Shim, Ji Young, Ihsane, Tabea. English Overt and Null Complementizers. Studies in Generative Grammar, 27-3, 515-533. Most studies on English complementizer that assume that overt and null that clauses have the identical underlying structure, predicting they show (nearly) the same syntactic distribution, contrary to fact. This paper explores overt and null complementizers in clausal complements of both non-factive and factive predicates in English, building on the assumptions that (i) feature specification on C differs from language to language and (ii) languages also differ as to lexicalizing a subset of these features on C. Adopting Rizzi’s (1997) split CP structure with two C heads, Force and Finiteness, we argue that null that clauses are FinPs, whereas overt that clauses have an extra functional layer above FinP, lexicalizing either the Force head under non-factive predicates or the light demonstrative head d under factive predicates. These three different underlying structures also successfully account for different syntactic patterns found between overt and null that clauses in various contexts.
1. Introduction
2. Overt vs. null complementizers
3. Conclusion
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