Small Clause as Unified TP-AgrP Structure

Abstract

This paper is to defend for the unified clause structure in which nonfinite clauses including ECM and small clauses are all analyzed as constituents formed by the combination of two functional categories of TP and AgrP. The main purpose of the unified TP-AgrP approach is to simplify and generalize the various clause structures. For this, I propose the verbal predication mediated by functional heads and copulars. In verbal predication mediated by copulars, the small clause subject occurs in the Spec(TP) position and the small clause predicate is AgrP with the head Agr containing a predication operator or a predicate particle that turns small clause predicate into a predicate, and copulars move from VP to the predicational phrase head, Agr. In this proposal, the structure of the small clause parallels to that of infinitival ECM clause so that both clauses are proposed to be TP-AgrP. Accordingly, the parallel interpretations of ECM and small clauses can be explained by parallel structures. In a unified TP-AgrP structure, we can uniformly say that T is the head of finite clauses as well as infinitival clauses including ECM and small clauses. The small clause predicate is the verbal predication, so it is different from non-verbal predication. Therefore, the proposed verbal predication gives rise to satisfactory solutions to the problems previously raised by non-verbal predication. The proposed uniform structure TP-AgrP also explains the different behavior in predicate raising of ECM and small clauses with the argument that predicate raising is allowed only to A`-position. (Hanbat National University)