multiwh

Multiwh is a term used in linguistics to describe clauses that contain two or more wh- words or wh- phrases, typically in questions or related constructions. The phenomenon is often illustrated with sentences that front multiple wh- elements, such as: Which book and which shelf did you say Mary bought? or Who did what where? In these examples, more than one wh- element participates in a single interrogative template, linking each wh- phrase to a corresponding interpretation elsewhere in the clause.

Analysts study how multiwh items are licensed and interpreted. In many syntactic theories, multiple wh- elements are thought to move to the left periphery of the clause, sometimes to the same landing position and sometimes to distinct positions within higher CPs. The configuration raises questions about scope, binding, and island constraints, and different frameworks propose different structures (shared traces, multiple positions, or overt coordination) to account for acceptability or unacceptability across languages and contexts.

Cross-linguistic variation shows that languages differ in how freely they tolerate multiple wh- fronting. English, for example, can accommodate certain multiwh questions through coordination or successive fronting, while other languages exhibit stronger restrictions. The concept also informs psycholinguistic experiments on processing load and on how listeners resolve ambiguities when several wh- elements are present.

In computational linguistics and natural language processing, multiwh constructions pose challenges for parsing, anaphora resolution, and machine translation. Systems must determine which wh- phrase corresponds to which gap and how the interpretations scale with the number of wh- elements. See also wh-movement, long-distance dependency, island constraints.