Pied-piping

In linguistics, pied-piping is a phenomenon of syntax whereby a given focused expression brings along an encompassing phrase with it when it is moved. The term was introduced by John Robert Ross in 1967. It references the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, where a piper lured rats and children away from their town. In syntactic pied-piping, a focused expression (such as an interrogative word) pulls its host phrase with it when it moves to its new position in the sentence. Metaphorically, the focused expression is the piper, and the host phrase is the material being pied-piped. Pied-piping is an aspect of syntactic discontinuities and has to do with constituents that can or cannot be discontinuous. Pied-piping is most visible in cases of wh-fronting of information questions and relative clauses, but it is not limited to wh-fronting. It can also occur with almost any type of discontinuity, including extraposition, scrambling, and topicalization. Most, if not all, languages that allow discontinuities employ pied-piping to some extent. However, there are significant differences across languages in this area, with some languages using pied-piping much more than others. In English, pied-piping occurs when a wh-expression drags its containing phrase with it to the front of the clause. The pied-piped material can be a noun phrase (NP), an adjective phrase (AP), an adverb phrase (AdvP), or a prepositional phrase (PP). In the following examples, the focused expression is indicated in bold, and the fronted word/phrase in the (b) and (c) sentences is underlined, with the gap marking its canonical position. The material that has been pied-piped is any underlined material that is not bolded. The (b) sentences show the focused expression pied-piping the target phrase, and the (c) sentences show absence of pied-piping. which is often ungrammatical. (1) a. She bought that house. b. Which house did she buy ___? c. *Which did she buy ___ house? (2) a. She is ten years old. b. How old is she ___? c. *How is she ___ old? (3) a.