Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax)

Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP

Recent Titles in OXFORD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE SYNTAX Richard Kayne, General Editor Particles: On the Syntax of Verb-Particle, Triadic, and Causative Constructions Marcel den Dikken

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Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP

Edited by PETER SVENONIUS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

2002

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Instanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto

and an associated company in Berlin Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Subjects, expletives, and the EPP / edited by Peter Svenonius. p. cm. — (Oxford studies in comparative syntax) Papers presented at a workshop held June 1997, University of Troms0. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: The que/qui-alternation and the distribution of expletives / Knut Tarald Taraldsen — Icelandic expletive constructions and the distribution of subject types / 0ystein Alexander Vangsnes — Expletives, subjects, and topics in Finnish / Anders Holmberg and Urpo Nikanne—The EPP in a topic-prominent language / Katalin E. Kiss — The extended projection principle as a condition on the tense dependency / Ian Roberts and Anna Roussou — Parameters of subject inflection in Italian dialects / M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia — Subject positions and the placement of adverbials / Peter Svenonius. ISBN 0-19-514224-1; 0-19-514225-X (pbk.) 1. Grammar, Comparative and general—Syntax—Congresses. I. Svenonius, Peter. II. Series. P291 .S83 2002 415—dc21 2001036744

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Contents

Contributors 1. Introduction PETER SVENONIUS

vii 3

2. The Que/Qui Alternation and the Distribution of Expletives KNUT TARALD TARALDSEN

29

3. Icelandic Expletive Constructions and the Distribution of Subject Types 0YSTEIN ALEXANDER VANGSNES

43

4. Expletives, Subjects, and Topics in Finnish ANDERS HOLMBERG AND URPO NIKANNE

71

5. The EPP in a Topic-Prominent Language KATALIN E. Kiss

107

6. The Extended Projection Principle as a Condition on the Tense Dependency 125 IAN ROBERTS AND ANNA Roussou 7. Parameters of Subject Inflection in Italian Dialects M. RITA MANZINI AND LEONARDO M. SAVOIA

157

8. Subject Positions and the Placement of Adverbials PETER SVENONIUS

201

Index

243

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Contributors

ANDERS HOLMBERG University of Troms0 KATALIN E. Kiss Linguistic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences RITA M. MANZINI University of Florence URPO NIKANNE University of Oslo IAN ROBERTS University of Stuttgart (currently at University of Cambridge) ANNA Roussou University of Bangor (currently at University of Cyprus) LEONARDO M. SAVOIA University of Florence PETER SVENONIUS University of Troms0 KNUT TARALD TARALDSEN University of Troms0 0YSTEIN ALEXANDER VANGSNES University of Bergen

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Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP

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1 Introduction Peter Svenonius

The literature on the three concepts named in the title of this book is vast. In this introduction, I simply provide a sketch (in § 1-3) of the issues that set the scene for the chapters in the volume. My discussion is judiciously larded at appropriate points with brief references to those chapters, and each chapter is summarized in §4. In §5,1 discuss the chapters in relation to each other, and then summarize some of their shared assumptions.

1. Subjects The subject occupies a precarious position in generative linguistics; on the one hand it is an indispensable concept at a descriptive level, and is accorded basic status as a primitive notion in some frameworks (along with other grammatical relations); on the other hand it has defeated all attempts at a cross-linguistically valid definition, and a substantial part of the field takes it to be no more than a descriptive label for an epiphenomenal collection of properties (cf. McCloskey 1997 for a clear overview of the issues). Traditional grammarians distinguish between grammatical or formal subjects and logical or notional subjects; for example, Jespersen notes (1927:227-228, 1949:107-110) that in a raising construction like (la), the grammatical subject is he, but the notional subject of the main clause is the (discontinuous) infinitive clause he to fall; while in the most deeply embedded clause in (1b) (from Dickens), the grammatical subject is there while the logical subject is what. (1)

a. b.

He happened to fall. I don't mean to say that I know what there is particularly dead about a door-nail.

