Subject Theta Roles and Tamil Tough Movement
Nagarajan Selvanathan
December 2017
 

In English tough movement (TM), the currently prevailing assumption is that there is no subject theta role: whatever theta role the logical object has in the embedded position in the expletive construction is the theta role that the subject has in a TM construction (Hicks 2009, Hartman 2011, Keine & Poole 2017). This is despite old arguments to the contrary from Lasnik & Fiengo (1974) and Kim (1995). In this squib, I discuss novel Tamil TM data. I first show that Tamil has the same A/A' properties as English TM and then show that there is a subject theta role in TM with two pieces of evidence: subject oriented adverbials and the koL verbal suffix. The Tamil data is used to argue against accounts of TM that deny a subject theta role in TM. Additionally, I argue that Mulder & Den Dikken's (1992) reanalysis account of TM can best account for the differences between tough, pretty and too/enough predicates in Tamil.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003767
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Submitted
keywords: tough movement, a'-movement, null operator, theta role, theta criterion, syntax
Downloaded:394 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]