Wh-movement#Pied-piping

In linguistics pied piper construction is a term for a certain class of interrogative sentences and relative clauses. In them, the question word or the relative pronoun functions not as alone as otherwise record preliminary element, but as it moves further material in the sentence- initial position. The term was introduced by John Robert Ross in 1967 and is based on the word motive of the Pied Piper of Hamelin ( by his flute playing moved in a similar manner, the rats with them out of the city ).

Examples

• Simple sentence introductory relative pronoun in comparison with a Pied Piper Construction:

Had ( Rats ), who tries unsuccessfully to catch Hubert ( The rats ) to catch the Hubert had tried unsuccessfully. Other examples are:

On whose good qualities do you think? The Pope, on the good and bad qualities, I just do not want to think ... I am unclear how large a share he wants to take over. What drove fast is he? Grammatical analysis

Normally applies a rule that specifies that a question or a relative pronoun must be placed at the beginning of the block for the formation of interrogative sentences and relative clauses. This can be explained that the sentence initial position (the position of complementer, ie the place where even subordinating conjunctions are in generative grammar) a feature " question set " bears, which must be matched with the corresponding feature of the question word ( analogously for relative clauses ).

The problem with the Pied Piper design is now that question or relative pronouns are embedded deeper. So the above example " how large a share he wants to take " an indirect question, in which a whole noun phrase (ie, the noun " share " with its attributes ) was preceded by. Support the feature " question " is just the word " like", and in this it is merely a qualifier to the adjective attribute that occurs within this noun phrase. Therefore, the question word is not the grammatical head of construction and after conventional ideas can not be projected to the entire preceding noun phrase his question feature. Then it is not clear why the whole noun phrase " a ... share " of the prefix rule can be affected.

Proposed in the literature, the rules for the feature distribution in these structures modified so as a solution to the question or relative feature of exception can spread to the entire larger phrase and this in the whole like a question or a relative pronoun is then treated.

A problem that remains, is in the differences between individual languages ​​, which Pied Piper structures are acceptable and which are not. Example, there are differences between German and English in this respect:

English: Reports [the height of the lettering on the covers End of month ] the government prescribes ... German not: * reports, [ the height of the label whose envelopes ] the government prescribes ... German: A sonata, [ the play | enjoy English is not: * A sonata [ Which to play ] is fun References