Since Ross (1967), movement has been known to display what is called the island-sensitivity. As has long been advocated and assumed in the generative grammar, English DP and TP are the cyclic nodes/bounding nodes/barriers from which an extraction is disallowed, which turns into different versions of locality in the name of Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) in Chomsky (2000, 2001). With this technology, the bounding nodes enter into a new stage, Phases. In essence, however, Cyclicity, Subjacency, and PIC are all dealing with locality constraint on movement (Boecks 2012:58). While maintaining a theory-neutral stance between different versions of locality constraint on Wh-movement, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the two closely related constructions of English, Sentential Subject Construction (SSC) and its corresponding Extraposition Construction (EC) with respect to the island effect. The fact that Wh-constituent can be extracted neither from finite that-CP nor non-finite for-CP in SSC, while it freely moves out of both that-CP and for-CP in EC is analyzed with a null D head. As a consequence of this analysis, it is argued that a null D(P) is a necessary constituent in order to account for the impossibility of Wh-extraction from SSC. On the other hand, the ban on extraction is lifted in EC, due to the lack of the encapsulating DP.

This paper aims to discuss an English parochial construction, ‘would rather [CPthat [...]],’ in “I’d rather that you didn’t mention the price” and “My wife would rather that we didn’t see each other any more” Assuming that ‘rather’ is an adverb as defined in all English dictionaries available commercially as well as on-and off-line, ‘would rather CP’ construction renders an intriguing issue with respect to the clausal type, since the matrix TP obviously lacks a lexical verb, yielding a verbless finite clause with a fully embedded CP in it. Swan (1980: 519), Quirk, et. al (1985: 1183), Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 1003), Carter & McCarthy (2006), Klippenstein (2012), and Wood (2013), Merriam-Webster (2016: 490) as well as many on-line sites including Barron TOEFFL (2011) grammar units have all presented the construction ‘would rather CP...’ and provided with the meaning, usages, and its idiomatic status. Based on the data from Klippenstein (2012) and Wood (2013), this paper proposes a SubjunctP above the lexical VP which is occupied by a V ‘rather’. The lack of lexical verb in this construction is accounted for so that the generalization still holds that there is no verbless finite clause in English. The lexical V, with a null spell-out, retains the categorial feature V with the semantic residue of the verbal ‘rather’. The etymological and historical evidence backs up the categorial status of ‘rather’. Furthermore, since the verbal ‘rather’ is used normally with Subjunctive in meaning, it is argued to project as SubjunctP with [±Subjunct] features so that it affects Tense/Aspect/Mood of the embedded clause.

The current study aims to provide a feature-based account for the superficially contradictory constructions widely examined in syntax, known as the Definiteness Effect (DE) and the anti-Definiteness Effect (anti-DE). The DE is stated that the definite/ strong determiner phrases cannot serve as a notional subject. The anti-Definiteness Effect, however, is the case in which the definiteness effect vanishes, yielding the anti-Definiteness effect. In the anti-DE examples, the strong/specific/definite determiners are allowed to appear in the existential constructions (Milsark 1977, Ward and Birner 1995, McNally 1997, Abbott 1993, 1997, Keenan 2003, Hartmann 2013). In this paper, I argue that the anti-DE examples are an instance of Focus construction, which houses a bunch of syntactic as well as pragmatic features such as [focus, existence, knownness] (Bolinger 1977, Cann 2008), among others. It should be obvious that it is neither necessary nor accurate to dichotomize the determiners into Strong vs. Weak. The current proposal resolves this apparent contradiction between the DE and the anti-DE in a unified way, leading to the conclusion that there is no such thing as (anti-)DE. Furthermore, it may extend to other existential constructions such as HAVE-existentials (Quirk, et al 1976, Huddlestone and Pullum 2002, Tham 2004, Hong 2017, 2018). The ramifications of the present analysis include that there in there-existentials in English originates Spec-vP (Deal 2009) and the vP selects the Focus Projection whose most salient features include [focus, existence, knownness], among others.

Sungshim Hong and Jaekeun Lee. 2017. Let’s Talk about Let+Us: English Hortative and Causative Constructions. Studies in Modern Grammar 96, 67-88. This paper deals with the two seemingly alike constructions in the English language, LET’S construction and LET+US construction. The foci of the current research include (i) whether or not LET’S is a mere phonological contraction of LET+US, (ii) how they are different in their distribution, as well as their interactions with negation/Tag questions, and (iii) why they are different; their asymmetries are attributed to the internal structures of the two. That is, in this paper, their internal structures are distinctively proposed within the Minimalist syntax (Chomsky 1995, 2004, 2005, 2007). On the basis of a garden variety of the already known asymmetries between the two (Seppänen 1977, Fries 1964, Davies 1986, Palmer 1988, Potsdam 1998, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Quirk et al 1972, 1985), we support the idea that in spite of some of their superficial similarities and looks, the two constructions, both of which contain an identical lexeme LET, need to be analyzed independently from each other. Following the insight of Alcazar and Saltarelli (2014), the light verb, v, is poised for Hortative LET’S in a mono-clausal configuration. The occurrence of Causative LET+US may contract into the isomorphic LET’S, the Hortative LET’S as well. Nonetheless, the Causative LET+US occurs in a bi-clausal configuration with a Tdef intervening, whose Spec is US or any other DP. This paper presents the internal structures of the Hortatives and Causatives differently so that their morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic disparities can be easily accounted for. It is suggested that the Hortative LET’S underwent syncretism (Radford 2004, Gelderen 2004, 2008), whereas the lexical LET survives as a main verb.

Being a rare form of sentence formation, not many languages seem to have Tag question constructions as English does (Culicover 1992:193). Besides, Cuenca (1997:4) notes that the English Tag question construction has received less and less attention in the later period of generative syntax, due to the colloquial characteristics of the construction. Of the two major distinct approaches to English Tag question constructions including Mono-clausal approaches such as Klima (1964), Arbini (1969), and den Dikkien (1995), and bi-clausal approaches such as Huddleston (1969), Culicover (1992), McCawley (1998), and Sailor (2009), the current paper proposes a Minimalist approach to Tag Question Construction using a series of Head movement, Focalization of vP, a Polarity reversing functional projection, PolP, which contains an abstract morpheme [NEG], and adjunction mechanism. Through these thorough and meticulous steps, the English Tag question construction receives a Minimalist facelift.

The current research aims to show that a transitive predicate/verb in one language may not necessarily be transitive in another. An alternative argument structure, Alternative Argument Structure Hypothesis (AASH), is proposed and advocated in this paper in order to account for erroneous production patterns noted and observed in Kim (2001), Park (2013), and Hong (2015a, b). Korean L1ers learning English as an L2 insert illicit prepositions between an English transitive V such as ‘marry’,‘kiss’,‘answer’etc. and its complement, yielding fairly high inaccuracy. It is argued that the erroneous patterns may be attributed to the asymmetries in the lexical argument structures between the Korean Vs and its English counterparts. The Korean counterparts of these English Vs are of the Sino-Korean origin light verbs (Han and Rambow, 2000, Choi and Wechsler 2002, Bak 2011) accompany‘-hata’. Under this proposal, it is the argument structure rather than morphological case as Montrul (1997, 2000), Ahn (2013), and Brown and Iwasaki (2013) have argued for that transfers to the acquiring process of the transitivity of the English Vs by Korean L1ers. The ramification of this study is that L1 grammar of argument structure transfers to L2 acquisition more fully and noticeably than has been assumed in the literature.