At our present level of understanding, it seems that we can deconstruct the traditional subject into three components, one thematic-aspectual (the thematically most prominent argument of a predicate), one morphosyntactic (classically identified by 3

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

4

case and/or agreement), and one discourse-informational (the topical or thematic entity named in a proposition) (cf. the discussion of the V-domain, the I-domain, and the C-domain in Platzack 2000). In the most straightforward cases, all of these components converge on a single noun phrase, prominent in all three components. In other cases they diverge. In a case like (2a), the morphosyntactic and discourse-informational systems converge on an entity which is not the thematically most prominent argument. In (2b), morphosyntactic marking is split: the thematically prominent argument controls agreement, but does not occupy the canonical subject position. In the reply in (2c), the discourse-informational topic neither occupies the subject position nor shows any other morphosyntactic subject marking. (2d) challenges theories of the thematic/aspectual system to determine which argument is prominent. (2)

a. b. c. d.

Theatergoers were provoked by the performance. There were both kinds of wine at the party. Where's Odradek?—I left him under the stairs. Peach schnapps attracts bees.

Despite such permutations, English generally consistently uses position (along with what case and agreement it has) to mark the thematically most prominent argument (lexical selection and voice are commonly used to ensure that the resultant subject is topical). Different interactions among the different components give rise to different systems cross-linguistically, for example ergative systems where the transitive object patterns with the intransitive subject for case/agreement) and topic-prominent systems, where morphosyntactic marking is more robust for the discourse topic than for the thematic-aspectually highest argument (cf. Li and Thompson 1976, E. Kiss 1995b, and the other papers in E. Kiss 1995a). Although the interactions among these components vary from language to language, the components are not independent of each other: each feeds the next. That is, first, the case/agreement system is sensitive to the thematic/aspectual system; there are 'active' or 'split' case-marking systems that distinguish agentive from patientive arguments, as well as ergative and accusative systems, but in each of these case-marking is determined by the thematic role of the argument, either in isolation (in an active system) or relative to other arguments (in accusative and ergative systems) (cf. Dixon 1994:28-35 for comments on semantic-based marking, and E. Kiss 1987 and in this volume for discussion of the situation in Hungarian). Various grammatical processes, such as imperative formation, binding, causative formation, and control are part of the thematic-aspectual domain and are similarly cross-linguistically sensitive to this component (Anderson 1976), so that even in an ergative language like Inuit, the argument of a control-type predicate controls the thematic-aspectual Actor of a transitive clause1 and even a topicprominent language like Lahu can have accusative case marking on the Theme of a transitive verb (Matisoff 1973:155-158) and regularly forms causatives in which the Agent of the embedded verb is the controllee (cf. Matisoff 1973:436). In the familiar GB-based frameworks, the only way for the syntax to refer to thematic structure is indirectly, so it is important that the rules of VP projection are universally determined by properties of 0-assignment. In the alternative adopted by Manzini

INTRODUCTION

5

and Savoia (this volume), thematic roles are aspectual features, allowing 6-assignment to occur at a greater distance; this makes the actual structure of the VP irrelevant (cf. Borer 1994); characteristics of feature movement are then responsible for the observed connection between the thematic-aspectual system and such processes as control. The second correspondence I alluded to above was that the discourse-informational component may universally be fed by the Case/agreement system. It is of course difficult to show that this is universal, but it seems that processes involving the informational domain (or C-domain), including relativization, topicalization, and other A-bar-type operations, are not directly sensitive to the thematic-aspectual system but only as mediated by the morphosyntactic system (cf. the 'topic' of Dixon 1972 and 'pivot' of Dixon 1994; see also Manning 1996 for discussion), so that an ergative language may favor the absolutive, rather than the Actor, in such processes. For example, ergative languages frequently require promotion of an Actor to absolutive case (through antipassive) for A-bar extraction (Nakamura 1996:92). E. Kiss argues in this volume that nominative in Hungarian is licensed not in the Isystem as in English, but in the lexicon; consistent with this, the nominative argument shows no prominence for purposes of focusing or other movement processes. In sum, the notion of subject is a multifaceted one. In the Government-Binding, Principles and Parameters, and Minimalist frameworks, subjecthood is generally a descriptive label, without theoretical status. Yet we can discuss, with Koster (1978), whether CPs can be subjects, without devolving into incoherence; just as we can say that the subject in Icelandic can be dative (Zaenen et al. 1985), that Warlpiri subjects of transitive verbs take the ergative case (Hale 1973), that Korean can have multiple subjects (Park 1973), or that English requires a subject. This last claim is the topic of §3; but before moving on to the subject requirement itself, I turn in §2 to one of its most important diagnostics, the expletive.

