A paper co-authored by our 3rd year student Rotsuprit (Ford) Saengthong and John Gluckman (University of Kansas), entitled “Thai Tough-Constructions and the Tough Signature”, has been accepted for publication by Syntactic Theory & Research (STAR). Below is the abstract:
We investigate the tough-construction in Thai, focusing on two exceptional properties. First, Thai tough-constructions may involve a potentially unconstrained dependency, and second, the gap in the embedded clause can be in the subject position. While these facts superficially support a heterogeneous view of tough-constructions across the worlds languages, on closer inspection, we come to a different conclusion. We argue that unconstrained dependencies and subject gaps are not a function of Thai tough-constructions, but instead reflect the fact that Thai has an undiagnosed broad subject position. Once controlled for, Thai tough-constructions look surprisingly like other well-documented cases. Ultimately, we are concerned not with variation in tough-constructions, but rather crosslinguistic similarities.
You can read the paper here: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/010319
Congratulations, Ford!