Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

containing a Case conflict. In other words, since filtering the undesired results comes later in the
derivation, we have no way of stating that the condition applies only if there is one candidate
available.
Since these are very specific predictions tied to very specific formulations, it could be
that the question can be a false problem. For the sake of convenience, we will continue to refer to
0 and 0, leaving as an open question whether they could be simplified as 0, 0 or 0.
2. AGR-identifiers and Binding Theory
The theory of AGR coindexation in the preceding section makes sure that AGR has an I-
subject. Concerning the BG problem, the rule of coindexation makes sure that an object will be
coindexed with AGR in the absence of an external Argument. Nothing we have said, however,
ensures that in such a situation the object is not able to receive Accusative. Recall that we cannot
stipulate that Nominative is preferred to Accusative because Nominative is not the only Case
option for a subject. The result we want to obtain is that whatever Case option is available for the
subject (Nominative, Accusative in ECM, PRO) is to be preferred to Accusative. To express this
idea in a simple way, we will introduce the notion of AGR-identifier, and we will assume that the
I-subject has to obtain Case from its AGR identifier. We will present the technical notion of
AGR-identifier in the following sub-section. A discussion on what is the theoretical status of the
rules we will propose is deferred to section 2.5.
2.1. The notion of AGR-identifier
For languages like English, the apparent situation is that I-subjects actually move to the
Spec of AGR. I will propose that this is not necessarily the case for all languages. In what
follows, a theory will be presented predicting why filling Spec of AGR is sometimes obligatory
and sometimes not.
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