fronting

Fronting is a linguistic term used to describe the movement of a unit to the left edge of a clause or utterance. It covers several related processes in different subfields, most commonly syntactic fronting and phonological fronting.

In syntax, fronting refers to moving a constituent to the initial position of a clause. This often serves purposes of emphasis, topic introduction, or information structure, and it can participate in question formation. A well-known instance is wh-fronting, where a wh-word moves to the front of the clause to form a question, as in What did you eat? from the underlying order You ate what? Another example is topical fronting, where a phrase is placed at the beginning for contrast or focus, as in To the store, I am going.

In phonology, fronting describes articulatory changes that move sounds toward the front of the mouth. A common example is velar fronting in child speech, where sounds like /k/ and /g/ are replaced by more front sounds, producing pronunciations such as tat for cat. Fronting can also occur as a phonological process in some languages or dialects, affecting consonants or vowels.

Fronting has cross-linguistic variation and interacts with discourse, dialect, and language development. In research, it helps describe how speakers structure information, mark focus, indicate questions, or alter articulation, and it is studied within syntax, phonology, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition.