Verbal ‘RATHER’: No Verbless Finite Clause in English

• 발행기관: 현대문법학회
• 저자명: Sungshim Hong
• 간행물 정보: 『현대문법연구』제101호, 91~109쪽, 전체 19쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 언어학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2019.02.28

영문 초록

Sungshim Hong. 2019. Verbal ‘RATHER’: No Verbless Finite Clause in English. Studies in Modern Grammar 101, 91-109. This paper aims to discuss an English parochial construction, ‘would rather [CPthat [...]],’ in “I’d rather that you didn’t mention the price” and “My wife would rather that we didn’t see each other any more” Assuming that ‘rather’ is an adverb as defined in all English dictionaries available commercially as well as on-and off-line, ‘would rather CP’ construction renders an intriguing issue with respect to the clausal type, since the matrix TP obviously lacks a lexical verb, yielding a verbless finite clause with a fully embedded CP in it. Swan (1980: 519), Quirk, et. al (1985: 1183), Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 1003), Carter & McCarthy (2006), Klippenstein (2012), and Wood (2013), Merriam-Webster (2016: 490) as well as many on-line sites including Barron TOEFFL (2011) grammar units have all presented the construction ‘would rather CP...’ and provided with the meaning, usages, and its idiomatic status. Based on the data from Klippenstein (2012) and Wood (2013), this paper proposes a SubjunctP above the lexical VP which is occupied by a V ‘rather’. The lack of lexical verb in this construction is accounted for so that the generalization still holds that there is no verbless finite clause in English. The lexical V, with a null spell-out, retains the categorial feature V with the semantic residue of the verbal ‘rather’. The etymological and historical evidence backs up the categorial status of ‘rather’. Furthermore, since the verbal ‘rather’ is used normally with Subjunctive in meaning, it is argued to project as SubjunctP with [±Subjunct] features so that it affects Tense/Aspect/Mood of the embedded clause.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Wood (2013) and other Critical Data on Would Rather

3. Toward a Proposal: SubjunctP

4. Conclusion

키워드

‘would rather that’ construction verbal rather parasitic participle Subjunctive Projection counterfactual