earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to propose that English non-finite clauses including ECM and small clauses(henceforth, SC) have a parallel internal structure with the verbal predication mediated by the copular BE. To support the idea, the English copular verb BE is classified as auxiliary and lexical verbs depending on its syntactic, semantic, and phonetic features, and then the lexical BE is sub-classified into the following two types: be-① and be-②. This paper argues that be-②’s semantic and phonetic features are lost in the process of Grammaticalization with only functional ones left. To consolidate the argument, some empirical evidences are presented from French and Nigerian Edo languages. In the Edo language especially, overt copular particles, whose morphology is totally distinct from its auxiliary BE, must exist in front of the predicate AP or NP whether it is placed in the main or embedded clauses. Based on these specimens, this paper contends that, instead of the functional category, the phonetically null functional element be-② mediates the predication and agreement between English SC subjects and predicates. Therefore, describing the SC complements and ECM as an identical TP structure seems worth pursing in that various English clausal structures can be explained uniformly by the head of T. (Chungnam National University)