wh-movement

Most English interrogative words start with wh-, for example, who, whom, whose, what, which, when, where, why, etc. (though how is an exception).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌdʌbəlju ˈeɪtʃ ˌmuvmənt/

wh-movement (countable and uncountable, plural wh-movements)

1. (syntax) a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause.

• wh-extraction
• wh-fronting

• A-bar movement

• wh-in-situ
• wh-island
• wh-word

• parasitic gap

• wh-movement on Wikipedia.Wikipedia