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Pied Piping, Feature Percolation and the Structure of the Noun Phrase

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Elizabeth A. Cowper
Elizabeth A. Cowper*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Ross (1967) showed that in relative clauses, not only may the WH-phrase be fronted, but an NP or PP containing the WH-phrase may also be fronted, as shown in (1):

  1. (1)

    1. a. This is the child [who]i I’ve been hearing stories about ti.

    2. b. This is the child [about whom]i I’ve been hearing stories ti.

    3. c. This is the child [stories about whom]i I’ve been hearing ti.

    Ross called this phenomenon “pied piping”. His statement of the pied piping convention is given in (2).

  2. (2) Any transformation which is stated in such a way as to effect the reordering of some specified node NP, where this node is preceded and followed by variables in the structural index of the rule, may apply to this NP or to any non-coordinate NP which dominates it, as long as there are no occurrences of any coordinate node, nor of the node S, on the branch connecting the higher node and the specified node. (1967:114)

Notice that Ross’s statement applies to any transformation moving an element over a variable. Thus, the prediction is that WH-questions and relative clauses should behave similarly with respect to pied piping. This is not the case, as pointed out by Bresnan (1976:37). Questions seem to be much more limited in what can be pied piped than are relative clauses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 321 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1987

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