Abstract
In this paper, a tough-moved sentence in English is analyzed within the framework of the Dynamic Model of Grammar developed mainly by Kajita (1977, 1986, 1992). It is shown that a tough construction like The book is easy to read is lexically or pragmatically extended from a simple basic predication sentence like The book is easy through syntactico-semantic discrepancy called meaning-concealment and the rule of syntactic realization. It will be argued that this extension hypothesis can account for many idiosyncratic problems concerning tough constructions, for example, (i) control of an empty subject in an embedded clause, (ii) strict semantic restriction in the selection of embedded verbs, and (iii) difference in syntactic behavior between an embedded infinitival clause of a tough-sentence and that of an eager-sentence.
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