In 'This sonata is easy to play,' the object position of 'play' is empty — you cannot say 'This sonata is easy to play it.' This gap provides the strongest evidence for which analysis of tough-movement?
AThe control analysis, because the subject controls a silent PRO in the embedded clause's object position
BThe movement analysis, because movement leaves a trace in the extraction site and a pronoun cannot simultaneously occupy that position
CThe raising analysis, because raising predicates always produce gaps in embedded clauses
DA construction grammar analysis, because the gap reflects the NP's membership in both matrix and embedded clauses
The impossibility of 'This sonata is easy to play it' — where a pronoun co-refers with the fronted subject — is a classic diagnostics for movement. Movement leaves a trace or gap in the original position; inserting a pronoun there creates two elements competing for the same thematic role (Principle C violation or simple redundancy). Standard control predicates allow pronouns in embedded positions ('John is eager to see him,' with different referents). The gap in tough-constructions behaves like a movement trace, supporting the movement analysis over control.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
The raising analysis of tough-movement faces a specific empirical challenge. What is it?
ARaising predicates require the matrix subject to bear a thematic role, but tough-adjectives assign no thematic role to their subjects
BRaising predicates permit expletive subjects (as in 'It seems that she left'), but tough-adjectives resist expletive subjects in the raising configuration
CThe embedded infinitival in tough-constructions lacks a gap, unlike canonical raising derivations
DRaising only applies to clausal complements, not to infinitival complements of adjectives
Canonical raising predicates like 'seem' allow expletive subjects: 'It seems that she left' raises to 'She seems to have left.' If tough-movement were raising, we should be able to raise 'this problem' out of 'It is tough to solve this problem' to get 'This problem is tough to solve.' But the expletive starting point resists this — tough-adjectives require a specific, referential NP in subject position. This looks more like control (where the controller must be referential) than like raising, blocking a clean raising account.
Question 3 True / False
In 'This problem is tough to solve,' the subject 'this problem' receives a thematic role from the adjective 'tough' in the matrix clause.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This is the key diagnostic distinguishing tough-movement from control. In a standard control predicate like 'John is eager to leave,' 'John' receives a thematic role from 'eager' — John is the experiencer of eagerness. In tough-constructions, 'this problem' is not experiencing toughness; the toughness belongs to the solving event. The subject's semantic interpretation comes entirely from the embedded clause (it is the thing being solved). This semantic inertness of the matrix subject is the pattern of raising, not control — the subject has no matrix thematic role.
Question 4 True / False
Standard object control predicates like 'persuade' differ from tough-adjectives in that the controller in a control predicate receives a thematic role from the matrix predicate.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
In 'I persuaded John to leave,' the subject 'I' receives the agent role from 'persuade' in the matrix clause. The controller (John) has a thematic role as the theme of persuading. Both participants have clear thematic relationships to matrix predicates. Tough-adjectives assign no thematic role to the matrix subject at all — 'this problem' has no role in the difficulty event; its semantic interpretation comes entirely from the embedded clause. This lack of a matrix thematic role is precisely what tough-movement shares with raising, and what it does not share with control.
Question 5 Short Answer
What three syntactic categories does tough-movement simultaneously resemble, and what specific property of the construction is evidence for each resemblance?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Tough-movement resembles (1) movement: the gap inside the embedded infinitival — the object position of 'solve' is empty and cannot be filled with a co-referential pronoun, exactly as movement leaves a trace. (2) Raising: the subject has no matrix thematic role — 'this problem' is semantically inert in the matrix and gets its interpretation from the embedded clause, as raised subjects get their thematic role from the embedded predicate. (3) Control: the requirement for a referential (non-expletive) NP in subject position — control predicates require referential controllers, and tough-adjectives resist expletive subjects in the raising-like configuration.
This overlap is why tough-movement is theoretically productive: it sits at the boundary between three well-studied construction types and forces refinement of the criteria used to distinguish them. Current minimalist analyses treat it as A-movement with special properties, but the construction continues to motivate debate about the empirical frontier between raising and control — categories that look clearly distinct in canonical cases but blur at the margins.