Pied-piping and prepositional stranding
Pied-piping describes the situation where a phrase
larger than a single wh-word occurs in the fronted position. In the case where
the wh-word is a determiner such as which or whose, pied-piping refers to the
wh-determiner's appearance sentence-initially along with its complement. For
instance, in the following example, the entire phrase "which car" is
moved:
Which car does he like t?
In the transformational analysis, the wh-word
which moves to the beginning of the sentence, taking car, its complement, with
it, much as the Pied Piper of Hamelin attracted rats and children to follow
him, hence the term pied-piping.
In the case of determiners, pied-piping is
obligatory. For instance, the following sentence would be ungrammatical:
*Which does he like t car?
However, there are cases where pied-piping can be
optional. In English, this is often the case when a wh-word or phrase is the
object of a preposition. For instance, the following two examples are both
grammatical:
To whom did she reveal her secret t?
Who did she reveal her secret to t?
The second example is a case of preposition
stranding, which is possible in English, but not allowed in Latin or other
Romance languages. For languages that use postpositions rather than
prepositions, stranding is not allowed either.
