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

postverbal subject in 0.c), which cannot m-command the gerund, does not licence the controlled
PRO and the sentence is ungrammatical. Since both the pre-verbal subject in 0.a) and the null
subject in 0.b) licence the gerund, the conclusion is that pro is preverbal.
Catalan (and Spanish) behave in a similar way: 83
(79) a. Estant tan cansat, en Joan se n'ha anat al llit
Being so tired the J. SI-off-has gone to-the bed
'Being so tired, Joan went off to bed'
b. Estant tan cansat, se n'ha anat al llit
Being so tired SI-off-has gone to-the bed
'Being so tired, he went off to bed'
c. *Estant tan cansat, se n'ha anat al llit en Joan
Being so tired SI-off-has gone to-the bed the J.
'Being so tired, JOAN went off to bed'
There are two main objections to Rizzi's account for the facts. Firstly, if we adjoin the
gerund to a superordinate sentence, we obtain the following paradigm:
83 Other non-finite sentences, such as temporal infinitives
in Catalan (and Spanish) (see Rigau (1992) for an analysis of
this construction), manifest the same paradigm as 0:
(i) A l'arribar, (en Joan) se'n va anar al llit
At the-to-come J./pro went off to bed
'When Joan/he arrived, he went to bed'
(ii) *A l'arribar, se'n va anar al llit en Joan
At the-to-come went off to bed J.
Rigau convincingly argues that these infinitives do not
involve PRO. If so, the facts cannot be explained as a problem
of control, as we will see.
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