earticle

영어

In this paper I discuss a more complicated case of ‘It’-Extraposition in English in the Optimality Theory [1] by further modifying and extending the analysis done in Khym (2018) [2] in which only the ‘relatively’ simple cases of ‘It’-Extraposition such as ‘CP-Predicate’ was dealt with. I show in this paper that the constraints and the constraint hierarchy developed to explain the ‘relatively’ simple cases of ‘It’- Extraposition are no longer valid for the more complicated cases of ‘It’-Extraposition in configuration of ‘CP-V-CP’. In doing so, I also discuss two important theoretic possibilities and suggest a new view to look at the ‘It’-Extraposition: first, the long-bothering question of which syntactic approach between P&P (Chomsky 1985) [3] and MP (Chomsky 1992) [4] should be based on in projecting the full surface forms of candidates may boil down to just a simple issue of an intrinsic property of the Gen(erator). Second, the so-called ‘It’- Extraposition phenomenon may not actually be a derived construction by the optional application of Extraposition operation. Rather, it could be just a representational construction produced by the simple application of ‘It’-insertion after the structure projection with ‘that-clause’ at the postverbal position. This observation may lead to elimination of one of the promising candidates of ‘Iti…[CP that~]i’ out of the computation table in Khym [2], and eventually to excluding the long-named ‘It’- Extraposition case from Extrsposition phenomena itself. The final constraints and the constraint hierarchy that are explored are as follows: • Constraints: *SSF, AHSubj, Subj., Min-D • Constraint Hierarchy: SSF<<>>Subj.>> AHSubj.