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

(80) a. Estant cansat, és millor que en Joan se'n vagi
Being tired is better that the J. goes away
b. Estant cansat, és millor que se'n vagi
Being tired is better that goes away
c. *Estant cansat, és millor que se'n vagi en Joan
Being tired is better that goes away the J.
The examples in 0 are parallel in acceptability to the ones in 0 except that the gerund is in
a position where c-command (or m-command) by the preverbal subject of the embedded clause
is not possible. So the claim that c-/m-command is a necessary condition to licence the gerund
PRO cannot be maintained. There must be some other account for the fact that the postverbal
subject does not licence the gerund.
In order to preserve Rizzi's analysis, one could assume that control takes place at some
level where the gerund is adjoined to the embedded sentence, the surface structure in 0 being a
result of gerund raising. This level, however, cannot be D-structure, since at that level the subject
of anar-se'n 'go away' does not m-command the gerund anymore than the postverbal subject, on
the assumption that go away is an unaccusative verb and its subject is an object at D-structure.
But independently of this problem, there are more basic empirical problems for the
control account. If we replace the gerund by a finite adjunct clause, the distribution of
acceptability does not vary: 84
84 The paradigm in 0 has a correlate in Italian:
(i) a. Come era stanco (Gianni) è andato via
As he-was tired (G.) is gone away
b. *Come era stanco è andato via Gianni
As he-was tired is gone away G.
Paradigm 0 also has an Italian correlate. However, since
gerunds are a little literary, dislocation of the gerund to an
upper clause gives slightly awkward results:
(ii) a. Essendo stanco è meglio che (Gianni) vada via
Being tired is better that (G.) goes
away
b. *Essendo stanco è meglio che vada via Gianni
Being tired is better that goes away G.
1