International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology

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Revisiting 'It'-Extraposition in English: An Extended Optimality-Theoretic Analysis

  • Received : 2019.05.20
  • Accepted : 2019.06.02
  • Published : 2019.06.30
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Abstract

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constraints and the constraint hierarchy developed to explain the 'relatively' simple cases of 'It'-Extraposition are no longer valid for the more complicated cases of 'It'-Extraposition in configuration of 'CP-V-CP'.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 post-verbal position. This observation may lead to elimination of one of the promising candidates of '$It_i{\ldots}[_{CP}that{\sim}]_i$' 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: ${\bullet}$ Constraints: $^*SSF$, AHSubj, Subj., Min-D ${\bullet}$ Constraint Hierarchy: SSF<<>>Subj.>> AHSubj.

Keywords

Selection of an Optimal Candidate #1

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References

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