With W movement (in English wh-movement) the syntax becomes the phenomenon that the default word order changes in question sentences relative to the word order in confirmatory sentences because the asking element - for example, a prompt pronoun - is in the forefront sentence is meant. In many languages, for example, Dutch is required inversion in this case.
The name for this phenomenon varies by language. In Dutch, the term "W-movement" is preferred because most Dutch questions begin with a W (what, when, why etc.).
According to Joseph Greenberg, the phenomenon W-movement is associated with certain language universities. In languages in which confirmatory sentences apply the VSO order, in questioning sentences, the question word or other questioning element would always be the forefront, whereas in languages that use the SOV sequence as a default in languages that do not necessarily apply in confirmatory sentences. In languages with the most common sentence order SVO, the requesting element is also often the pretext (for example, in almost all Indo-European languages), but not always, for example, not in Chinese languages. Also see
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