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Complement Clauses in Portuguese: Syntax and acquisition
Edited by Ana Lúcia Santos and Anabela Gonçalves
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 17] 2018
► pp. 129–186

Controlled overt pronouns as specificational predicates

| Universidade of Minho, CEHUM

Szabolcsi (2009) shows that there are languages where control and raising infinitives have overt subjects, in compliance with (1):

(1)
a.

The overt subjects of control complements can only be pronouns.

b.

The overt subjects of raising complements can be pronouns or lexical DPs.

Drawing on data from European Portuguese (as well as Spanish and Italian) we show that the evidence underlying (1) constitutes a strong case in favor of a non-raising approach to obligatory control. Relying on the observation that many consistent Null Subject Languages (NSL) allow for explicit subjects in raising and control complements, we develop an account that aims to capture the association between this phenomenon and the null subject property.

Keywords: infinitival complements, control, raising, null subject language, exhaustive focus
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The data
    • 2.1Obligatory control complements
    • 2.2Raising complements
    • 2.3Discussion
  • 3.Multiple subjects and emphatic pronouns
    • 3.1Evidence that emphatic pronouns are subjects
    • 3.2Multiple subjects in raising and control complements
  • 4.Cross-linguistic differences
  • 5.Some background assumptions regarding the syntax of the consistent NSLs
  • 6.Two possible alternative accounts of controlled pronouns
    • 6.1Alternative 1: Controlled pronouns as pronounced PR
    • 6.2Alternative 2: The controlled pronoun is a doubling DP within a Big-DP
  • 7.The proposal
    • 7.1Hungarian structural focus as predication
    • 7.2Postverbal subjects in the Romance NSLs
  • 8.Infinitival complements revisited
    • 8.1Raising complements
    • 8.2Control complements
  • 9.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.17.05bar
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