The prepositional object (PO) of an active sentence in English can sometimes be passivized, becoming the subject of the corresponding passive sentence. In particular, the verb (V) and preposition (P) in the English prepositional passive (P-Passive) are assumed to be reanalyzed to form a single structural unit, giving the status of a verbal object to the PO to be passivized. However, not every V+P sequence can undergo reanalysis, permitting the passivization of POs. Thus, we have to explain what licenses the reanalysis of V and p. resulting in an acceptable P-Passive sentence. In this paper, I will identify the factors which determine the passivization possibilities of POs and explain how they interact with one another. The results of this study will illustrate how formal and functional factors work together to form a major syntactic construction and to determine its grammaticality and acceptability.

It is noted that although the current state of development of web-based English education (hereafter referred to as WBEE) might not meet the criteria some educators have set for themselves in the field, students certainly seem to prefer studying in a web-based and computer-assisted learning environment. This kind of demand is fueling the drive to develop more suitable variations of WBEE. In order for WBEE to work out, a teacher should be a multifunctional type of instructor handling responsibilities such as the role of scriptwriter to create text, act as technician for the sound mixing and recording, preside over online chat rooms and discussion boards, and finally, as webmaster to maintain the site and supervise all academic/ clerical work related to the course. Therefore, it is suggested that WBEE be accompanied by a small personnel to divide the labor and lessen the burden on the actual teacher. Finally, it is noted that the traditional relationship between students and teacher may no longer be sustainable since WBEE does not provide the face-to-face style of class discussion and office hours in its current form. Until the technology is fully developed to compensate for these kinds of differences, it is an immediate challenge to provide other more compelling reasons for students to participate in WBEE.

This paper focuses on the applicability of paradigm to derivational morphology and the pressure of paradigm enforced on derivational phonology and morphology. Through a close examination of well-attested data, we will demonstrate that apparent surface idiosyncrasies in phonology are the results of paradigm leveling, and that paradigmatic forces of analogy are productively operating in English word formation. On the basis of these observations, it can be argued that the notion of paradigm has at least some justification within derivational morphology as well, even if not to the same extent that it has with inflectional morphology and that the paradigm forces are independently needed in any adequate phonological and morphological theory. This can also be extended to provide evidence against the split morphology hypothesis that inflectional and derivational morphology belong to different grammatical modules.

In this paper, I examine the phenomenon of English depictive and resultative predications with specific attention given to the relation between accentual focus structure and argument structure. The goal is pursued primarily through a production experiment and analyses to establish the interconnection between focus and argument structure. The central claim is that the resultative predicate forms a complex predicate with a main verb, whereas the depictive predicate behaves as an adjunct in English secondary constructions. The result shows that the relationship between focus and accent depends at least in part on their argument structure, confirming that current focus theories about argument-head and adjunct-head structures in primary predication constructions can be extended to secondary predication constructions.

The simple forms in English have mostly been investigated in terms of tense, especially by those who do not distinguish between tense and aspect in English. However, we often find some usages of the simple forms that do not seem to fit in any of the meanings of tense. The purpose of this paper is to find aspectual meanings out of the simple present and past forms by re-analyzing their meanings in terms of aspect. It turns out that they represent the perfective aspect seeing a situation as a whole with no beginning. middle and end. As for the controversial stative situations in the simple forms, they have been proven to show the perfective aspect, too, if we agree to see both the part and whole in state as having the same features. And syntactic evidences from the simple forms and their corresponding progressive forms compared also show that the habitual dynamic situations represent the same aspect in the simple forms.

This paper wanted to test the reality of English schwa by phonetic and phonological methods. Phonetically it wanted to see acoustic evidence of the relationship between the full vowels and their reduced vowels in the unstressed positions. Phonologically it wanted to prove how systematic the schwa sound is by the constraint-based grammar. As a result, the schwa phenomenon in English was supported both phonetically and phonologically. In the phonetic analysis no relationship Was found in the distribution of the F1 and F2 of the full vowels and their reduced vowels in the unstressed syllables of the derived words. The reduced vowels tended to converge into a target of F1 516 and F2 1815. The view that the schwa sounds have a target was supported. On the phonological side the constraint-based tableau produced the successful output by using FAITH (V), (equation omitted)V, FAITH V[-BACK+HiC], V[-Low, -TNS]#, REDUCE V[-STR, -TNS] as constraints. No ranking was found. Any violation of the constraints ousted the candidates.

In this study I investigate two implicit arguments in English middles: discharged argument and event argument. I argue that in middle formation external argument is discharged and event argument is suppressed. The proposal can account for the problems with the previous studies (Williams 1981; Keyser and Reoper 1984: Roberts 1987: Fagan 1988, 1992: Chung 2000). When a middle derives from the corresponding transitive verb, the subject argument is discharged, being an implicit argument. Argument discharge is different from argument suppression in the passives and argument deletion in the ergatives. I also argue that event argument is suppressed in middle formation. Event argument suppression is supported by the following: (i) The transitive verbs are always eventive but the corresponding middles are stative, and (ii) the middles are underlyingly eventive, (iii) the middles are “adorned” by certain manner adverbials.