Syntactic transformation

theory

linguistic research program proposed by N. Chomsky; radically revises the Government and Binding approach; asserts that Universal Grammar is a “perfect” system, i.e. optimal according to several global metrics; abandons concepts such as government

In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between what and the object position of doing in "What are you doing?". Interrogative forms are sometimes known within English linguistics as wh-words, such as what, when, where, who, and why, but also include other interrogative words, such as how. This dependency has been used as a diagnostic tool in syntactic studies as it can be observed to interact with other grammatical constraints.

architecture of early generative grammar

linguistic theory