wh-movement
US/ˌdʌbəlju ˈeɪtʃ ˌmuvmənt/
wh-movement noun: a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause.
Noun
wh-movement (countable and uncountable, plural wh-movements)
- a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause.
- Synonyms:
- wh-extraction, wh-fronting
Synonyms of wh-movement
- wh-extraction
- wh-fronting
Forms of wh-movement
| plural | wh-movements |
|---|
Origin of wh-movement
Most English interrogative words start with wh-, for example, who, whom, whose, what, which, when, where, why, etc. (though how is an exception).
Questions about wh-movement
- What does wh-movement mean?
- Wh-movement means a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause.
- What part of speech is wh-movement?
- Wh-movement is a noun.
- How do you pronounce wh-movement?
- Wh-movement is pronounced /ˌdʌbəlju ˈeɪtʃ ˌmuvmənt/ (US).
- What is the plural of wh-movement?
- The plural of wh-movement is wh-movements.
Words near wh-movement in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wh-movement (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “wh-movement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wh-movement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.