• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.211-225
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• 2001

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.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2001

The displacement of the prepositional object from PP (DPO) was strictly prohibited in Old English (OE). No matter how such a prohibition is theoretically analyzed, it seems clear that OE had some sort of constraint against DPO. In this paper, I address the issue of what motivated the constraint by explaining what made DPO so difficult in OE. In particular, on the basis of the discussion about relative obliqueness among OE NP arguments, I propose that what was behind the constraint is both a high degree of obliqueness of OE prepositional arguments, which was rigidly marked and represented by the preposition as an obliqueness marker, and the representation and maintenance of relative obliqueness among OE NP arguments.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.149-159
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• 2002

Prepositional stranding (P-Stranding), which was possible only in certain types of constructions in Old English, began to be allowed more freely in the Middle English (ME) period, resulting in many new types of P-Stranding. Although many relevant studies have tried to account for the development of these new P-Stranding types, none of them or no combination of them seem to adequately explain how the new types came into being in ME and why they occurred in the order in which they occurred. In this paper, I explain why the development of new P-Stranding types in Middle English cannot be properly explained by any of the previous studies and then provide an alternative account of the advent of each new type of P-Stranding and the chronology involved on the basis of the displacement of the prepositional object from PP (DPO), a constraint on DPO (DPO), and the subject requirement (SubjR).

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2004

This paper has revisited the dative alternation in English, and defended the so-called polysemy view. The paper has argued for a particular format of lexical representation, one that allows reference to events. In addition to the semantic conditions, the paper has argued that the DO and PO constructions also allow for different information structures.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 1999

This paper argues that the basic modes of spatial cognition can be best identified in terms of argument/participant location, and shows that natural language uses‘simple’types of semantic denotations to encode spatial cognition, and further notes that spatial expressions should be interpreted not as locating an event/state as a whole but as locating arguments/participants of the event. The ways of locating events/states are identified in terms of argument orientation(AO), Which indicates semantic patterns of linkiarticipant location. and shows that natural langrage uses ng locatives to specific arguments. Four patterns of argument orientation described here reveal substantial modes of spatial cognition. and the AO patterns are mostly determined by the semantic classes of English verbs combining with locative expressions, i.e., by the event type of the predicate. As for the denotational constraint of locatives, the paper concludes that semantic denotations of locative PPs are restricted to the intersecting functions mapping relations to relations.