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== Movement ==
== Movement ==
Generativist syntacticians say that sentences have a "deep structure" that adheres to universal grammar, but various language-specific constraints transform this into the "surface structure" when the sentence gets actually realized. The most important such transformation is '''syntactic movement'''.
Generativist syntacticians say that sentences have a "deep structure" that adheres to universal grammar, but various language-specific constraints transform this into the "surface structure" when the sentence gets actually realized. One important such transformation is '''syntactic movement'''.


For example, English has something called ''wh-movement'': when we turn a sentence like "Mary wants Bill to dance" into a wh-question, we say "'''Who''' does Mary want () to dance?".
For example, English has something called ''wh-movement'': when we turn a sentence like "Mary wants Bill to dance" into a wh-question, we say "'''Who''' does Mary want () to dance?".