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

(104) At D-structure, AGR must be coindexed with the most prominent non-(inherently-
)Case-marked DP or CP in its c-command domain.
However, it is crucial for our theory that Partitive DPs may be possible I-subjects.
Otherwise, sentences like:
(105) There are many children
would have no I-subject, and should be excluded, as 0 is obligatory. 91 On the other hand, it is
plausible that the indefinite DP in 0 is the subject in some sense, since it agrees (in number) with
the verb in English and many other languages.
To solve the problem, we will assume that partitive Case differs from other inherent
Cases in that Partitive alone is not sufficient to Case-licence a DP. Suppose we postulate that:
(106) Partitive has to be realized as Structural Case at S-structure.
If we want to maintain that Partitive is an inherent Case, then it must not be one
relevant for 0. It would anyway be a defective Case, which has to be supplemented by a
structural Case. It is not clear why 0 should hold. There is, though, some evidence for its
empirical validity. Consider the following pair of examples:
91 For this reasoning to hold, we must exclude the
possibility that the expletive itself becomes the I-subject
(thanks to Jeff Runner for pointing this out to me). We can
obtain this result by assuming that:
a) The expletive is directly generated in Spec of AGR.
b) The notion of c-command relevant for 0 is strict ccommand:
AGR o does not c-command its specifier.
Alternatively, we could stipulate that the I-subject has to
have 'semantic content'.
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