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Chomsky, N. (2008) On Phases. In: Freidin, R., Otero, C.P. and Luisa Zubizarreta, M., Eds., Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory: Essays in Honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, MIT Press, Cambridge, 133-166. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262062787.003.0007

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Wh-Questions in English and Chinese: A Phase-Based Approach

  AUTHORS: Zheng Gao

  KEYWORDS: Wh-Questions, Phase Model, Minimalist Program, Merge, English and Chinese

  JOURNAL NAME: Open Access Library Journal, Vol.8 No.3, March 26, 2021

  ABSTRACT: Wh-question has aroused considerable attention of linguists around the world. English is a wh-movement language, while Chinese is commonly recognized as a wh-in-situ language. By the advent of the Minimalist Program outlined by Chomsky, the syntactic derivation in a phase-based approach has reduced the computational operation. The syntactic structures are built in a bottom-up and one-phase-at-a-time way. Merge and Agree are the most basic syntactic operations. The paper presents how Phase Theory works and clarifies a computational model of generation of wh-questions. This model accounts for how the uninterpretable [WH] feature of wh-phrases is checked and deleted and when phrases are sent to Spell-Out. The paper tries to explore the similarity and difference of nominal wh-words between English and Chinese in matrix and embedded wh-questions, which will help provide further evidence of the power of universal grammar, and the usefulness of the approach to syntactic operation of other languages.