| dc.description.abstract | The overall purpose of this thesis is to provide a descriptive analysis of the Tough-Movement construction which is illustrated by the following sentence pairs: It is tough to paint the fence – The fence is tough to paint. The thesis establishes that the elements showing the pattern is an adjective taking an infinitive complement CP as its argument. The TM sentences have a PRO in the embedded clause which controls the subject of the main clause and in the basic sentence structure, the adjective takes. The pattern has multiple proposed analysis, the thesis will discuss ‘The operator movement analysis’ and ‘The direct movement analysis’
Furthermore, the thesis establishes the movement of the construction which seem to be licensed by A-bar movement. Thereon, the thesis then investigates Norwegian which seem to act accordingly. The adjectives allowed in the construction have been identified, but the thesis analyses Norwegian adjectives as predicates, as well as adverbs in the Norwegian ‘go-construction. Through analysis of the go-construction, it seems to be a verbal TM construction only allowing the embedded verb the property of agentivity (i.e. PRO is an Agent). The thesis implies that this property could be the case with English psych-verbs in the TM construction. | |