Christian Leu
LING 404
May 13, 2014
Extra Credit
In syntax, movement is an occurrence that comes out of a syntactic theory that tries to explain problems in speaker knowledge of a language. DP movement and WH movement are similar in that they both deal with a syntactic occurrence that expresses a speaker’s knowledge. However, both DP and WH movement differ in their expression of the function of words, even if the words are homophones that are similarly related in meaning or position. DP movement is closely related to NP movement, and it is sometimes called the “argument.” DP movement can occur from the end of a clause, in which the subject can be transformed in a DP movement within a tree structure, to then fill the unfilled position of specifier, or head sister to a CP. The difference between DP and WH is that although they both can contain the same words in the same locations, they show different speaker knowledge and different function of the words. WH movement is the movement to the specifier position of CP. Without WH movement, this would be the DP position, but since DP and WH placement differs in function and in demonstrating of speaker knowledge, it is different. The big difference between WH from DP is that WH movement denotes a question specifier or movement to the specifier, or test of placement to the specifier. DP movement is confined to subject speaker knowledge representation, and WH movement is confined to question of subject, theme, or result of another speaker’s knowledge.