A Study on Subject Selection and Transitivity in English

초록

The purpose of this study is two-hold: 1) to identify language-specific parameters that determine how far and in what ways the choice of subject can affect the degree of transitivity in English, and 2) to examine linguistic tendencies or regularities underlying the subject selection in English transitive sentences. The data analysis reveals that English, as a subject-prominent language, tends to resort to a ‘S(agent)- V(action)-O(patient)’ construction which overtly expresses the agency of a grammatical subject, highlighting individual entities (i.e. both human and non-human subjects) in transitive events. This language-specific preference for ‘agent/causer- oriented’ expressions is supported by the extensive use of non-human subjects in transitive sentences. Finally, this study suggests that the typological preference for ‘agent/causer- oriented’ expressions is inextricably associated with subject selection, and thus it could be thought of as a linguistic factor that might affect the scope and degree of transitivity in English.

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