In:Footprints of Phrase Structure: Studies in syntax in honour of Tim Stowell
Edited by María J. Arche, Jan-Wouter Zwart, Hamida Demirdache and Hagit Borer
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 288] 2025
► pp. 56–75
Exceptional case-marking reconsidered
Published online: 2 October 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.288.04las
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.288.04las
Abstract
Postal (1974) (with roots much earlier) analyzed ECM
subjects as raising into higher clause. Chomsky (1973, 1981) instead argued that the boundary of an infinitival clause is so weak
that it is as if its subject is in the higher clause for Case and other purposes. Davis (1984) proposed that it is infinitival Infl rather than the higher verb that licenses accusative
Case on its specifier, similar to a classic analysis of the Accusative-Infinitive construction in Latin, except that
in English, the accusative assigning feature must be inherited from the matrix verb. I discuss a variety of ECM-type
phenomena in English, concluding that for some speakers, ECM subjects can, but need not, raise into the higher clause.
Then I show how an extension of Davis’s account covers the range of phenomena considered.
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