Heavy Complements in English

Abstract

This study mainly concerns English data where an overt element apparently intervenes between the head and the complement, which posits an interesting question under the X-bar schema. For the data, three possible movement-based accounts (the incorporation, the rightward movement, the verb movement approaches) are discussed but it is pointed out that those transformational approaches encounter critical problems. Thus, it is concluded that the complement that comes after a modifier is base-generated and is placed in a special complement position that is preserved at the right periphery, being mediated by the light verb phrase which connects the theme structure to the rheme structure. This proposal has an advantage of making a generalization that heavy elements occur at the right periphery, This study further accounts for distributional and grammatical contrasts between non-nominal complements and nominal complements that appear after a modifier, Also, this current account can make a structural distinction between subject inversion and the construction of the heavy complement which have previously been viewed as a heavy NP shift identically, explaining their different distributional fact.