1.5 Organization of the Book

The book contains six chapters and is organized as follows.

Chapter One introduces the research question and briefly presents the proposal of the study.Chapter Two reviews previous studies on the predicate NP licensing and introduces four approaches to the problem.The review shows that the concerned topic is somewhat overlooked due to the limitation of the Case Theory in GB period.And the four approaches do not provide a satisfying explanation of the predicate NP licensing in English in failing to identify the case-assigner.We think the failure is out of the constraint in GB framework, in which case is assigned to a nominal item after it enters derivation.So, in Chapter Three, we thoroughly review the case-licensing mechanism in GB period and that in MP period.By comparison, we find that the feature checking framework in MP, especially the Multi Agree operation provides a potential to account for the case-licensing patterns of predicate NPs in NSCs.On the other hand, we explore into the clausal structure of NSCs carefully in Chapter Four to figure out the maximal projection structure of small clause and identify the functional head Pr in it.In Chapter Five, we analyze the derivation and feature checking mechanism in NSCs on the bases of the findings in previous two chapters and uncover the NP licensing puzzles in English NSCs.Furthermore, we present explanation of several puzzles in NSCs, such as the function of particle“as”, copula“be”and the distribution of NSCs in terms of different epistemic verbs.Chapter Six makes a summary of the study and raises some questions worth further research.