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(21) *John doesn't remember if [ IP himself actually won ]
If the 'if' C o is a governor of the Spec of IP in infinitives, it is likely to be so in finite
contexts as well. Therefore, the IP in 0 should not count as a Binding Domain unless, again, we
assumed that the some element adjoined to I' blocks this government. In this case, to impair
things, the element in question would be empty, in fact radically empty if affix lowering takes
place at S-structure, as in Chomsky (1988). 114 Kayne crucially assumes for independent reasons
that an anaphor has to abide by BT requirements at S-structure, so that 0 could not be rescued at
LF.
To try to rescue Kayne's hypothesis from both 0 and 0 there are some ways-out to try.
We could assume that in genitives the 's particle (which would be morphologically irregular for
their) is actually a D o element adjoined to D', which would elegantly account for its enclitic
character. 115 To avoid the problem in 0, we could simply assume Rizzi's (1989-b) idea of the
'Anaphor Agreement Effect', by which anaphors in subject position of tensed clauses would be
excluded on independent grounds. However no similar account is possible for the grammaticality
of 0, which would be incorrectly ruled out because of BT second principle, in parallel with 0
being incorrectly ruled in:
(22) John does not remember if [ IP he actually won ]
In conclusion, although Kayne unproblematically accounts for the impossibility of 'if'-
infinitives in short infinitival V-movement languages, the account is less clear for enclisis
114 Notice that 0 is a problem for Chomsky's (1986-b)
proposal as well: he has to assume (and he does quickly in
passing) that AGR counts as a virtual antecedent without being a
possible antecedent, in order for the IP to be a Binding Domain
for himself without possibly being one in which himself can be
bound.
115 We would assume, as in Fukui & Speas (1986), that 's is
the head of D o being a genitive Case assigner.
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