earticle

영어

The goal of this paper is to examine several problems regarding tough-constructions (TC) which have been considerably controversial since the very beginning of the Generative Grammar and to present possible solutions to them within the theoretical framework of the Phase-Based Minimalism. It is argued that those problems concerning TC have stemmed from the so-called A-movement approach in which TC can be derived from expletive-TC, referred to as non-tough-constructions (NTC) in this paper, by a kind of transformational rule. It is also argued that the approach has relied too heavily on the GB concepts, such as the levels of representation, taken to be conceptually and empirically unnecessary in Minimalism. Therefore, this paper proposes that, in the analyses of TC, we adopt an A'-movement approach instead of the A-movement one and the phase-based minimalist approach instead of the GB-style representational one. By doing so, we present relatively successful solutions to such controversial TC-related problems as the θ-role assignment problem, the Case-checking/assignment problem, the locality problem, the movement motivation problem, and the scope problem