On the position of interrogative phrases and the order of complementizer and clause

Earlier versions of generative grammar, dating back to Bresnan (1970), proposed that wh-movement moves interrogative phrases into the position of complementizers. While the dominant view in generative grammar since Chomsky (1986) has been that wh-movement is movement into Spec of CP, the purpose of this paper is to examine typological evidence bearing on the earlier view, of movement into the position of complementizers. It investigates crosslinguistic patterns in the position of complementizers and the position of wh-phrases to determine whether there is any correlation between the two. While this does not appear to impact the more recent view of movement to Spec of CP, the patterns described here are of possible independent interest, both to generative linguists and to typologists. I argue that while the typological evidence initially appears to support the idea of a relationship between these two word order parameters, on more careful consideration, I conclude that there is no evidence of a correlation.