'Tough' movement

Abstract

'Tough movement' describes the putative derivation for a syntactic configuration into which a relatively restricted group of predicates (typically in the semantic class of 'easy'/'a cinch'/'hard'/'tough') enter, as in "John is tough to please". The 'tough construction' has largely eluded satisfactory analysis through successive transformational generative frameworks, which have typically placed importance on relating its derivation to its analog constructions (e.g. "It is tough to please John"; "To please John is tough") and sought to achieve this through movement. While the tough construction undoubtedly bears the hallmarks of syntactic movement, much of the theoretical difficulty in its analysis centers on two apparent paradoxes. First, tough constructions appear to instantiate A-movement, yet the movement required (to raise an embedded clause object into matrix subject position) violates firmly established constraints on locality. Second, tough constructions robustly satisfy diagnostics for A'-movement, while no phrase is easily identified as undergoing this A'-
movement.

This chapter reviews classical debates in the generative literature concerning analyses based on raising of the subject and on base-generation of the subject (the latter also with associated A'-movement), and the extent to
which the different positions can explain the empirical facts particular to the construction. It is shown that developments in the analysis of the construction
have proceeded synergistically with developments of various major theoretical concepts, including movement, theta-theory, and grammatical levels of representation; in some cases the former have been instrumental in advancing or supporting the latter. The analysis of tough constructions is shown to encounter significant theoretical obstacles, though these are largely overcome by analyses incorporating a combined role for A-movement and A'-movement operations in the derivation of tough constructions. Finally, some
challenges for future research into tough constructions are identified, with a brief exposition of how one of these challenges – explaining the set of restrictions on tough constructions that are not attested in the analog sentences – can be approached.

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ORCID for G Hicks: orcid.org/0000-0003-4126-8655

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