2. Expletives Expletive, pleonastic, or dummy subjects have been pivotal in syntactic argumentation. They are identified by their lack of semantic content, and their resolutely grammatical nature makes them an excellent probe into the boundary between syntax and semantics. They are crucial, for example, in the identification of syntactic positions as thematic or nonthematic, so that the pattern in (3) shows that the position after promise is thematic and that the position after suspect is not (cf. Bresnan 1972: ch. 3). (3)

a. We suspect there to be a party next door b. * We promise there to be a party next door

Three types of expletive subject are recognized in traditional grammars of English: extraposition it, weather it, and impersonal there, distinct from locative there (shown in (4d)). (4)

a. b.

It is obvious where you got that hickey. It gets dark in November.

6

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP c. d.

There's a fly in your soup, isn't there? There's our bus (*isn't there?)

Expletives are by definition semantically empty. Chomsky (1981:323-325) has argued that weather it is not an expletive, but rather what he calls a quasi-argument. It can bind PRO in an adjunct, for example, unlike the true expletive there (cf. E. Kiss, this volume, for similar examples from Hungarian; also Bennis 1986 on extraposition it controlling PRO). (5)

a. It often clears up here right after snowing heavily, b. * There is often a party here right after being a wake.

There is also a possible argument from Burzio's Generalization, which states that all and only verbs which assign an external 6-role can also assign Case to an object (Burzio 1986:178). Compare (6a), in which a weather predicate takes an object, to (6b), in which an unaccusative verb fails to; not even a resultative predicate can save (6c), though the resultative predicate is fine when the internal argument gets Case elsewhere, as in (6d) (i.e., the noun phrase mackerel has moved from object to subject position; cf. Simpson 1983 on resultative predicates with unaccusative verbs). (6)

a. It rained mackerel. b. * Rain fell mackerel. c. * Rain fell mackerel thick on the ground. d. Mackerel fell thick on the ground.

This suggests that it gets a 0-role from rain, specifically an external 0-role. Thus, we might wish to disregard meteorological it, when considering the behavior of expletives. A positive result of this move is that it allows us to handle the most serious of Postal and Pullum's (1988) examples of apparent expletive objects; consider their examples in (7). (7)

a. b. c.

We demand it of our employees that they wear a tie. I would really dig it if you tickled my toes. Beat it!

Examples like (7a) plausibly involve extraposition from a small clause subject position, thus being analyzable as ECM (i.e., it is an embedded subject; cf. (3a) above). On the other hand, examples like (7b) more clearly suggest extraposition from object position, on which see below. What is immediately pertinent is (7c), where there is no CP. Beat it means, roughly, 'go away immediately,' and as Postal and Pullum point out, there is no word that could substitute for it and preserve that meaning. Thus, this might be another example of a quasi-argument, a subcategorized (or s-selected) pronoun with only idiomatic content (essentially following Bolinger 1973). Hoekstra (1983) argues that extraposition it is referential as well (cf. also Bennis 1986, Vikner 1995). It is always coindexed with a CP (Rosenbaum 1968), resembling in this sense a resumptive pronoun. In fact, E. Kiss (this volume) shows that in Hungarian, extraposition pronouns can even be focused, and must therefore have

