whatwhich

Whatwhat is a term used in discussions of English interrogatives to describe a hybrid or nonstandard class of questions that blend the what and which elements. The term is not part of formal grammar, but it appears in informal or pedagogical contexts to name instances where the distinction between what (open-ended) and which (restricted) is blurred.

Overview and usage

Whatwhich is typically associated with learner language, translation artifacts, or exploratory analyses in linguistics. In standard English, the expected forms would be either which + noun to indicate a restricted set or what + noun to indicate a broader inquiry. Examples such as "What which book did you read?" or "What which of these is yours?" are generally judged ungrammatical in formal syntax. The concept helps describe how speakers may attempt to combine openness and specificity in a single question and why such forms arise in acquisition or translation.

Theoretical considerations

As a descriptive label, whatwhat serves to examine how wh-phrases encode information structure, scope, and selects among a range of possible items. It can illuminate cross-linguistic transfer effects, where a speaker’s first language influences the way questions are formulated in English. In computational linguistics, whatwhich can function as a heuristic category in data annotation or as a placeholder for mixed-type wh-questions in parsing and generation tasks.

See also

Wh-questions, What-questions, Which-questions, Language acquisition, Natural language processing.