earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is to investigate English raising constructions in terms of the cognitive construal of prominence. The prominence as cognitive construal has two aspects: profiling and trajector/landmark distinction. In this paper it is argued that the profiling and trajector/landmark distinction in the prominence construal for English raising constructions are motivated by the main clause phenomena and the so called figure/ground focusing construal, respectively. It is claimed that the trajector/landmark distinction is accountable for the prominence asymmetry between a raised subject and a raised object in English raising constructions. On the other hand, the profiling aspect of prominence is related to the prominence asymmetry between a main clause and subordinate clause sentence element. The two factors interact to set up the hierarchy of prominence for the three types of raising constructions.