piping), while others allow moving the wh-phrase leaving the preposition behind (preposition stranding).

The syntactic analysis of wh-questions often relies on theories of movement within a clause. Wh-phrases are modeled as moving to a higher position (such as the specifier of CP), creating a dependency with the element extracted from the embedded clause. This movement is subject to constraints such as subjacency and island conditions, which limit where and how wh-words can be extracted.

Whfrågespråk thus captures a fundamental cross-linguistic difference in how languages encode interrogatives, reflecting broader patterns of syntax and information structure. See also wh-movement, interrogatives, and island constraints.