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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.1704-1718
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 03 Nov 2025 Revised 09 Dec 2025 Accepted 20 Dec 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202512.1704

that-Trace Effect in English: Box System and Labeling

Ick-Hee Ihm ; Haewon Jeon ; Ji-Yeoun Lee
(First author) Academic research professor, Language Research Institute Hankuk University of Foreign Studies 2008764@hufs.ac.kr
(Co-author) Visiting Associate Professor, English Education Department Silla University hwJeon@kmou.ac.kr
(Co-author) Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature Gyeongsang National University think2ce@naver.com


© 2025 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to account for the asymmetries between subject and object in English wh-movement, topicalization, and wh-in-situ within the framework of Chomsky’s (2024) Box System (BS) and the Labeling Algorithm (LA) (Chomsky 2013, 2015). Building on recent developments in the Minimalist Program, the paper proposes that the (in)accessibility of a matrix phase head C to its goal determines the (un)grammaticality of a wh- or topic element extraction from an embedded clause. When the overt complementizer that inherits ϕ-features and a force feature (subsuming [Q] or [Topic]) to INFL, a <Q, Q> or <Topic, Topic> label is established within the embedded {XP, INFLP} configuration, rendering an embedded wh- or topic element inaccessible to the matrix C. Conversely, in the absence of the overt complementizer that, the embedded wh- and topic element is accessible to the matrix C.

Keywords:

Box System, that-trace effect, (in)accessibility, asymmetry, labeling

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF-2023S1A5B5A16079970). We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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