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This paper explores properties of extraposition in English and provides the previous analyses of extraposition and their problems, focusing Koster's (2000) parallel construal analysis and Sheehan's (2011) scattered deletion analysis. To solve them, we assume Richards' (2009) suggestion that internal pair merge must be required to accommodate Agree-less movement. Given this, we argue that extraposition in English can be divided into two types: one is that extraposed elements such as relative clause, PP adjunct, subject CP and object CP, are directly merged in the rightmost position, due to external pair merge. The other is that after the extraposed element like PP complement is set-merged with source NP because of the Ɵ-relation, it is moved on the rightmost position via internal pair merge. Our proposal provides independent evidence that extraposition is not a PF movement but an operation in narrow syntax with interpretative effects

This paper aims to investigate‐functional and syntactic constraints imposed on extraposition from NPs in English. Given the general tendency that something focused or important is placed at the end of the sentence, it is shown that information structure has to do with extraposition: the elements extraposed from NPs must be more important than any other sentence element in information status; that is, the extraposed elements should be more important than the rest of the sentence elements. In cases where two types of extraposition are involved in a sentence, a syntactic constraint has also been suggested, following Jang (2006), that the path of an extraposed element must not cross that of the other extraposed element and instead, the former must be nested or vice versa

English LIC has its unique syntactic, pragmatic, and discourse-related features, not to mention phonological and prosodic features. This paper mainly deals with syntactic, informational, and discourse-related features in English LIC. English LIC delivers discourse-related information in legitimate syntactic structures. Most of English LIC has either unaccusative or unergative verbs with locational or directional locative PPs. Depending on the kinds of verbs, LIC entails some distinctive syntactic properties, such as long distance agreement and extraposion in PF, but it has null expletive Pro in [Spec, TP] in common. In discourse situations, it is natural for communicators to deploy discoursal information in legitimate syntactic structure. LIC has categorical information structure, so the PP receives hearer-old interpretation and the grammatical subject at the end of the sentences receives hearer-new, focus, interpretation. We have proposed that in LIC, there is null expletive Pro equivalent to there in [Spec, TP] to satisfy EPP. And we have also showed that null expletive Pro in [Spec, TP] is well applied to finite verb agreement, tag questions, PRO-binding, Raising and ECM constructions. In conclusion, we posit that there must be null expletive Pro to satisfy EPP in English locative construction.

As noted by Napoli (1988), there are two kinds of expletive it, namely the extraposition it (EXT-it) and the raising it (R-it). The expletive construction accompanying EXT-it and the one with R-it behave differently with respect to some syntactic phenomena. They are the extraction of a wh-phrase from the clausal argument, controlling the PRO subject in an adjunct infinitival clause, the possibility of serving as a small clause complement, and the mobility of the clausal argument to subject position. To provide a reasonable analysis for the two expletive constructions in question, this paper proposes that in the expletive construction accompanying EXT-it the expletive is merged in the specifier of the clausal argument and then moves to the matrix [Spec, TP], whereas the expletive is merged directly in the matrix [Spec, TP] in the expletive construction with R-it. The syntactic differences between the two expletive constructions in question are successfully accounted for under this paper’s proposal with minor adoption of some relevant syntactic mechanisms. The cannonical expletive construction accompanying EXT-it may be led by R-it when the clausal argument is introduced by a wh-phrase, but this problematic case is explained under the assumption that the EPP feature of C must be checked off by a lexical item bearing the same value with respect to [±wh] feature.

This paper aims to provide a Role and Reference Grammar(RRG) account of it-cleft construction in English. The followings are claimed in this paper. First, it is claimed that English it-cleft construction is considered as the construction in which the cleft pronoun it serves both specificational and expletive functions and the cleft constituents are not the parts of the predicates. Moreover, the cleft clause is claimed to be a kind of relative clause. This claim leads us to postulate an alternative Layered Structure of Clause, which is different from the one proposed by Pavey(2004). Second, the be' predicates should be doubly marked at the Logical Structures to reflect two functions, in which the first one is for the semantic function, and the second one, for the pragmatic. Third, the cleft construction is different from the it-exptraposition construction, in that the mixed approach does not apply to the it-exptraposition construction, and the function of be predicate is predicational.