INTRODUCTION

7

semantic content (presumably, as she suggests, through the 0-chain that they form with the coindexed CP). This would eliminate Postal and Pullum's (7b) above, leaving uncontested the contention that expletives can appear only in subject position. Thus the only reasonably clear case of an expletive is the impersonal one, represented by two types. One type is the historically locative there in English, er in Dutch, and der in Danish and some dialects of Norwegian and Swedish (in the latter spelled dar). In the other Germanic languages, the existential expletive is generally identical to the neuter pronoun (det in Norwegian and Swedish, pad in Icelandic, tad in Faroese, es in German and Yiddish). This has consequences for agreement, in that locative-based expletives seem to correlate strongly with agreement with the associate, whereas pronoun-based expletives vary on this score (cf. French, where expletive il controls singular agreement).2 It might be thought that not even the impersonal expletive is strictly nonreferential, since, like extraposition it, it is always linked to something, namely an associate NP; but this is true only of English. There are clear cases where the corresponding expletive is not associated with any nominal, as in the impersonal assertions in French (Kayne 1975:247, note 56), Icelandic, Swedish (from Falk 1993:74), and Danish. (8) a. II sera parle de vous par tout le monde French it will.be spoken of you by all the world 'The whole world will be talking about you' b. Pad verdur talad um big ut um allan heim. Icelandic it becomes spoken about you out of all world 'The whole world will be talking about you' c. Det kluckar i roren av avloppsvatten. Swedish it gurgles in the.pipes by drainwater 'Drainwater is gurgling in the pipes' d. Der ma ikke ryges. Danish there may not be.smoked 'Smoking is not allowed' English is quite unusual among the Germanic languages in disallowing impersonal statements without any associate NP (cf. Vikner 1995). Analyses of expletive constructions abound. An important development was that of Safir 1982, 1985, 1987 involving a Case/agreement chain between the expletive and the associate; properties of such a chain are then argued to account for the definiteness effect. This approach successfully handles the fact that when Case is not transmitted, as in (8), there is no definiteness effect (a preposition assigns Case to the postverbal DPs in (8a-c)). However, Vangsnes (this volume) notes that in Icelandic, the definiteness restriction varies with the position of the associate, not with any property of the expletive; as a consequence, he argues, a Case chain cannot be involved and the definiteness effect must receive a different analysis. He provides one, basing it on de Hoop's 1996 theory of strong and weak Case. Since the available Case licensing is predicted by that theory to vary with the position of the associate, this more naturally accounts for the observed facts in Icelandic, and extends easily to Safir's data as well (on the assumption that P assigns strong Case).

8

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

Chomsky (1986) proposed that the associate moves abstractly to the position of the expletive, which bears some subset of the features associated with nominal arguments. There have been many variations on this analysis, including different proposals regarding what features the impersonal expletive bears. In this spirit, Taraldsen, this volume, argues that the expletive bears only number features, and Vangsnes, in this volume, proposes that expletives have deictic features, and may also have Case features, parameterized across languages. Holmberg and Nikanne, also in this volume, show that the division in Finnish expletives between (roughly) the impersonal type and the extraposition and weather type is overtly reflected in their case, with the impersonal type being partitive; this, they argue, is a default form, and the impersonal expletive in Finnish is actually caseless. On the abstract movement analysis, an expletive with the requisite features may obviate movement, and therefore agreement with the associate will not obtain. However, Manzini and Savoia, in this volume, point out that agreement is always strict in person,3 suggesting that the associate always raises, and that movement of the associate cannot be too closely linked to the checking of agreement features. In contrast, Vangsnes (this volume) argues that there is never associate movement, arguing for agreement at a distance. Agreement at a distance, in the form of feature movement, is also the solution opted for by Holmberg and Nikanne, in this volume. Note that Vangsnes rejects the possibility of uninterpretable features, and so the expletive, with its deictic features, must have semantic content; thus the expletive status of there is not unquestioned. In fact, Bennis (1986) argues that there is an adverbial, and Hoekstra and Mulder (1990) and Moro (1997) similarly argue for a kind of content for there (though such accounts have problems with examples like (8d) above, cf. Falk 1993: ch. 4). Consider also E. Kiss's (this volume) arguments that all-focus statements asserting the existence of an event are predicated over the event variable. On the basis of data from Hebrew and other languages, Borer (1997) similarly argued at the Troms0 conference that locative expressions could provide an anchoring for the event variable. A natural combination of these ideas would be to take the expletive as an overt expression of the event variable (cf. Kratzer 1995 and §1.5.3 below). Taking impersonal-type expletives to be contentful would eliminate the question of why there are overt expletives but raise the new question of why they are so rarely overt. Even the Germanic languages make use of null expletives, particularly in inversion contexts. In fact, the expletives used in impersonal statements are obligatorily null when not clause-initial in Icelandic, German, and Yiddish, as indicated here for Icelandic (from Thrainsson 1979:477), with Norwegian for comparison (cf. Platzack 1985, Vikner 1995: ch. 6). (9) a. I gaer voru (*bad) mys i badkerinu. Icelandic b. I gar var *(det) mus pa badekaret. Norwegian yesterday were it mice in the. bathtub 'Yesterday, there were mice in the bathtub' The expletive is strictly obligatory in initial position if no other element appears there (cf. (8b) above), consistent with the V2 requirement. However, the same expletive cannot appear, in German or Icelandic, if some other element occupies the

