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

(5) a. He tried [ to be himself/*him again ]
b. On doit essayer [ d'être soi-même/*on/*lui(même) ]
One must try to be SE-SELF / one/he (SELF)
c. Er versuchte [ wieder sich selbst/*er zu sein ]
He tried again SE SELF / he to be
'He tried to be himself again'
(6) a. Intentava de tornar a [ ser ell (mateix)/*si mateix ]
He-tried to return to be he (SELF) / SE SELF
'He tried to be himself again'
b. Intentaba volver a [ ser él (mismo)/*si mismo ]
He tried to-return to be he (SELF) / SE SELF
c. Non riusciva ad [ essere lui (stesso)/*se stesso ]
Not managed to be he (SELF) /*SE SELF
'He didn't manage to be himself'
So we are led to the conclusion that infinitival I-subjects have a Case position, and that
the Case position is, for as given language, the same as that of the finite clauses. 107 More
specifically, infinitival I-subjects inherit Case from Spec of AGR in non-NSLs, while they are
directly Case-marked in NSLs. Since this is a necessary requirement for our theory to be
extendable to infinitives, we have to build some plausible theory that achieves this result. As far
as the theory of visibility or, more generally, any theory pointing to uniform Case requirements
for all Arguments is to be welcome on the grounds of simplicity, our proposal will have some
independent plausibility.
107 We will propose that this is not the case for some
languages such as Occitan and Sardinian.
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