This paper argues that the extraposition account cannot be a proper option for the derivation of English clefts. This point is clarified by showing that the extraposition account cannot provide satisfactory explanations for the empirical problems involving the unavailability of predicational copular sentences for clefts, scope ambiguity facts, the behavior of idiom chunks, the wh-blocking phenomena, and VP-ellipsis. Inversely, these empirical problems suggest that the raising account is the proper option for the derivation of English clefts since they receive satisfactory explanations under the raising account. Although this reasoning is in line with Pinkham and Hankamer (1975), this paper does not agree with them on the following two points; the range of derivationally ambiguous clefts and another derivational option for them. Based on their finding on subextraction facts, they suggest that English DP-clefts may be derived by the way of the extraposition account or by the way of the raising analysis. But contra their suggestion, this paper claims that, besides DP-clefts, some instances of PP-clefts are also derivationally ambiguous. Additionally, this paper also argues that not the extraposition account but the (null) operator-movement account should be adopted as another viable option for the derivationally ambiguous English clefts.

This paper focuses on syntactic and pragmatic analyses in Subject Extraposition Construction(SEC). It is argued that movement and non-movement analyses have many syntactic shortcomings. It means that the former explains the unaccusative verbs and transitive verbs by using the different movement theory and the latter does not have the unified view of case checking. Overall, to cover various SECs, I suggest that predicate located between subject NP and extraposed PP is considered the important semantic factor under pragmatic analysis as followings: first, appearance or existence, second, the strength of importance and third, anaphoric or deictic meaning. This paper proposes that the semantic property of predicate regarded as head is conclusive to judge the acceptability of SEC.

In this paper I discuss a more complicated case of ‘It’-Extraposition in English in the Optimality Theory [1] by further modifying and extending the analysis done in Khym (2018) [2] in which only the ‘relatively’ simple cases of ‘It’-Extraposition such as ‘CP-Predicate’ was dealt with. I show in this paper that the constraints and the constraint hierarchy developed to explain the ‘relatively’ simple cases of ‘It’- Extraposition are no longer valid for the more complicated cases of ‘It’-Extraposition in configuration of ‘CP-V-CP’. In doing so, I also discuss two important theoretic possibilities and suggest a new view to look at the ‘It’-Extraposition: first, the long-bothering question of which syntactic approach between P&P (Chomsky 1985) [3] and MP (Chomsky 1992) [4] should be based on in projecting the full surface forms of candidates may boil down to just a simple issue of an intrinsic property of the Gen(erator). Second, the so-called ‘It’- Extraposition phenomenon may not actually be a derived construction by the optional application of Extraposition operation. Rather, it could be just a representational construction produced by the simple application of ‘It’-insertion after the structure projection with ‘that-clause’ at the postverbal position. This observation may lead to elimination of one of the promising candidates of ‘Iti…[CP that~]i’ out of the computation table in Khym [2], and eventually to excluding the long-named ‘It’- Extraposition case from Extrsposition phenomena itself. The final constraints and the constraint hierarchy that are explored are as follows: • Constraints: *SSF, AHSubj, Subj., Min-D • Constraint Hierarchy: SSF<<>>Subj.>> AHSubj.

