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

1. Aims and Scope of this Thesis
The aim of the present thesis is to explore and work out an alternative to standard
theories in the GB framework on the nature of AGR and subjects, as a basis for an account of the
standard cluster of properties which hold for most Null Subject Languages (NSLs):
- null subjects
- subject inversion
- absence of that-t effects
Although these correlations may not be universal, I think they are not just a matter of
coincidence, even if they hold only of a certain subset of languages. Our account of the facts
essentially consists in a reinterpretation of the theory by which: a) all languages have subject
inversion in an abstract sense: non-NSLs (which have been traditionally assumed not to display
such a possibility) have anaphoric inverted subjects, whereas NSLs have [-anaphoric] I-subjects;
b) all languages have null internal subjects (I-subjects), the contrast being between the ones
having anaphoric null I-subjects (i.e., non-NSLs) and the ones having [-anaphoric] null I-subjects
(i.e., NSLs).
We will also provide an account for another fact that holds for most Romance NSLs,
namely infinitival long head movement.
In addition, the theory is conceived as a way of deriving a classical descriptive
generalization, namely Burzio's Generalization (BG). The two facts correlating under this
generalization (presence of an external Argument and availability of Accusative Case) are not
easily derivable in a straightforward way from a single syntactic premise, since they look very
different in nature. In the present account, BG is reduced to a specific version of the Extended
Projection Principle, ultimately derived from the licensing of the AGR morphology in a given
language.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will set out some theoretical premises that I will
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