Overt Nominative Subjects in Infinitival Complements Cross - NYU ...

NYU Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 2: Papers in Syntax, Spring 2009 24The same observations hold for all the other Hungarian control verbs, including utál `hate’,elfelejt `forget’, etc. So,(104) Abrusán’s Observation About De Se PronounsThe overt pronoun in the subject position of infinitival control complements isinterpreted exclusively de se.The standard assumption is that the de se interpretation of PRO is a matter of the lexicalsemantics of PRO. What we see, however, is that an obligatorily controlled infinitival subject isalways interpreted de se, irrespective of whether it is null (PRO) or an overt pronoun. There aretwo possibilities now. One is that our overt pronouns are simply phonetically realized instancesof PRO, the de se anaphor. The other is that de se interpretation is forced on any pronominal bythe semantics of the infinitival control relation. This latter position seems preferable.Descriptively, it fits better with the fact that in other, non-control propositional attitude contextsthe overt pronouns are optionally interpreted de re or de se, and that non-de se PRO is perfectlypossible in non-controlled contexts (viz., arbitrary PRO). This position also holds out the hopethat once the semantics of infinitival control is better explicated, the obligatoriness of the de sereading is explained. The lexical de se anaphor proposal would simply stipulate that controlconstructions only accept lexical de se anaphors as subjects.Languages differ in exactly what exemptions from obviation they allow in subjunctives,but the de se interpretation of overt infinitival control subjects is a diagnostic to look for whenone wishes to ascertain whether a language exhibits the same phenomenon as Hungarian.3. Other languages that may have overt infinitival subjectsin both control and raising: Italian, Mexican Spanish,Brazilian Portuguese, Modern Hebrew, Romanian, andTurkishWith this background I turn to the discussion of data from other languages. I will be assumingthat the reader has read the more detailed discussion pertaining to Hungarian.3.1 Italian (thanks to Raffaella Bernardi, Ivano Caponigro, and especially Andrea Cattaneofor data and discussion)3.1.1 ControlItalian is a good language to start with, because for many speakers certain word ordersdisambiguate the relevant readings. We start with control. Negation is included in the first set ofexamples just in order to make the truth conditional differences sharper. The overt subject ishighlighted by underlining; this does not indicate stress.In (105), preverbal solo lui takes maximal scope: it scopes over both negation and theattitude verb `want’. In (106), sentence final solo lui is ambiguous. On what I call the HI readingit takes matrix scope, though this is not identical to the one observed in (105), because it remainswithin the scope of negation. What we are really interested in is the LO reading (under bothnegation and the attitude verb).