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

CONTROL AND RAISING 81basis for expressing the relative position in time of the situation expressed bythe predication vis-a-vis the utterance, and we cannot relate the attitude of thespeaker to this situation" (Holmberg and Platzack 1995.23). As we can see fromthe preceding quotation, both mood and tense relate to Fin. Extending thisobservation a bit further, we note that the subject is also related to Fin; in otherwords, the position associated with the subject features, namely AgrS, alsocorrelates with Fin. Note that while T must relate to the utterance time so thatthe event position of the predicate is temporally evaluated, the same holds forthe subject (AgrS), since the distinction between speaker and hearer (mainly theperson distinction) is also evaluated in connection to the utterance time (see alsoDavis 1998). Under this analysis, finiteness cannot simply translate to thepresence of tense or agreement but is a correlate of tense and Agr (and mood),namely the heads that (to a large extent) define the I domain, and Fin, theposition providing the anchoring point to the speech time. 4What emerges from the brief discussion so far is that identifying -finitewith -T or with lack of agreement is not always correct. Matrix declarativeswith modals, for example, are standardly analyzed as finite although it is notclear that they have any T specification:(14) a. John may move to France.b. John must move to France.Suppose we interpret the modals may and must in (13) as deontic (permissionand obligation, respectively). It is not clear that there is any temporal specificationin either of these two cases. Instead the modal shifts the evaluation time tothe future, as Enc (1997) argues. The underlying assumption of her analysis isthat modals are quantificational expressions over possible worlds: may involvesexistential quantification, while must involves universal quantification (overpossible worlds consistent with obligations, etc.). In (14) the event position ofthe verb is by default identified with the utterance time (possibly due to the absenceof T, or an interval provided by T) which shifts to the future under thescope of the modal. In nonmodalized matrix declaratives, T binds the event positionassociated with the predicate and provides the interval that is evaluated withrespect to the matrix time; thus, no modal shifting takes place. Building onthese assumptions we could take Fin to be the position associated with existential/universalquantification (as well as other similar operators, such as genericones) over time intervals (T) or possible worlds (modalized contexts).Overall, the point that is made in this brief discussion is that finiteness is aproperty of C interacting with the functional heads in the I domain. If this iscorrect, then we would not expect to find major differences between Romance orEnglish and the Balkan languages when it comes to complement clauses despitethe different realizations as infinitives versus subjunctives. What is crucial isthat these complements exhibit certain properties that are determined by the selectingpredicate (or some other operator in the matrix clause).