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

(74) Fer (???en Joan) la feina (en Joan), em sembla...
To-do the J. the work the J. me-seems
'That Joan does the work, well, it seems to me...'
In Spanish, instead, where the VSO word-order is a possible form of subject inversion in
finite clauses, VSO word order in IOS is quite usual. 138
Let us assume that the cases we have seen in 0, 0, 0 and 0.b) are cases of IOS with an
inverted subject (IOS-INV). 0.b) shows another phenomenon: Sardinian IOS-INV allow a null
subject with arbitrary interpretation. Catalan and Spanish IOS-INVs show an even more
surprising fact: the subject can be null and fully referential (see Rigau (1992)):
(75) En acostar-m'hi, em va mirar provocativament
In approach-me-there me-looked-at provocatively
'As I approach him/her, s/he looked at me provocatively'
The null subject in is not controlled and is fully referential. We will assume, with Rigau
(1992), that this null subject is a pro. We will also assume that the arbitrary null subject in
Sardinian IOS-INV in 0.b) is a pro.
There are at least two questions our theory should address:
138 As we will see in the next chapter infinitives with a VSO
word order are predicted to be possible in principle. In fact,
this example is not as unacceptable as a parallel case with a
finite clause. Still, the prediction is that Spanish allows VSO
in IOS with no problem, while Catalan marginally allows it for
other reasons. This is in accordance with the spirit of the
Parallelism Principle (in whatever version, see below) we are
proposing.
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