The Extraposition phenomenon in English has been analyzed mainly through two approaches: a derivational approach under the Principles & Parameters framework (P&P) [1] and a representational approach under the early Minimalist framework (MP) [2]. The first one tries to understand the phenomenon as a result of the movement of a Big Subject first to the end of a sentence which is then followed by the insertion of an expletive ‘it’ to the empty Subject position. On the other hand, the second one tries to understand it by way of assuming a Big Subject originally base-generated at the end of a sentence which is followed by the insertion of an expletive ‘it’ to the empty Subject position. The two approaches, however, are not free from theoretical defects at all: the full derivational approach was under controversy in terms of (1) the failure of the Binding Theory and (2) its inability to suggest anything about the marginal reading issue. On the while, the representational approach has been argued (1) to violate the thematic hierarchy that should be kept in Dstructure, and (2) to be also unable to suggest the slightest difference in marginal reading issue as the first one. In this paper I focus mainly on analyzing the ‘It’-Extraposition phenomenon in the Optimality Theory [3]. I will show that by way of (i) some newly developed constraints such as Subj., and AHSubj. and (ii) a constraint hierarchy of Subj.>>AHSubj., the controversies of ‘It-Extraposition’ such as (1) the analysis of construction and (2) the very closely related issue of ‘marginal reading issue’ can be explained properly.

This study aims to provide the grammatical and discourse properties of that-complement clause extraposition (hereafter CCE) constructions with the help of a total of 3,791 sentences from COCA. As a starting point, we lend weight to the argument that the extraposed clause of the head noun appears to be more akin to appositive than relative clause constructions. In corpus findings, the singular form as well as the definite article are clearly more frequent with respect to use of the head noun characterized with [ANIMATE -] and [THEME +] values. As well, the present tense predominantly comes into use, whereas the presentational verbs take the extraposed that-complement clause fairly often. Of particular relevance here is that we provide several types of modality of the head noun, so the epistemic value making up most of the occurrences is further classified into five groups: evaluation, argument, evidence, idea, and perception. The final question addressed in our investigation is what illocutionary force a speaker or writer conveys within the that-complement clause. Self-assertion shows the highest rise in the use of illocutionary force, while prior context is highly favored over no discourse-based information in CCE construction.

This study investigates extraposition possibilities of a complementizer phrase or prepositional phrase out of its subject NP. It is argued that various syntactic studies have been proposed on subject extraposition constructions, but these syntactic analyses fall short of explaining extractability of CPs or PPs from subject NPs in its entirety. To account for the puzzling data in Subject Extraposition Construction more exclusively, this paper introduces a new projection, RefP with the notion of "specificity", advanced Enc(1991), Kiss(1996), and others. In the process of this, it turns out that (non)specificity of the subject NP is crucial to distinguishing the acceptability from the unacceptability of extraposition out of subject NPs.

There was a long debate between movement vs. base-generation analyses of extraposition, which also revolved around the question of the landing site and definiteness effect. As is well known, extraposition from specific DPs is impossible according to Gueron (1980), Diesing (1992) and Kiss (1996), among others. So far many analyses (e.g., rightward movement analysis, stranding analysis, stylistic analysis, base generation analysis, post-cyclic merger analysis) have been presented, but they all show several problems, especially with regard to definiteness effect. In this paper, we show that these several problems with the previous analyses can be solved in the framework of Minimalism, especially on the assumption that the extraposed elements are base-generated NPs in disguise - [NP [N' ØN [PP/CP ]]], and the uninterpretable/unvalued defective agreement feature of the purported extraposed Null N enters into Agree with the interpretable/valued agreement feature of the 'host' DP.

This paper investigates the properties of extraposition from subject in English at the syntax-lexicon and syntax-discourse interfaces. The attested presence of counterexamples (from unergative and transitive verbs) for the standard unaccsuative restriction led to the abandonment of a syntactic analysis of the construction and of its unaccusativity diagnostic status. It is argued, however, that the existence of counterexamples does not preclude a syntactic/semantic analysis in favor of a discourse/functional approach. This paper shows that it is locative syntax that encompasses various types of verbs allowed in the construction and makes discourse requirements on the construction to be met.

