Earticle

This paper deals with the syntactic properties and structure of the English ‘contact clauses’ in the sense of Jespersen (1909-49). It first reviews the syntactic properties which distinguish between restrictive and non-restrictive full relative clauses in English and also their syntactic structures proposed in the previous literature. Then it discusses the syntactic properties and structure of the contact clauses in English. It is proposed in this paper that the category of the contact clause is TP, rather than CP. Contact clauses display the diagnostics of a syntactic A'-chain, and this paper argues that the relative head (the node to which the relative modifier is adjoined) is an A'-position which directly binds into the relativized position. Essentially, contact clauses are restrictive relative clauses which simply lack the apparatus of the syntactic operator movement

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.

In this paper I argue under the minimalist framework of Chomsky (1998, 1999) that null operators, in contrast to wh-operators, are basically regulated by the finiteness property of the clause(5) involved, in its distribution and aspects of movement, and demonstrate how the derivation of operator constructions is affected by the presence or absence of phonological contents in operators. The theoretical implication of this paper is that the postulation of null operators in English is not merely a linguistic artifact but rather a necessity of the theory of English to accommodate two essentially different operator constructions.

A wh-in-situ must be somehow associated with C, possibly as a way of scope taking, in order to ensure proper interpretation. So far, there have been two approaches concerning the fact that a wh-in-situ can have both a wide and a narrow scope. One is that a wh-in-situ undergoes movement at LF to the Spec of Comp by Aoun, Hornstein, and Sportiche(1981), Chomsky(1981), Hung(1982), Kayne(1984), Lasnik and Saito(1984), May(1985), Watanabe(1992), Tanaka(1999), and so on. The other is that a wh-in-situ does not undergo LF-movement at all and it is unselectively bound by the Q-operator instead. This approach was done by Pesetsky(1987), Stroik(1992), Aoun and Li(1993), Tsai(1994), Reinhart (1995), and so forth. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to explain why a wh-in-situ has an ambiguous interpretation. This approach along with the assumptions of Chomsky(1998, 1999) assumes that a null operator with an uninterpretable [wh] feature and an interpretable [Q] feature undergoes XP-movement overtly. With these assumptions, this paper shows that the reason that a wh-in-situ has both a wide and a narrow scope is the result of null operator movement to the position where the scope is marked.

This paper offers a new analysis of English tough constructions that resolves the tension between their internal A-bar dependency and the robust absence of reconstruction effects. This study claims that the tough-subject construction involves the base-generation of the matrix subject, which saturates a property (<e,st>) derived by null operator movement in the embedded clause. The lower copy of the operator is analyzed as a null resumptive pronoun rather than as a variable trace. This assumption explains the lack of Condition C and Weak Crossover effects while preserving the operator dependency required to license parasitic gaps. Finally, this analysis derives the asymmetry in experiencer PP licensing from a fundamental difference in semantic typing. The analysis demonstrates that while the expletive variant selects a proposition (<s,t>) capable of supporting external modification, the tough-subject variant selects a property that structurally excludes experiencer PPs.

In this paper, by arguing that Korean (sub)comparatives exhibit no cross-over (SCO/WCO) effects, unlike English (sub)comparatives, I suggest that while pied-piping is involved in English comparatives, overt LBE (left-branch extraction) is involved in Korean comparatives, implying that there is a parametric variation in relation to the way the null degree operator undergoes movement. During the discussion, I also show that exhibiting long-distance dependency and island effects, Korean comparatives involve null degree operator movement, like English comparatives, while Korean comparatives exhibit no identity condition effects, unlike English comparatives.

This paper shows that Korean comparatives involve degree operator movement, in contrast to Japanese comparatives. Beck et al. (2004) claim that yori 'than'-clauses in Japanese comparatives do not involve a degree variable, rather denoting individuals. Beck et al. (2004) further expect that Korean would pattern together with Japanese comparatives. However, I argue that Korean comparatives involve degree variables in the syntax, evidenced from negation island effects, no variation in acceptability, scope interactions, subcomparatives, measure phrase comparatives, and syntactic island effects.

The quote initial reported direct speech optionally involves subject-main verb inversion, and the inverted cases are called the quotative inversion construction. This study examines the structure of this quotative inversion and non-inversion constructions and diagnoses one previously unnoticed problem in them. More specifically, it will be shown that the quotative operator, widely believed to be involved in the derivation of the quotative constructions, is immune to the Coordinate Structure Constraint. This obviation effect is attributed to the A-movement nature of the quotative operator movement, based on the idea that A-movement is immune to the Coordinate Structure Constraint.