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

2.4.2. Theoretical Problems
Another intrinsic problem for the hypothesis above is the requirement in 0, repeated here:
0 Case can be assigned only to the head of a maximal CHAIN.
In more classical accounts this requirement can be derived from the last resort character
of DP-movement or, more generally, of CHAIN-formation: a CHAIN cannot be longer than
necessary for it to obtain Case. But, as we pointed out, in the above account it is crucial that
CHAINS are not formed because of Case requirements (Accusative is available in principle), but
because of the EPP. So the requirement in 0 has to be merely stipulated.
A conceivable way to derive 0 would be the following: there is a kind of requirement to
the effect that Nominative is 'preferred' to Accusative. So, to exclude 0 above, repeated here:
0 a. *The problem developed tAcc
b. *There developed the problemAcc
we could argue that within a CHAIN, whenever we can choose between Nominative and
Accusative, Nominative has to be chosen. This strategy, however, does not work for infinitive
sentences, where the head of the CHAIN is not assigned Nominative, but Accusative or Oblique
(in ECM or 'for'-infinitive constructions) or no Case (in PRO-infinitives, if PRO does not bear
any Case). So, the fact that the head of a CHAIN is not assigned a uniform Case makes it
impossible to derive 0 from a Case-hierarchy strategy.
Another set of theoretical problems for the theory above come from Binding Theory.
Since it is a crucial problem, we will treat it in a separate section.
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