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

NYU Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 2: Papers in Syntax, Spring 2009 454.1.1 RaisingThe intensional raising verb kazhet’sja `seem’ does not take infinitival complements. The raisingcase can be illustrated with aspectual verbs, stat’ `begin’ and perestat’ `stop’. My informantswere in agreement that the raising examples work fine with both pronominal and lexical subjectsin the infinitival clause. Much like in Italian, examples with sentence final `only’-phrases areambiguous between the HI and the LO readings, but placing the `only’-phrase between theinfinitival verb and another element of the infinitival clause eliminates the HI reading. The mostlikely explanation is that the matrix subject could not occur in that position, i.e. that whateveroccurs there is indeed the subject of the infinitival clause.(212) Tol’ko on/Gordon stal/perestal prixodit' domoj pjanim.only he/Gordon began/stopped go-inf home drunkHI `Only he/Gordon began/stopped going home drunk’(213) Stal/perestal prixodit' domoj pjanim tol’ko on/Gordon.began/stopped go-inf home drunk only he/GordonHI `Only he/Gordon began/stopped going home drunk’LO `It began/stopped being the case that only he/Gordon goes home drunk’(214) Stal/perestal prixodit' domoj tol’ko on/Gordon pjanim.began/stopped go-inf home only he/Gordon drunkLO `It began/stopped being the case that only he/Gordon goes home drunk’The aspectual verb does not simply exhibit default (3sg neuter) agreement. In the examplesabove stal/perestal is masculine, and it would take the feminine form stala/perestala if theinfinitival subject were tol’ko Eva `only Eva’.As an alternative analysis, Polinsky (2008) has suggested that examples somewhat like(213) and even (214) result from scrambling. On this view `only he/Gordon’ would raise into thematrix clause and then scramble rightward, mingling with infinitival material. While I do notdoubt that Russian generally allows rightward scrambling, I would find the scrambling analysisof the above examples less likely, because it presupposes that the secondary predicate pjanim`drunk’ also scrambles up to the matrix.But if the scrambling analysis of (213)-(214) is correct, is does not yet explain how the LOreadings come about. Polinsky (2008) does not address the question of interpretation. In a sectionon “Raising Verbs as Quantifiers” Szabolcsi (2009) proposes that raising verbs may undergoscope-extending movement. This analysis assigns a syntactically explicit quantificationalanalysis to raising verbs, in the spirit of Kusumoto (2005) and Lechner (2007). These authorsargue that tenses and modals quantify over the time and the world arguments of verbs in asyntactically explicit manner. Szabolcsi’s proposal (originally devised for Shupamem) mightcomplement Polinsky’s, if evidence can be obtained that the raising verbs in (213)-(214) havemoved to an extra-high position, and if it is explained why verb movement needs to be aided byrightward scrambling in LO readings in Russian.