The primary purpose of the paper is to show that such phenomena as the cliticization of weak pronouns, TH/EX in there constructions and the wh-movement from extracted nominals can fall under one generalization called "defocusing", a pragmatic operation that cannot be applied twice to the same syntactic object. We argue, in this paper, TH/EX is not a PF operation but a pragmatic operation before Spell-Out. In our model, syntactic objects should go through all the syntactic and/or pragmatic operations before they reach the interface and lexical insertion is a 24hr outlet rather than a one-fell-swoop operation.

Chegyong Im. 2001. Person Constraint and Licensing of Expletive Constructions. Studies in Modern Grammar 25, 29-53. Some structures allow number agreement but not first/second person agreement. That would follow if the [person] feature of T reduces to [3 person] (the default choice). We will show, in this paper, the environment in which this phenomenon happens, suggesting a universal constraint for the locative inversion constructions and expletive constructions. The other major purpose of the paper is to illustrate the licensing of expletive constructions in the framework of Rizzi (1997) and Platzack (2000). We argue that the different syntactic behavior between there type expletives and it type expletives can be explained in terms of Multiple Interfaces. We will also try to show that the structure of TECs in Icelandic can be neatly identified in our proposal.

Hak-youn Kim. 1997. Expletive Constructions in Optimality Theory. Studies in Modern Grammatical Theories 11: 91-105. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest LRI (Last Resort Insertion) instead of Subject in the rank of Subject ＞ FI for optimal expletive in non-pro drop language. The general framework of Optimal Theory in syntax is introduced focused on Ob-Hd constraint in subject-verb inversion in English, and Subject and FI constraints in English and Italian. However the Subject constraint defined as "subject position must be filled" is not enough to cover all the expletive constructions. When the so called associate-NP is definite(DP), it can satisfy EPP feature in Infl without expletive. And Default Agreement of Subject in Icelandic also blocks an expletive in the subject position. Instead the last resort insertion of expletive occurs in order to satisfy the EPP feature only when the associate-NP is indefinite(NP). This is because the expletive functions as a determiner. Therefore I suggest to replace Subject by LRI.