This study addresses the Noun Phrase Extraposition Construction (NPEC) in English, which is recognized for its distinctive linguistic features, rendering it an idiomatic clause. This construction possesses three fixed constituents: expletive pronoun subject it, verb be with a singular verb form and its subsequent definite article the. Thus, the superficial form consists of ‘it + be + adjective + the + noun modified by a relative clause’, asyntactic pattern that guarantees the existence of its corresponding constructional meaning. This prompts us to explore the syntactic and semantic features within the framework of Construction Grammar, particularly in terms of collostructional analysis. This study draws several conclusions based on this analysis. First, NPEC functions as an interrogative with scalar properties. The predicate adjective, which expresses these properties, denotes emotional intensity toward an extraposed noun phrase. Next, the extraposed noun phrase directly signifies either the amounts of entities or indirectly the quantity of entities pertaining to concrete objects. The latter leads to ambiguous interpretations. Furthermore, this study suggests that the constructional meaning of NPEC is that the unusual feature of a particular entity is causing someone to become distracted.

This study investigates extraposition possibilities of complements and adjuncts out of their source DPs. The results show that the definiteness property of source DPs has an impact on extractability, but this property alone falls short of explaining the observed phenomenon in its entirety. Building on the semantics of specificity, advanced by Enc (1991) and others, this paper offers a novel account for the otherwise puzzling data in this research domain. In the course of challenging recalcitrant data in complement- and adjunct extraposition and wh-extraction, this paper introduces the notion of “visibility.” It turns out that a visible or invisible status of a specifier is crucial; that is, extraction is only possible when a specifier of a source DP is empty and thus visible in the course of derivation.

This paper provides a unified analysis for the three types of right displacement in English as the clause-final right-displaced element has in common the function of specifying/elaborating on what has been left referentially indeterminate or blank in the preceding clause. We take the surface make-up of the three constructions at issue to indicate that the right-displaced element has coordinate structure relation with the preceding 'propositional' constituent such as vP or TP. Based on this initial conception of the three constructions at issue, we make three points. First, we argue that these constructions involve clausal coordination and their surface forms are derived by eliding the second conjunct except for the base-generated/leftward-moved element outside it. Second, we show that the economy of structure-building is at work in the formation of the two coordinate conjuncts in the constructions, accounting for the well-known Right Roof constraint or clause-boundedness condition. Third, we also demonstrate that the ban on P-stranding heavy NP shift of a certain argument element follows from the unavailability of an implicit argument to the relevant position of the first conjunct.

English licenses the extraposition of a clausal expression to the sentencefinal position while introducing the expression it in the objectposition. The object extraposition also includes the so-called vacuousextraposition in which the expletive object and the allegedly extraposedCP are adjacent. This paper investigates actual uses of the vacuous objectextraposition, using contemporary corpora. Based on the empiricaldata obtained from the comprehensive corpus search, we suggest thatthe illocutionary rule of ‘assertion’ plays a key role in licensing theconstruction, in addition to the factive lexical semantics of the matrixverb in question. Together with the assumption that English employsnot only verbal but also nominal extraposition, we also offer a construction-based analysis that can account for the licensing conditions aswell as grammatical properties of the construction.

According to the Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981), expletives have no semantic content and thus cannot occur in theta-marked positions. However, there seem to exist overt cases where the expletive it appears in the theta-marked object position. Many attempts (Case-based analysis by Authier (1991), Predication analysis by Rothstein (1995), Spec analysis by Stroik (1991, 1996)) have been made to account for such cases, with the common postulation of generating the expletive in the non-theta marked position and moving to the object position. Though such movement operations could account for general cases, they have not been successful in capturing the contrast that happens with respect to various properties including the optionality of the expletive it. This paper claims that such a contrast, in addition to the distribution possibilities of it in the object position, easily follows from a lexical and constraint-based analysis couched upon tight interactions among various grammatical components such as lexicon, argument structure, syntax and semantics.