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An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as what, which, when, where, who, whom, whose, why, whether and how. They are sometimes called wh-words , because in English most of them start with wh- (compare Five Ws ).
The English interrogative words (also known as "wh words" or "wh forms") are words in English with a central role in forming interrogative phrases and clauses and in asking questions. The main members associated with open-ended questions are how, what, when, where, which, who, whom, whose, and why, all of which also have -ever forms (e.g ...
Interrogative forms are sometimes known within English linguistics as wh-words, such as what, when, where, who, and why, but also include other interrogative words, such as how. This dependency has been used as a diagnostic tool in syntactic studies as it can be observed to interact with other grammatical constraints.
The pronunciation of the digraph wh in English has changed over time, and still varies today between different regions and accents.It is now most commonly pronounced /w/, the same as a plain initial w , although some dialects, particularly those of Scotland, Ireland, and the Southern United States, retain the traditional pronunciation /hw/, generally realized as [], a voiceless "w" sound.
The pronunciation of English relative words starting with the wh digraph involves a phonetic element historically pronounced as /hw/ and now variously realized as /w/ or /ʍ/. [ 30 ] : 14 Speakers with the whine - wine merger generally use /w/ , resulting in words like which , and why being pronounced with an initial /w/ sound, homophonous with ...
This list contains acronyms, initialisms, and pseudo-blends that begin with the letter W.. For the purposes of this list: acronym = an abbreviation pronounced as if it were a word, e.g., SARS = severe acute respiratory syndrome, pronounced to rhyme with cars
The spelling 'who' does not correspond to the word's pronunciation /huː/; it is the spelling that represents the expected outcome of hwā, while the pronunciation represents a divergent outcome – for details see Pronunciation of English wh . The word is cognate with Latin quis and Greek ποιός.
DPs can move for another reason: in the case of Wh-questions. In English, these are questions that begin with <wh> (e.g. who/whom, what, when, where, why, which, and how); words that serve the same function in other languages do not necessarily begin with <wh>, but are still treated as “Wh-items” under this framework.