Subjects and Complementizers

Author: P. Branigan, Year:1992

This Thesis is concerned with the position that subject and objects occupy at LF. It is demonstrated that objects must occupy a Case position outside of VP at LF in order to account for the effects of objects in participle agreement configurations and in configurations in which they interact with ‘dependent’ elements in VP adjuncts. It is shown that subjects occupy a non-Case position located between CP and IP, a position which can also be occupied by inverted locative phrases in English. The A-bar status of this position leads to ‘that-trace’ effects and a greater sensitivity to A-bar extraction of the subject from inside an island.

Thesis Supervisor:      David Pesetsky

Title:                           Associate Professor

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Table of Contents

1          Goals, Framework and Assumptions                                                             7

            1.1       Goals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7

            1.2       Framework:     the Minimalist Program. . . . . . . . . . . . 9

                        1.2.1    The Derivational Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

                        1.2.2    Feature-checking (a generalized Case theory) . . . . . .   11

                        1.2.3    PF constraints and the ‘strength’ of morphological features  13

                        1.2.4    The Definition of A and A-bar positions. . . . . . . .  14

                        1.2.5    Economy of Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

                        1.2.6    Bounding Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   16

                        1.2.7    Global Economy and Form Chain. . . . . . . . . . . 17

                        1.2.8    The Strict Cycle Condition. . . . . . . . . . . . .    18

                        1.2.9    Copy theory of Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . .            20

            1.3       Other Assumptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   20

                        1.3.1    Chain Uniformity and Complement-Adjunct Assymetries   20

                        1.3.2    VP-Internal Subjects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22

                        1.3.3    Zero Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   22

            1.4       Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2          Overt object Shift                                                                                           25

            2.1       Introduction: issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

            2.2       The technical problem and Chomsky’s solution. . . . . . . .   26

            2.3       Overt object shift in French and English. . . . . . . . . . .   33

                        2.3.1    The facts about participle agreement in French. . . . . . 33

                        2.3.2    Proposal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

                        2.3.3    Overt object shift in English. . . . . . . . . . . . .  43

                        2.3.4    Overt object shift and the Strict Cycle Condition . . . .  48

3          Covert object shift                                                                                          51

            3.1       The issue: the syntactic prominence of direct objects. . . . . .   51

            3.2       Polarity item licensing of direct objects. . . . . . . . . . . . 53

            3.3       The height of Exceptionally Case-Marked Subjects. . . . . . .  56

                        3.3.1    Alternative analyses (Lasnik and Saito) . . . . . . . .   60

                        3.3.2    Alternative analyses (Larson’s) . . . . . . . . . . .    62

                        3.3.3    ‘Late’ covert object shift and complements to believe and

see                                                                                           65

            3.4       The height of complements to prepositions. . . . . . . . . .  68

                        3.4.1    The height of a second internal argument. . . . . . . .  71

4          Subject Extraction                                                                                           77

            4.1       Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   77

                        4.1.1    The problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  77

            4.2       Evidence for an A-bar position between IP and CP. . . . . . .  78

                        4.2.1    Locative/quotative inversion. . . . . . . . . . . . .  78

                        4.2.2    Adverb placement in English. . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

                        4.2.3    Agreeing complementizers. . . . . . . . . . . . .     81

            4.3       Evidence that operator subjects remain in Spec-PP. . . . . . . 85

                        4.3.1    ‘Vacuous movement’ effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

                        4.3.2    ATB extraction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  88

                        4.3.3    Relative pronoun deletion and the ‘anti-that-trace’ effect. . 88

                        4.3.4    West Flemish resumptive die. . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

                        4.3.5    Qui. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

                        4.3.6    A Consequence: Comp-to-Comp movement. . . . . .   97

            4.4       Spec-PP and ‘surprising assymetries’. . . . . . . . . . . .  98

                        4.4.1    Consequences of the preceding sections. . . . . . . .    98

                        4.4.2    Surprising Assymetries in Finite Clauses. . . . . . . .  98

                        4.4.3    Weaker surprising assymetris. . . . . . . . . . . .    101

                        4.4.4    Uniformity and q-positions. . . . . . . . . . . . .   103

                        4.4.5    Uniformity and ‘complement’ positions. . . . . . . .   106

            4.5       Deriving that-trace effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  108

5          Conclusion                                                                                                      113

Bibliography                                                                                                               115