WH-QUESTION IN AKWUKWU-IGBO DIALECT OF IGBO
CHAPTER TWO
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The principles and parameters theory was developed by Noam Chomsky in his Pisa 1979 lectures later published as “LECTURES ON GOVERNMENT AND BINDING’’.
The central ideas that characterize this approach is
- That there is a set of fundamental principles that are common to all languages.
- A finite set of parameters that determine syntactic variability amongst languages.
The framework seeks to identify all the parameters that are universal to human language. (Universal grammar)
Ndimele in his book ‘’The Parameters of Universal Grammar: A Government and binding approach”. Specified that government and binding was brought about due to the urgent need to narrow down the range of possible alternative rules in linguistic analysis and also to shift emphasis from the study of rule systems to that of a system of principles. According to him the principles and parameters approach also called government and binding did not witness any radical break from his earlier works in transformational generative grammar.
The major difference between earlier models of syntactic analysis and government and binding is that whereas these other models propose construction specific rules, government and binding accounts for all the rules that involve permutation with a universal transformation rule called move-alpha (move-a) (Ndimele 1992:19).
In trying to exposit further on the concept of move-a, Ndimele alongside scholars like Lasnik and Saito (1984), Lasnik and Uriageraka (1988), Yusuf (1989), Ndimele (1991), complained that the rule move-a does not do enough justice to the relationships existing between the derived structure (S-structure)and their underlying counterparts (D-Structure). The rule move-alpha as according to Lasnik and Saito (1989:258) implies that the relationship between D-structure and its S-structure can only be that of movement. Which can be explained using move-alpha. The reason for using this theoretical framework is because the move-alpha principle in Government and Binding paradigm, has the ability to account for all kinds of movement that take place within a sentence,
2.2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.2.1 QUESTIONS
Uwajeh (1996:92) defines question as a sentence whereby the language communicator communicates this desire to be informed about something
A question would therefore be said to be an entity with a specific form and capable of requesting for certain information about a certain phenomenon of entity (ies).
2.3 KINDS OF QUESTIONS
Roger (1971:91-92) classifies questions into two (2) categories. He says yes/no questions are realized by a change of word order rather than as with negatives which is by an insertion of a special morpheme, giving examples like “will Peter open the door?” and has John arrived?” He proposes the class of WH-questions are clearly distinct from yes/no questions in that assent or denial is not demanded in relation to whole proposition, but a query is focused on a specific part of the sentence’s content, localized in a particular syntactic constituent. Some of the examples given include:
- Who has opened the door?
- How are cakes made?
- Why should he get all the credit
- Which boy opened the door?
In a similar view, Alan Cruttenden (1986) says that interrogatives fall basically into two major classes: yes/no interrogatives and question word interrogatives. In his opinion question word interrogatives ask for information in a more general way, whereas yes/no interrogatives ask for an opinion about the truth of a proposition.
Goody (1977) is also of the opinion that there are two (2) different types of questions. One set consists of questions which are simply answered by saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. In English, they differ from statements only in the inversion of word order. She calls these kind of questions ‘closed questions’, since according to her, they are already complete propositions as opposed to incomplete propositions which are open questions for which the answer provides the missing clause. This ‘how many people are at the party?’ may be formally represented as, ‘? (X number of people are at the party)’ and why did you do it, is represented as ‘? (you did it because…X…)?’
Yusuf, (2007:212) states that interrogative sentences elicits verbal response from the addressee. In Igbo, there are two basic types of interrogative sentences: the yes/no interrogatives and the type that contain interrogative words (question words) the yes/no type are so-called because at laid have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as responses.
2.3.2 WH - QUESTIONS
Radford (1981) states that “WH-questions are so called because in English they typically involve the use of an interrogative word beginning with wh, e.g. (why, what, when, where, which)”, he notes that ‘how’ is also classified as a WH-word because it exhibits the same syntactic behavior as other members of the WH-class. He goes further to state that the speaker by virtue of these WH-questions request information about the identity of some entity in the sentence. For example, ‘where’ – question asks for a specification of a place, a ‘who’ – question asks for information about the identity of a particular person, etc and an appropriate reply would therefore be a word, phrase or sentence containing the required information.
Yusuf (1997) adds that English language may be the motivation for the name, WH-questions. As all content word questions cross-linguistically have adopted it.He adds that in content word questions, certain information will be missing for which some answer is required and the information phrase that is missing is coded WH-phrase.
The features of the formation required by WH-words is generally determined by the types of WH-word in question, WH-words have nominal features, they are understood to function as the verbal argument of D-structure level, they are therefore verbal complement which occurs at clause final position.
