In formal syntax, tough movement refers to sentences in which the syntacticsubject of the main verb is logically the object of an embeddednon-finite verb. The following sentences illustrate tough movement. The phenomenon was so named by Rosenbaum because prototypical example sentences like involve the wordtough. In these sentences, this problem is logically the object of solve, and Chris is logically the object of please. The sentences can therefore be paraphrased as: or Adjectives that allow this construction include amusing, annoying, awkward, bad, beautiful, beneficial, boring, comfortable, confusing, convenient, cumbersome, dangerous, delightful, depressing, desirable, difficult, dull, easy, educational, embarrassing, essential, excellent, exhausting, expensive, fashionable, fine, fun, good, great, hard, horrible, ideal, illegal, important, impossible, impressive, instructive, interesting, irritating, loathsome, necessary, nice, odd, painful, pleasant, pleasurable, rare, risky, safe, simple, strange, tedious, terrible, tiresome, tough, tricky, unpleasant, useful, and weird. This construction is also possible with noun phrases like a pleasure, a breeze, or a cinch: and with the verb take: Similar constructions are possible in Dutch, but with a much more limited range of predicates : In early transformational grammar , this construction was analyzed as an instance of object-to-subject raising, in which the object is base-generated in the normal position after the embedded verb in the deep structure of sentences like, just as in, but that it is then moved to the front in the surface structure: In classical government and binding theory it is no longer assumed that the object is moved directly to the subject position. Rather, Chomsky proposed that the NP "Chris" is base-generated in the main clause, and a null operator raises within in the embedded clause: The tough movement construction is similar to but distinct from pretty constructions and adjectives modified by too or enough: For one, these latter constructions do not allow an alternate form with an unraised object: or fronted infinitive:
