• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.9 no.spc
• /
• pp.131-148
• /
• 2003

This paper, conducted within the GB framework, investigates inversion phenomena in the functional categories, Focalization Phrases and Topicalization Phrases. The leading idea of this paper is that formal feature checking in these two functional categories is mostly responsible for inversion in which either verb or auxiliary verbs appear in front of subjects and also it will try to find an answer to the following questions: "What are the features that trigger the inversion?" and "Can all the inversion constructions explained by Haegeman's Focalization & Topicalization?" My discussion is largely based on English inversion constructions such as wh-inversion, negative inversion, and adverbial inversion. Also I will show there are some problems in Topicalization and Focalization analysis to explain some inversion constructions and present Rizzi(1999)'s analysis for those problems.

• Language and Information
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.87-103
• /
• 2007

This paper reanalyzes examples with missing verbs. Northern Mandarin rejects argument nominal phrases after a silent verb, as well as silent verbs inside islands. These restrictions suggest a grammatical process which silences verbs. I propose that these restrictions are the result of VP-topicalization followed by ellipsis. This analysis accounts for the island sensitivity of these constructions: since VP-topicalization feeds ellipsis, constructions with elided VPs are not derivable from configurations where movement is impossible. Also, to avoid topicalization along with the VP, the argument must move out of VP; the subsequent topicalization of the VP containing the argument's trace would then give rise to a configuration where that trace c-commands the moved-out DP. Adjuncts do not pose a problem because they are located outside of that smallest VP-shell. The data presented here are accommodated by neither of Tang's (2001) proposals for silent verbs (gapping and empty verbs). Instead, they provide support for a third source for silent verbs, VP-ellipsis via topicalization.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.56 no.5
• /
• pp.871-905
• /
• 2010

This paper is motivated by Watanabe's (2001) observation that English byphrase passives are sometimes translated into Japanese object topicalization constructions. That is, the original English sentence in the passive may be translated into the active voice with the logical object topicalized. A number of scholars, including Chomsky (1981) and Baker (1992), have remarked that languages have various ways to avoid focusing on the logical subject. The aim of the present study is to examine the translation equivalents of the English by-phrase passives in an English-Korean parallel corpus compiled by the author. A small sample of articles from Newsweek magazine and its published Korean translation reveals that there are indeed many ways to translate English by-phrase passives, including object topicalization (12.5%). Among the 64 translated sentences analyzed and classified, 12 (18.8%) examples were problematic in terms of agent defocusing, which is the primary function of passives. Of these 12 instances, five cases were identified where an alternative translation would be more suitable. The results suggest that the functional characteristics of English by-phrase passives should be highlighted in translator training as well as language teaching.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.37-54
• /
• 2003

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomena of preposing and inversion in English from the discourse-pragmatic perspectives. We claim that different types of preposing can be unified to a single process of topicalization. We also show that diverse discourse functions of inversion can be subsumed under the ‘linking’ function with the prior discourse. It is followed a comparative discussion between preposing and inversion to find what similarities the two constructions share and what differences there exist between the two. It is concluded that the choice of a syntactic forms ultimately depends on the speaker's evaluation of the information status of the knowledge store of the hearer.

• Korean Linguistics
• /
• v.65
• /
• pp.295-320
• /
• 2014

The idiom is listed in the lexicon, because it's meaning cannot be inferred from it's constituents. And the idiom is a single semantic unit. Thus the idiom is inserted to the syntax in the quality of a word. But the idiom is not always inserted to the syntax as a word. In the process generating the sentence, we can recognize the categorial property of the idiom that it is formally equal to the syntactic phrase. Then each of the constituents of the idiom can be inserted to the syntax. This is why the syntactic operation(as modification, topicalization, relativization, etc) can be applied to the constituent of the idiom. In this respect the idiom is a flexible construction as the listeme of a lexicon. The flexible property of the idiom is related to the dynamicity of a lexicon. The formal or semantic transformation of the idiom is the good example to show the dynamicity of a lexicon.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.117-149
• /
• 2004

The paper is to argue against the asymmetric CP-V2 analysis of Old English, according to which finite verbs invariably undergo movement into a clause-final T within subordinate clauses and reach the functional head C within main clauses. The asymmetric CP-V2 analysis, first of all, faces difficulty in explaining a wide range of post-verbal elements within subordinate clauses. To resolve the problem, the analysis has to abandon the obligatoriness of V-to-T movement or introduce various types of extraposition whose status is dubious as a legitimate syntactic operation. Obligatory V-to-T movement in Old English lacks conceptual justification as well. Crosslinguistic evidence reveals that morphological richness in verbal inflection cannot entail overt verb movement. Moreover, the operation is always string-vacuous under the asymmetric CP- V2 analysis and has no effect at the interfaces, in violation of the principle of economy. The distribution of Old English finite verbs in main clauses also undermines the asymmetric CP-V2 analysis. Conceptually speaking, a proper syntactic trigger cannot be confirmed to motivate obligatory verb movement to C. The operation not only gets little support from nominative Case marking, the distribution of expletives, or complementizer agreement but also requires the unconvincing stipulation that expletives as well as sentence-initial subjects result from string-vacuous topicalization. Finally, textual evidence testifies that Old English sometimes permits non-V2 ordering patterns, many of which remain unexplained under the asymmetric CP-V2 analysis.

• Language and Information
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.1-14
• /
• 2002

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.