• Language and Information
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-15
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• 2012

In accounting for the so-called copy raising (CR) in English, the movement perspective has assumed that the embedded subject of the CR verb's sentential complement is raised to the matrix subject, leaving behind its pronominal copy. This kind of movement-based analysis raises both empirical and analytical issues, when considering variations in the pronominal copy constraint. This paper investigates the actual uses of the construction, using online-available corpora. Based on this corpus search, we classify two different types of copy raising predicates (genuine and perception), and discuss their grammatical properties in detail. We suggest that the simple copying rule couched upon movement operations is not enough to capture great variations in the uses of the construction, and show that interpretive constraints, e.g., perceptual characterization condition, play an important role in licensing the construction.

• Language and Information
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.33-52
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• 2014

This paper proposes a unified structural account of some instances of the English Modals and Semi-auxiliaries. The classification and the syntactic/structural description of the English Modal auxiliary verbs and verb-related elements have long been the center for many proposals in the history of generative syntax. According to van Gelderen (1993) and Lightfoot (2002), it was sometime around 1380 that the Tense-node (T) appeared in the phrasal structures of the English language, and the T-node is under which the English Modal auxiliaries occupy. Closely related is the existing evidence that English Modals were used as main verbs up to the early sixteenth century (Lightfoot 1991, Han 2000). This paper argues for a bi-clausal approach to English Modal auxiliaries with the infinitival particle 'to' such as 'ought to' 'used to' and 'dare (to)' 'need (to)', etc. and Semi-auxiliaries including 'be to' and 'have to'. More specifically, 'ought' in 'ought to' constructions, for instance, undergoes V-to-T movement within the matrix clause, just like 'HAVEAux' and all instances of 'BE', whereas 'to' occupies the T position of the embedded complement clause. By proposing the bi-clausal account, Radford's (2004, 2009) problems can be solved. Further, the historical motivation for the account takes a stance along with Norde (2009) and Brinton & Traugott (2005) in that Radford's (2004, 2009) syncretization of the two positions of the infinitival particle 'to' is no different from the 'boundary loss' in the process of Grammariticalization. This line of argument supports Krug's (2011), and in turn Bolinger's(1980) generalization on Auxiliaryhood, while providing a novel insight into Head movement of V-to-T in Present Day English.