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

(3) Catalan, Spanish, Italian:
a. En Joan prefereix [ de fer-ho ell (mateix)/*si mateix ]
The J. prefers to do-it he (SELF) / SE SELF
b. Juan prefiere [ hacerlo él (mismo) /*si mismo ]
J. prefers to-do-it he (SELF) / SE SELF
c. Gianni preferisce [ di farlo lui (stesso) /*se stesso ]
G. prefers to do-it he (SELF) / SE SELF
Given that our account of the distribution of I-subjects crucially relies on the Case
position for the I-subject and, on the other hand, PRO-infinitives are standardly assumed to
contrast with finite clauses as far subject-Case is concerned, the facts in 0/0 do not trivially
follow from the assumptions we made to account for 0 in finite clauses.
Suppose we assumed that PRO does not have Case. Then the A-Chain containing the I-
subject would not have a Case position, and no Binding Domain would be definable for the I-
subject, according to our definition of Binding Domain, repeated here:
(4) A is Binding Domain for B iff A is the minimal FC containing B, a governor of B and the
Case position from which B obtains Case.
If no Binding Domain is definable, no prediction is made concerning the [±anaphoric]
character of the I-subject. This is an undesirable result, since the infinitives show exactly the
same behavior as finite sentences, as we see in 0/0, and this should not be a matter of accident. In
addition, what we called reflexive copulative constructions, whose behavior we derived from the
same definition of Binding Domain behave exactly the same in finite and infinitival
constructions:
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