Differential subject marking in Polish: The case of Genitive vs ...

indicates that the argument possesses the state denoted by the VP” (Bennis 2004:86, fn. 1); cf.
(53). The presence of v in such cases thus follows from the principle/implication in (54) (Bennis
2004:88).
(53) If v is stative: [Spec, v] is Possessor (John knows the audience)
(54) If an external argument is present, v has to be generated.
In affirmative sentences the locative phrase moves to Spec,TP to satisfy the Extended Projection
Principle (EPP). 61 The nominal argument remains in situ and undergoes long distance agreement
with Tense. This explains the unmarked word order of such sentences (cf. section 3.3.1) and the
“quasi”-subject behavior of the NP in such cases (understood in terms of agreement and NOM
case marking; recall Dziwirek’s tests for final 1-hood) (cf. section 3.2). 62
In negated existential-locative sentences, a NegP is inserted above vP and the verb moves
to Neg°, which is due to the clitic nature of the negative marker in Polish (see Blaszczak 2001 for
a discussion of the structure of negated clauses in Polish); cf. (55). The nominal argument which
is marked for GEN in this case (see below) cannot undergo a long distance agreement with
Tense. To implement this one could assume that only NPs with unchecked (or unvalued) case
features can undergo an Agree relation (see Chomsky 1998, 1999). Given that the case feature of
the NP has already been checked (or valued for GEN), the NP is no longer able to undergo a
checking relation with Tense. As a consequence, the unchecked (unvalued) phi-features of Tense
can only assume a default agreement (3.Sg.Neuter). In other words, the default agreement is a
form of nonagreement; see Harves (2002) for an assumption along similar lines. 63 As far as the
61 In this sense the structure is similar to that of locative inversion in English, for which it is also usually
assumed that the locative phrase moves to Spec,TP to satisfy the EPP.
62 The question that still needs to be clarified is what prevents the small “stative” v in (52) from having an ACC
case feature. Note that the stative v obviously has this feature in cases like (53) above. One reason could be
the actual “make-up” of the Possessor: a nominal Possessor correlates with an Accusative object while a
locative Possessor does not. One could also think of a solution along the lines formulated by Freeze (1992)
and the subsequent literature that a possessive verb HAVE (assigning the ACC case to its object) arises as the
result of a syntactic incorporation operation of an abstract locative Preposition into BE. Thus, in cases like
(52) one would have to assume that such an incorporation operation cannot take place (see, among others,
Mahajan 1994 for a related discussion). I leave this question for further research.
63 Alternatively, it could be assumed that the surface subject position, the Spec,IP (or Spec,TP), is filled by a
dummy (cf. Dziwirek 1994), or in Witkos’ (2000) terms, by an expletive pro of the it-type that is equipped
with the categorial [+D] feature, 3 rd person singular neuter agreement feature and the [+NOM] case feature,
checking thus the relevant features of T and yielding the default agreement. In the probe-goal system of
Chomsky (1998), it is also assumed that in the cases under discussion the expletive is merged in [Spec,T]
without movement. The [person] feature of the expletive is uninterpretable and acts as a probe, seeking a goal,
namely “matching” features that establish agreement, in its domain T’ (the domain of a probe P is the sister of
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