earticle

영어

Contrary to the view advocated by Heycock (1993, 2007), this paper primarily claims that not only stage-level predicates but also individual-level predicates can serve as a topic. The evidence is found in the VP-preposing construction whose semantic functions can be claimed to mark an eventive topic. In the VP-preposing construction, it is found that stage-level predicates are predominantly preposed. However, this paper finds that it is not the case that individual-level predicates are excluded from the VP-preposing construction. The finding of this paper has three implications. First, the main claim of this paper makes us revisit De Swart (1991) who attributes an event argument to individual-level predicates as well as stage-level predicates, contrary to Kratzer (1995). Second, this paper supports Baltin (2005) who claims that it is the eventive part, not the entity part of the VP, that goes to the Topic Phrase. Third, the claim of this paper also sheds light on the issue on the parallelism between the nominal domain and the verbal domain since it claims that the parallelism operates not only at the semantic level but also at the discourse level.