earticle

영어

This paper argues that the extraposition account cannot be a proper option for the derivation of English clefts. This point is clarified by showing that the extraposition account cannot provide satisfactory explanations for the empirical problems involving the unavailability of predicational copular sentences for clefts, scope ambiguity facts, the behavior of idiom chunks, the wh-blocking phenomena, and VP-ellipsis. Inversely, these empirical problems suggest that the raising account is the proper option for the derivation of English clefts since they receive satisfactory explanations under the raising account. Although this reasoning is in line with Pinkham and Hankamer (1975), this paper does not agree with them on the following two points; the range of derivationally ambiguous clefts and another derivational option for them. Based on their finding on subextraction facts, they suggest that English DP-clefts may be derived by the way of the extraposition account or by the way of the raising analysis. But contra their suggestion, this paper claims that, besides DP-clefts, some instances of PP-clefts are also derivationally ambiguous. Additionally, this paper also argues that not the extraposition account but the (null) operator-movement account should be adopted as another viable option for the derivationally ambiguous English clefts.