An NP Matching Analysis for Tough Constructions in English

Abstract

Pitting three possible accounts for tough constructions, this paper advocates an NP matching analysis for them. Considering parasitic gap licensing, prohibited movement of the first object with double objects, and illegitimate extraction out of VP in tough infinitives leads to rejecting the traditional A-movement analysis for the construction at issue. (Anti-)reconstruction effects on anaphors, bound variable pronouns, idioms, R-expressions, and quantifiers provide testing grounds in comparing NP sub-extraction and NP matching analyses of tough constructions, eventually arguing that the latter is a valid one. The impossibility of extraposing tough infinitives is shown to follow from the clitic property of an Acc Case-bearing null operator rather than to argue for the NP sub-extraction analysis for tough constructions.