Interrogative Pronouns (Feature 19)
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Feature Annotation
Consider the equivalents of the four interrogative pronouns (i) ‘who’, (ii) ‘where’, (iii) ‘when’, and (iv) ‘how’ in your language. In many creole/pidgin languages, one or more of these are compound expressions, e.g. Seychelles Creole ki mannyer ‘how’, Bahamian Creole what side ‘where’.
An interrogative pronoun counts as compound if it is clearly segmentable synchronically into (at least) two component morphemes, both of which also occur elsewhere in the language with (roughly) the same meaning.
The compound interrogative must be a usual way of expressing the meaning. English, too, allows expressions like which person, at which place, at which time, and in which way, but these are not usual ways of saying ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’. But they need not be the only way of expressing these meanings. If a language allows both “which place” and “where” as usual ways of rendering the meaning ‘where’, this is counted as a compound expression after all. In other words, we do not count how many single-word expressions a language has for the four meanings, but how many usual compound expressions.
The constituents of the compound expression must be adjacent. Thus, the combination of an interrogative pronoun and an obligatory clause-final question particle does not constitute a compound expression.
Additional remarks
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Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | All single words | English (although one might possibly discern a morpheme wh-, the interrogatives who, where, when, how are not clearly segmentable, and in the case of who and how not at all). |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | One compound expression | Cape Verdean ki ténpu ‘when’, contrasting with ken(ha) ‘who’, undi ‘where’ and mo(di) ‘how’. |
| 3 | Two compound expressions | Bislama wanem taem ‘when’ and olsem wanem ‘how’, contrasting with hu ‘who’, wea ‘where’. |
| 4 | Three compound expressions | |
| 5 | All four compound expressions | Sango, and also Haitian Creole: ki moun ‘who’, ki kote‘where’, ki lè ‘when’, ki jan ‘how’ |
| 6 | Other | (Please give details in the “General comments” field.) |
WALS No.
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