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

NYU Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 2: Papers in Syntax, Spring 2009 4control is an instance of movement/chain formation (Hornstein 1999, Boeckx & Hornstein, toapp., Bowers, to app.), it is in principle possible for overt DPs to occur in the subject positionsmentioned in (11). Languages might choose to pronounce all copies, or just some lower copy.The fact that this does not routinely happen calls for an explanation; the usual assumption is thatthe highest copy is privileged, possibly subject to Bobaljik’s (2002:251) Minimize Mismatchprinciple: “(To the extent possible) privilege the same copy at PF and LF”. Instead or in addition,it may be that the highest copy must be pronounced to supply the finite clause with an overtsubject (cf. the EPP), and/or it may be that lower copies are simply unpronounceable. In oldendays the Case Filter plus the inability of infinitival inflection to assign abstract Case preventedthe subjects of infinitival complements of control and subject-to-subject raising verbs from beingpronounced (in the absence of ECM, inflected infinitives, etc.); more recently Null Case wassupposed to explain why PRO is covert (Martin 2001). However, the link between abstract Caseand morphological case has been severed and the usefulness of postulating abstract Case hasbeen called into question by Marantz (1991), McFadden (2004), and others. What takes the placeof Case in licensing the pronunciation of DPs? Pronouns have been argued to require someagreement relation in order to be fully specified (see Kratzer 2006 on bound pronouns, andSigurdsson 2007 for grounding) and all DPs have been argued to need a valued T feature(Pesetsky and Torrego 2006).Turning to (12), the absence of overt pronominal controllees may simply follow fromsome of the considerations above. If infinitival subjects are generally not pronounceable, then aninfinitival control complement cannot have an overt subject. It must have a PRO or a pro subject,or no subject at all if it is just a VP (Babby & Franks 1998, Wurmbrand 2003). But Landau’s(2004) theory of control covers both infinitives and subjunctives, and subjunctive clausesroutinely have overt subjects. It is therefore remarkable that Landau’s calculus of control takes itfor granted that the control complement has a null subject. There seems to be some, perhapsunspoken assumption about control that results in the controllee always being phonetically null.Semantic assumptions may do part of the work. Chierchia (1989) proposed that control involvesa so-called de se reading and that PRO is a de se anaphor. But the fact that overt pronouns alsohave de se readings, and the more recent assumption that control may also involve pro instead ofPRO indicate that more needs to be said. So perhaps “No overt controllees” could result from aconspiracy of the above considerations and more or less independent facts about obviation. SeeFarkas (1985) for an example of overt controlled pronouns in Romanian.My impression of the state of the art is that the theories I am familiar with do not predict(11) and (12) in a straightforward manner. But neither do these theories seem to say exactlywhere these generalizations are expected to fail. The present paper supplements the knowncounterexamples with further data that indicate that (11) and (12) are descriptively incorrect.1.3 A preliminary account of the cross-linguistic variationUnless otherwise indicated, the data in this paper come from my own field work. I amimmensely grateful to the colleagues who made themselves available for multiple rounds ofquestioning. They are thanked by name where the individual languages are discussed. I hasten toadd that the interpretation of the data as supporting or not supporting an infinitival subjectanalysis is invariably mine; my sources may or may not agree with it.According to my present understanding, the languages I have investigated fall into threemain categories: they either have overt nominatives in both raising and control complements, or