The nominal features of the answer being requested by the WH-words is always identical with the features of the WH-words:
When= [+ time]
Who = [+ person]
Which = [+ object]
How = [+ manner]
Where = [+ place]
What = [+ object]
2.3.2.1 WH-MOVEMENT
Barnstein (1984:247) defines WH-movement as a “transformation that moves a WH-word to the point of the clause in which it appears”.
The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics defined WH-movement as “proposed movement of WH-forms to the beginning of a clause or sentence”.
WH-fronting which is the movement of WH-words to sentence initial position has been from early syntactic theories an agreed movement rule. In recent syntactic theories, transformational rules have been compressed into one known as move alpha (α). It is also claimed that WH-transformation is an instance of the rule move- α.
Radford (1988:468) states that “…wh-phrase cannot originate in their superficial position as the left most constituent of s – b or both rather originate inside s”. It is the general view that the occurrence of a WH-word in sentence initial position results from WH-movement, thus implying that transformations involve the movement of WH-words from a position within the sentence to clause initial position at s-structure level.
Chomsky (1986) recognizes two (2) types of movement:syntactic WH-movement (for English type language) and LF WH-movement (for Chinese and Japanese languages), or both (for French type languages).
In talking about ‘syntactic WH-movement’ we refer to situations whereby the question word or WH-phrase move from one position in the sentence to another i.e. they move from their base generated positions to another position while “LF – WH-movement” refers to situations where the question word or WH-phrase remains in their base generated positions i.e. in-situ.
Uwalaka (1991) stated that Igbo language shares properties of English language which characteristically have syntactic WH-movement and some properties of Japanese – Chinese languages which have only LF WH-movement. This demonstrates that Igbo-like French, has both syntactic WH-movement and LF WH-movement.
Haegeman (1994) highlights certain features which are common to all constructions involving WH-movement, they are thus:
- The moved element must be a WH-phrase.
- The landing site must be empty, so that the moved WH-word can land.
- The landing site must be an argument position (position where overt NP can stay)
- Landing site should not be too far from the position from which it was extracted.
- It must leave a ghost copy i.e. trace of the original position from which it was moved.
Uwalaka (1991) demonstrated vividly both syntactic WH-movement as LF – WH-movement in Igbo language. She illustrated that in the formation WH-direct questions,WH-movement is optional, agreeing with the positions of Lasnik and Urigerenka (1988) and Chomsky (1986) posit that all languages are assumed to have LF (logical form) WH-movement, and B, it is the syntactic movement that is introduced.
SET A
- I huru onye
You see – rv(post) who
Who did you see?
- I mere gini
You do – rv(past) what
What did you do?
- I gara olee/ebee
You go rv (past) where
Where did you go?
SET B
- Onye ka I huru ti
Who that you see – rv((past)
- Gini ka I mere ti
What that you do – rv (past)
- Ebee ka I gara ti
Where that you go – rv(past)
Examples (1-3) exemplify the options in which the wh-phrase remains in situ while in examples 4-6 the wh-phrase is moved to clause initial position.
It is clear that the movement of the wh-phrase did not result in a different semantic derivation and is also grammatical.
These two types of constructions had been in (Goldsmith, 1981:307) been said to be the same semantically and pragmatically.
Uwalaka however in Uwalaka (1991:187) states that “the native speakers”, intuition about the said structure is that the construction type in Section B is pragmatically different from that in A.Even though each relevant part, for instance (1) and (4) encode the same meaning, yet sentence (4) is more emphatic than (1).
Ndimele (1994) in analyzing Echie dialect of Igbo spoken in Rivers State, disagrees with the claim of Radford and Chomsky i.e. Chomsky (1977), Radford (1988) “WH-words in sentence initial position is not in its original home”.
Ndimele while analyzing Echie claims that WH-phrases in Echie do not undergo any syntactic movement, and that their WH-words were base generated at sentence initial position in the sentence. He used categorized the syntactic behavior of Echie into 3 Classes.
- Predicate in-situ
- Subject in-situ
- Ndii questions
Ndimele claims that the predicate slot of the sentence is a most favourite position for Echie question words. According to him, predicate in-situ question are those in which the QW’s are based generated in past-verbal positions.
The examples he gave are thus:
(30) (a) Uche riri azu
Uche eat “fact fish”
Uche ate some fish
(b) Uche O riri mi
Uche he eat “fra what”
What did Uche eat?
(31) (a) Uche gburu Eze
Uche killed “fact Eze”
Uche killed Ez
(b) Uche O gburu onye
Uche he killed “fact who”
Who did Uche kill?
