Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

HEAD-TO-HEAD MERGE IN BALKAN SUBJUNCTIVES 692. In other contexts the infinitive was replaced by the participle, but this evolutionis out of the scope of this paper. Joseph (1983) points out a number of problemsregarding the various diachronic explanations to be found in the literature, which alltry to explain the loss of the infinitive as being due to the properties of the infinitiveitself, rather than to the properties of the subjunctive.3. In line with Williams (1980), Bouchard (1984), Koster (1984), Manzini(1983), and Lebeaux (1985), I assume that obligatory and nonobligatory control aretwo distinct syntactic relations. I will come back to nonobligatory control in sections2.3., 2.4. and 2.5.4. Balkan subjunctive clauses are headed by the so-called subjunctive particles,the status of which is ambiguous between Infl and C (see section 6). Since they do nothave any clear counterpart in English, I have retained them as such in the glosses: sa,da, na, and te for Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Albanian, respectively.5. This is an oversimplified presentation of the theory of PRO, but it is sufficientfor our present purposes.6. The reader is referred to these works for theoretical criticism and ample empiricalevidence against the analysis of control phenomena in terms of PRO. Most problemsremain under Chomsky and Lasnik's (1993) implementation according to whichPRO is defined as the empty category that is assigned null Case. For detailed criticismsee Hornstein (1999) and Manzini and Roussou (1998), who propose instead aminimalist restatement of the GB line of research adopted here.7. According to Manzini (1983), PRO is not a standard anaphor but an "anaphorwithout a governing category," which is subject to a revised principle A: an anaphorwithout a governing category must be bound in the governing category of its domain.Manzini's theory may well turn out to be right for optional control. As toobligatory control, 1 will assume that the other authors mentioned above are correctin trying to reduce it to standard binding.8. Compare Borer (1989), according to whom any kind of controlled subject isto be analyzed as a case of "anaphoric Agr."9. This does not force us to assume an intrinsic [+an] feature that would characterizeinfinitival subjects: infinitival subjects are empty categories that are identifiedby no features (compare pro, which is identified by Agr), and therefore they mustnecessarily enter a relation with an antecedent that provides them with the featuresnecessary for the assignment of reference; otherwise they take arbitrary reference.10. Although 1 believe that Roster's proposal is completely right, his terminologymight be confusing: the obligatorily controlled empty subject is referred to as"governed PRO" or "anaphoric PRO," or "obligatory PRO." Given the current theoryof PRO, these labels are contradictory. I believe that Koster has preserved the labelPRO in order to capture the 0 structure differences between controlled and raised subjects(see the discussion in the text above).11. See in particular Kayne's (1984) argument in favor of the Comp status of dein French:(i) Jean- { s'est trouve (*(!') e- etre la-bus.Johrij happened (*DE) e; be there,(ii) Jeaiij essaie de PRO- partir.John tries DE PRO leave.The example in (i) is ungrammatical because de heads a CP projection that counts asthe governing category in which the embedded subject must be bound, and this conflictswith the requirement that the NP trace be bound by the raised subject. Comparethe control configuration in (ii), which allows de. Given the identification of control