Clausal Subjects and Extraposition in the History of English

Using Kibort's revised Lexical Mapping Theory (Kibort, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2014), this paper gives an analysis of the argument structure of verbal predicates that alternately take (i) a clausal subject and (ii) a subject it in conjunction with propositional subclause. Based on data from syntactically annotated corpora of historical English, two separate argument structures are posited for the relevant predicates. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, a thematic subject it occurring together with an adjunct subclause and, on the other hand, a non-thematic subject it occurring together with a complement subclause. This distinction provides an explanation for a number of facts in present-day and historical English concerning extraction and co-occurrence patterns with respect to the predicates showing the alternation under discussion.