---
title: "<i>Wh</i>-questions in Singapore English tell us what about"
description: "B&W argue that no language genuinely combines English-style wh-fronting with Chinese-style wh-in-situ. 27 references."
authors: ["Yosuke Sato", "Jian Gang Ngui"]
year: 2017
venue: "Glossa: a journal of general linguistics"
source: "https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/4879/"
doi: "10.5334/gjgl.66"
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sato-2017-i-wh-i-questions-singapore/"
---
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# \<i>Wh\</i>-questions in Singapore English tell us what about questions with declarative syntax?

**Authors:** Yosuke Sato and [Jian Gang Ngui](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jian-gang-ngui/) · **Year:** 2017 · **Venue:** [Glossa: a journal of general linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/glossa-a-journal-of-general-linguistics/) ([Glossa a journal of general linguistics 2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/glossa-a-journal-of-general-linguistics/2017/)) · **Publisher:** [Ubiquity Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/ubiquity-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.66) · [PDF](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/4879/galley/12432/download) · [DOI 10.5334/gjgl.66](https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.66) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2592825146)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
This squib questions a typological claim by Bobaljik & Wurmbrand (2015, "B&W"). B&W argue that no language genuinely combines English-style wh-fronting with Chinese-style wh-in-situ. On their account, apparent optional in-situ questions in fronting languages are questions with declarative syntax (DSQs). Their evidence is that, across 10 surveyed languages, such in-situ forms cannot serve as complements of verbs like *ask* or *wonder*.

Sato and Ngui bring new data from Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). CSE is a wh-movement language, but it also accepts in-situ wh-phrases inside clauses selected by *ask* and *wonder*, which B&W's generalization rules out.

The authors keep B&W's Reverse Agree machinery but loosen one assumption. The Q-feature on the interrogative C head need not be fixed per language as valued or unvalued. It can be underspecified and take either value in a given derivation. The amendment still yields B&W's language types while allowing mixed systems.

The authors also argue that this property need not come from language contact. Malay and Ancash Quechua, neither of them contact languages, show the same optionality.

## Key points
- B&W's generalization: any language that moves wh-phrases to Spec,CP must also move them obligatorily in indirect questions. They checked it on English, German, Dutch, Icelandic, ASL, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Polish and French.
- Standard English allows matrix in-situ questions only in restricted contexts, such as legalistic, quiz-show or clarification questions. Embedding them under *ask*/*wonder* is ungrammatical.
- CSE, an English-lexified variety with a Chinese substrate, allows both fronted and in-situ wh in matrix clauses and in selected embedded clauses.
- Proposal: the C_WH Q-feature is underspecified.
  - If it enters unvalued, a c-commanding wh-phrase must value it, which forces overt movement.
  - If it enters valued, the in-situ wh-phrase is licensed by unselective binding.
- Supporting evidence from island effects:
  - CSE partial wh-movement obeys islands.
  - In Ancash Quechua (Cole 1982), fronting obeys the complex DP island while in-situ wh does not, and both forms can appear under *tapuy* 'to ask'.
  - The authors read this as favouring unselective binding over covert movement.

## Interesting ideas
- **Selection by question verbs as a diagnostic.** Whether a clause can be embedded under a question-taking verb shows whether it is grammatically interrogative or only used as a question in context. This separates clause type from speech act.
- **Underspecified features instead of a forced binary.** Rather than fixing a parameter per language, a grammar can leave a feature open and let each derivation choose a value, which covers mixed systems without breaking the restrictive core.
- **Island sensitivity separates mechanisms.** Two constructions that look alike on the surface can be told apart by whether they respect island constraints, which points to different underlying operations.
- **Testing a hypothesis outside its motivating data.** The authors derive a prediction from their amendment (non-contact languages with the same profile should exist) and check it against independent languages (Malay, Ancash Quechua). This avoids fitting a theory to the one case that inspired it.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (frames): prag could label "Your boy's name is what?" as a declarative clause carrying an interrogative speech act, keeping syntax and act as two distinct, explainable layers.
- **I2** (tree): UD dialect conversion and the parsers could treat Singapore-English in-situ wh inside a ccomp of *ask*/*wonder* as a legitimate dialect option rather than an error to repair.
- **I3** (learn): such contrastive diagnostics make good negative controls, checking that a repair rule or a silver-data witness does not treat wh-fronting and in-situ wh as interchangeable.
- **I4** (answer): reader evaluations could include declarative-order questions from quiz or interview genres absent from training, to confirm that question detection does not depend on word order.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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- [National University of Singapore](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/national-university-of-singapore/) — University, Singapore, Singapore · 207 works · 39,576 citations

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## Cite

Cite as: Yosuke Sato and Jian Gang Ngui. 2017. \<i>Wh\</i>-questions in Singapore English tell us what about questions with declarative syntax?. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{sato2017i,
  title = {{<i>Wh</i>-questions in Singapore English tell us what about questions with declarative syntax?}},
  author = {Yosuke Sato and Jian Gang Ngui},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.5334/gjgl.66},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.66}
}
```

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## References

27 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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26. How to cite this article: Sato, Yosuke and Jian Gang Ngui. 2017. Wh-questions in Singapore English tell us what about questions with declarative syntax? Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 17. 1–18, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ gjgl.66 [↗](https://doi.org/10.5334/)
27. Copyright: © 2017 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS [↗](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

*Updated 2 November 2026*