Another Diachronic Perspective on English Tough-Constructions

Another Diachronic Perspective on English Tough-Constructions

Goh, Gwang-Yoon. 2003. Another Diachronic Perspective on English ToughConstructions. English Language and Linguistics 16. 211-223. Ever since toughconstructions in English began to attract the attention of early transformational grammarians, there has been considerable controversy about the analysis of the syntactic and/or semantic relationship between the tough-subject and the gap in the infinitival phrase/clause. Although the type of approach that assumes no syntactic connectivity has long been favored by current syntactic frameworks, it is not clear whether this type of approach is a truly well-motivated position supported by sufficient empirical evidence. In particular, it has been noted that there is some substantia! evidence both for and against it. This paper attempts to provide a new perspective on the analysis of English tough-constructions by considering the insights from the diachrony of prepositional stranding constructions in the history of English.