A syntactic study of Wh-Questions in Bengali / Md Shahin Hossain

Md Shahin , Hossain (2018) A syntactic study of Wh-Questions in Bengali / Md Shahin Hossain. Masters thesis, University of Malaya.

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Abstract

This dissertation aims at investigating syntactic structures of wh-questions in Bengali Language (BL).It also aims to see whether it follows overt wh-movement or covert wh-movement or anything else and to represent the syntactic structures of BL wh-questions in contrast to the English language. It is confined to written Bengali language only. “Minimalist Program” introduced by Chomsky has been employed as the theoretical framework in the study. The research has been conducted by implementing syntactic process to explore and describe wh-question formations in BL. The data of this study has been collected through a questionnaire from 20 Bengali native speakers who were pursuing undergraduate and post-graduate studies at different faculties in University of Malaya. The results show that to form wh-questions, BL wh-items follow alternations. They can remain in situ and can move to various syntactic positions round the sentence. It follows full wh-movement and partial wh-movement. Wh-items often take scope left to right while in other languages such as in English, they always follow right to left. To form complex wh-question, even an embedded clauses which are conceived in the same way as English can syntactically move from its original position to sentence initial position or within the matrix clause to form wh-question in BL. It is also possible in BL that wh-word remain in situ in embedded clause and embedded clause move to 2nd cause position while matrix clause moves to initial position. It is hoped that this study will positively contribute to the void of knowledge and raise our awareness and understanding of the syntactic structures of wh-questions in BL. It will be beneficial, especially, to students of linguistics to study further in this area and Bengali Speakers, in general, to understand better about the syntax of BL wh-question. Moreover, it might be insightful to policy makers and language reformers in standardizing Bengali language.

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