(32) (a) Uche jhere ahia
Uche go “fact market”
Uche went to the market
(b) Uche o ghere beole
Uche he go fact where
Where di Uche go?
Subject in-situ question: Here sentences are generated in sentence initial position.
He argues that subject in-situ question words do not undergo any syntactic wh-movement for the following reasons:
- The question words are directly assigned theta (Ө) rules by their respective verbs in the same manner as their nominal counterparts.
- The question words occupy a Ө-position (theta-position) in their respective sentences. This is a position in which they can be visited for case checking. Their case properties are not due to inheritance from any coindexed position of some sort.
- Since the question words occupy the Argument position no trace of any kind is created.
- There is no pressure of an empty category have no overt syntactic movement of the question words takes place.
Examples:
(36) (a) Uche zara úlò
Uche sweep fact house
Uche swept the house
(b) Ònyé Zara ulò
Who sweep fact house
Who swept the house
(37) (a) Agwo tara Ezè
Snake bite fact Eze
A snake bite Eze
(38) (a) àto dhàrà
Three fall fact
Three of them fell down
(b) Ile dhàrà
How many fall Fact
How many of them fell down
Ndii Qustion
Ndii questions (or Qw clefts) are B called because they are generally introduced by the Question word ndii. Ndii is said to be distinct from other question words in echie because:
- It is the only Question word which is restricted to the sentence initial position.
- It cannot occur in a minimal Qw-phrase without being accompanied by certain generic nominals. The generic nominals must occur in its immediate right position.
- Serves as a focus marker specifying a position to its immediate right as the landing side for a proposed constituent.
1. Ndii onye riri ji m
Which person eat “fact yam that
Who was the one that ate that yam
2. ndii mgbei Eze bia
Which time Eze came
Hen is it that Eze will come
3. ndiii ke Uche weere ti
Which one Uche take “FACT” Ben
Which one did Uche takes?
He further argues that Ndii is base generated at ‘spec’ – position in a complemtize (cmp) phrase (CP) i.e. (spec, cmp).
Ndii
He argues that Ndii is base generated in the (spec, cmp) position in the sentences above as a wh-operator. From position ‘Ndii’ performs the role of a movement trigger thereby attracting the generic nominals from the lower clause into a position which is immediately at its right.
Since the generic nominals are not specified, as interrogatives they are moved into [CMP] (head of the CP) rather than into [spec, CMP] position which is already occupied by the WH-operator. The triggered and moved elements in ‘Ndii question’ constructions are not specified as [+ wh] and so cannot describe their finding in terms of a mere syntactic WH-movement in the traditional sense. Ndimele says that they are generic nominals and they cannot receive WH-interpretation in their base generated position unlike WH-question words.They receive WH-interpretation only after they are raised into the [CMP] position of the higher clause and this movement is made possible by the operator ‘Ndii which is basically [+ wh].
Ndimele (2003), unlike what the proponents of universal grammar propose, claimed that the wh-parameter cannot be discussed in terms of absolute binarity. He used various African languages to illustrate this, including Igbo language.He claims that Igbo language has 3 types of WH-question constructions: in-situ WH-questions, topicalized WH-questions and kedu-cleft questions, he concludes that the phenomena should not be conceived in terms of absolute binary choice; being that the distinction between in-situ and non WH-in-situ languages is not as sharp as previously conceived.
Ogbonna (2007), also in consonance with Uwalaka (1991) is of the opinion that Igbo language like French, English and some other languages, operate a mixture of both patterns in syntactic structures i.e. wh-movement and in-situ.
Uwalaka (1991) states that wh-movement is optional in direct questions but obligatory in embedded questions, she claims that it is not possible to group Igbo – French type languages with either English type or Japanese – Chinese type languages since Igbo-French type shares some but not all the properties of each set. She concludes that with respect to WH-movement, we have English type languages, Igbo-French type languages, and Chinese-Japanese languages, a conclusion which according to her is implicit in other work, such as that of Friemsdijik and Williams (1988).
CONCLUSION
The study of interrogative sentences is not one new to linguistic investigation, the various works on various languages have provided more insight into this phenomenon. More so, dialectal studies as such as done by Ndimele (1994) on Echie have revealed more interesting things about the question words, providing a more elaborate insight than the “standard Igbo” could offer.
Agreeing with Uwalaka (1991) WH-movement in direct questions is not compulsory, the movement is only made for pragmatic significance. Igbo language does behave like French type languages as regards similarity of movement as regarding WH-question words.