The Syntax of Wh-Questions: A Minimalist Account of the Optional Wh-Movement in Jazani Arabic

This study investigates the optional wh-movement in Jazani Arabic, a southern Saudi Arabian dialect spoken near Yemen. Optionality in wh-movement occurs when a language allows wh-phrases to remain in situ or be optionally fronted. This challenges the Minimalist Program, which predicts that no language permits both mechanisms simultaneously. Focusing on simple wh-questions, the study examines this optionality from a Minimalist perspective, employing the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995), the Split-CP Hypothesis (Rizzi, 1997), and Contrastive and Information Focus (Kiss, 1998). Data were collected via questionnaires and interviews with 17 Jazani speakers in the USA, who judged the grammaticality of various wh-phrases. The findings reveal that SVO is the default word order in Jazani Arabic, while VSO is the marked word order. Regarding wh-questions formation, simple wh-questions include argument and adjunct wh-phrases, which can either remain in situ or move to the left periphery. Their positions, however, are not entirely optional but are motivated by distinct syntactic and semantic triggers. In-situ wh-phrases exhibit a less costly movement process due to their weak [+wh] feature, which prevents them from moving overtly to the CP domain. Instead, they involve the covert movement of an Operator to the CP for interpretation as wh-questions. Conversely, fronted wh-phrases are driven by the need to check a strong contrastive focus feature, attracting them to the Focus Projection. These findings provide a Minimalist-compatible analysis of wh-movement, demonstrating that both in-situ and fronted wh-phrases can coexist in the same dialect, thereby refining our understanding of wh-movement optionality.