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not assigned until S-structure. Therefore the parenthetical specification in 0 is not necessary.
Now, since we make crucial use of inherent Case marking to discriminate which DPs are
candidates to be coindexed with AGR, we need some characterization of inherent Case-marking.
We will not discuss all the cases where inherent Case marking has been resorted to. For our
purposes, the following definitions will suffice as a characterization of inherent Case:
(5) Inherent Case is assigned at D-structure.
(6) Inherent Case assignment is obligatorily assigned.
(7) Oblique Case is inherent Case.
The above statements make sure that a DP in the complement of a preposition will never
be coindexed with AGR. We assume that apparent counter-examples (passives like: This was
talked about)
involve verb-preposition reanalysis of some kind (see Kayne (1981)), or at least, that in this case
the preposition does not assign inherent Case. For languages where all Arguments apart from the
object and the EA are prepositionally Case-marked, the above characterization suffices to
exclude the undesired cases of coindexation. For languages having oblique-Case-marked
Arguments not cooccurring with a preposition, we will assume that these Cases are also inherent.
With the preceding assumptions, the Argument that will be coindexed with AGR is
predicted in a relatively straightforward way:
- in a transitive or unergative structure, AGR will always be coindexed with the EA,
since it is generated as the highest DP (or CP) in the VP local Domain (we assume it is adjoined
to VP).
- in an unaccusative structure, AGR will be coindexed with the object DP, since it is the
closest non-inherently Case-marked DP in its scope.
1
- in a copulative structure, AGR will be coindexed with the subject of the small clause.
- in a raising structure, the closest DP or CP will be internal to the infinitival clause, since