영어 non-DP 주어의 구조적 위치

On English Non-DP Subjects and their Structural Position

This paper discusses so called the non-DP subject constructions in English. In general, a subject is a DP that bears Nominative case and that occupies 〔Spec, IP〕. However, in some examples under investigation, it looks as if non-DP categories such as Prepositional Phrases(PP), Adjectival Phrases(AP), Adverbial Phrases (AdvP), Small Clauses (PreP or SC), and VP occupy the canonical subject position, 〔Spec, IP〕. Under the framework of Chomsky's (1993, 1995) along with his previous works (Chomsky 1981, 1986), the Case Checking mechanism undoubtedly assumes that only DPs can have Case Therefore, the Case Checking/Agree mechanism is stated such that the strong uninterpretable feature, in this case Case feature (D or NP) feature must be checked off in a certain manner. Therefore, any phrasal categories other than DPs are not included in the considerations. Nonetheless, there are many instances of non-DP categories in English that occupy the seemingly canonical subject position, 〔spec, IP〕. In this paper, it is proposed that the actual position of these non-DP subjects in English is not in Spec of IP. Rather, they occupy 〔Spec, TopP〕 under CP in the sense of Lasnik & Stowell (1991), Rizzi (1997), and Haegeman & Gueron (1999). In its effect, therefore, this paper extends the idea of Stowell (1981) who argues that the clausal subjects in English is not in 〔Spec, IP〕, but in 〔Spec, TopP〕. We further argue that Stowell's version of Case Resistance Principle must be extended in order to accomodate many more occurrences of so called non-DP subjects.