The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

tion is blocked by the presence of the intervening NP a straight answer, andmovement of the NP He is therefore disallowed (technically, it would result ina doubly Case-marked NP, which is forbidden).If we want to classify the examples of ‘easy-to-please’ in (1)–(3), with theirconfigurations as in (6)–(8), under one type of movement process, NP-movementdoes not appear to be a good candidate, since it cannot account for allof the data. It would predict a split between (6) and (7) on the one hand and(8) on the other, but the ‘easy-to-please’ construction shows no such split. Thewh-analysis given in (5) does not face this problem, since wh-movement,whether of an overt wh-phrase or of an empty operator, does not correlatewith Case absorption and is therefore not blocked by an intervening object NP.As the simple examples in (12)–(14) show, wh-movement can indeed yield allthree configurations shown in (6)–(8). 1(12) Who idid you convince t i?(13) Who idid you deal with t i?(14) Who idid you get a straight answer from t i?A further distributional argument for assuming that the ‘easy-to-please’construction in present-day English features wh-movement is the possibilityof ‘long’ movement, whereby the gap is located in a more deeply embeddedclause, as shown in (15) and (16). 2(15) John will be easy [OP ito convince Bill to do business with t i].(16) A book like that is tough [OP ito claim you’ve read carefully t i].These more deeply embedded structures can again be paralleled in unambiguouswh-tokens like (17) and (18).(17) Who idid you convince Bill to do business with t i?(18) What book idid he claim he’d read t icarefully?The history of the ‘easy-to-please’ construction 259A final piece of evidence that has been adduced in favour of the wh-analysisis the fact that ‘easy-to-please’ can license a parasitic gap (pg), as in (19).(19) This book is difficult OP ito understand t iwithout reading pg carefully.1Although it allows all three configurations [ VPV (NP) (P) t], this is not to say that whmovementis completely free of restrictions; see Hornstein and Weinberg (1981) fordescriptive details.2The evidence of these sentence types is not crystal-clear. Some writers confidentlylabel examples like this ‘fully acceptable’, but others call them ‘not completely unacceptable’,‘marginal’ or even ‘ungrammatical’. See van der Wurff (1990b: 65–6) for areview of the different opinions.