A Minimalist Approach To The Extended Projection Principle Of Verb Phrases

In view of the Economy Principle,it is unconvincing to contend that the expletives it and there in English play no roles within v P,in which they are originally generated like other subjects,until they are moved to spec-T for checking the EPP feature of the tense T.Following the Uniformity of Theta-role Assignment Hypothesis(UTAH)proposed by Baker(1988)and Felser & Rupp(2001:312),we may consider expletive subjects as quasi-thematic subjects and arguments in the sense that they are caseless but occupy argument positions.The study maintains that the expletives in syntax are the requirement of the EPP.Central to this thesis is the proposal,within the framework of MP by Chomsky,that the light v in all v Ps,similar to T,carries an EPP feature and requires a constituent to fill in spec-v either in phonetic and/or semantic form.It can be an external argument,a nonfinite null subject PRO,an expletive or a PP.This proposal helps explain such phenomena of floating quantifiers(between T and v)as displayed by “both” in raising structures like Jennifer and her friend had both seemed hardy and the ungrammaticality of the sentence *There is a man sleeping as well as the usage in Chinese where some intransitive verbs,with a preverbal nominal phrase or pronoun,take overt complement Xiangbo sharen,chen huo zhi(Xiangbo killed someone;I made him alive)or Dongwuyuan pao-le yizhi laohu(A tiger ran from the zoo).In support of the argument that all v Ps carry an EPP feature and require an external “constituent”,be it in phonetic or semantic form,the thesis will focus on analysis of the syntactic derivation of v Ps containing transitive,ditransitive,intransitive(unaccusative and unergative),and ergative verbs,as well as gerunds and participles.