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

I will adopt the view that FQs undergo leftward movement, which is a typical situation
for light quantifier particles (e.g., French rien 'nothing', tout 'everything' as objects -see Pollock
(1989)).
* * *
These assumptions will be crucial in our characterization of subject inversion in the
following chapters. In fact, we already considered the alternative possibility that inverted
subjects are not in their basic position, but rather in some derived (Focus) position. To the extent
that either alternative is generalizable through the range of languages we will be considering, this
will not be a problem.
2.3. The Projection of Arguments
The ISH does not challenge the hypothesis that there is, in some sense, an external
Argument (EA) in the cases it had been traditionally postulated (transitive and unergative verbs).
This hypothesis makes sense for both empirical reasons (singling out EAs provides a basis for
explaining their peculiar behavior) and theoretical reasons. Concerning the latter, it is desirable
to preserve some version of the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH), as defined
in Baker (1988:46):
(31) Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis
Identical thematic relationships between items are represented by identical structural
relationships between those items at the level of D-structure.
It might turn out that 0 is too strong: it is a well-known fact that different languages allow
for different realizations of Arguments which are nonetheless thematically identical:
1