INTRODUCTION

9

initial position, as indicated in (9a). This pattern led Platzack (1985) to analyze Icelandic expletives as topic expletives (but see Vangsnes, this volume). Norwegian, in contrast, requires the expletive subject regardless, as indicated in (9b), much as does English. As Roberts and Roussou note in this volume, the appearance of expletives in SpecCP in V2 languages like Icelandic and in SpecIP in non-null-subject languages like English suggests a unification of the two phenomena; they propose that both are the result of an identification requirement on Tense, which appears in T in languages like English but in C in V2 languages. The question then arises whether the subject position in constructions like (9a) is occupied by any element, for example expletive pro, as in Jaeggli and Safir 1989, Christensen 1991, or Holmberg and Platzack 1995; the trace of the topicalized adverbial, as in Vangsnes, this volume; or nothing, as in Bennis 1986 (for Dutch), Haider 1987 (for German), and Roberts and Roussou, this volume (in general). The difference between pro and trace and nothing may seem like an iota,4 but what is at stake is the very universality of the EPP: if there is nothing in the subject position in (9a) or its German equivalent, then the EPP must not hold in that language, as the EPP is commonly understood. Thus it is time to turn to the EPP.

3. The EPP The Extended Projection Principle of GB/P&P/MP work of the 1980s and 1990s states that a clause must have a subject; analogous statements can be found in many other theories, but what makes this situation volatile in the MP framework and its predecessors is exactly the absence of a primitive notion of subject, as discussed in §1 above. An NP daughter was stipulated as part of the expansion for S in each of the early instantiations of the generative framework (cf. Chomsky 1957:26, Chomsky 1965:72, Chomsky 1970:216 note 7, Chomsky 1981:25; compare Jespersen 1924, inter alia, and Harris 1946). The development of a theory of specifiers (Chomsky 1970, Stowell 1981:257ff., 1983) and its extension to the clause, analyzed as IP (Stowell 1981, Chomsky 1981:111), generalized the subject-taking property of the clause to that of phrases in general, but a difference still remained. While the clause requires a subject, the various other categories do not. Chomsky 1981:40 links the subject requirement (called "Principle P" on pp. 2627 there) with the Projection Principle, a requirement for lexico-thematic isomorphism across levels of representation, and coins the term Extended Projection Principle for the combination (Chomsky 1982:10). In popular usage, the expression (usually abbreviated EPP) has come to refer to the requirement that every clause have a subject (and so it will be used here), and the connection between the EPP and the Projection Principle has remained turbid. The Projection Principle prevents, for example, 0-marked elements from disappearing during the course of a derivation, and prevents a single argument from receiving two 0-roles, but it is unclear why it should require that every clause have a subject. In order to understand the EPP it is necessary to determine whether it is crosslinguistically valid or not. On the face of it, it seems manifestly implausible that it

10

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

should be; the vast majority of the world's languages are unlike English, and freely allow sentences without overt grammatical subjects. For instance, Gilligan 1987 examines a genetically and areally diverse sample of about 100 languages and finds only eleven cases where thematic subjects cannot be null, and no cases where expletive subjects cannot be (he notes, p. 136, that Icelandic has oveijt expletives in initial position, and Classical Arabic has them in subordinate clauses). Thus sentences like the Italian (lOa) (from Rizzi 1982:126) or the Northern Sami (lOb) (from Nickel 1990:397) are typical of the world's conversations. (10) a.

b.

Non voglio che venga nessuno. not \vant.lSGthatcome.3scnobody '[I] don't want anybody to come' Arvigodii. began.to.rain '[It] began to rain'

Italian

Northern Sdmi

There has long been an intuition that even clauses without overt subjects have covert ones; witness Jespersen's (1937:20) analysis 'S° V for an Italian sentence like Vive 'He lives,' where the superscripted zero indicates phonological silence. Taraldsen's Generalization (Taraldsen 1980) is the statement in the terms of generative grammar that overt agreement morphology licenses null subjects. In the formal theory of null subjects that emerged from the work of Taraldsen (1980), Chomsky (1981), and Rizzi (1982), their distribution is subject to the same factors that constrain the distribution of other phonologically empty categories, as well as to (some of) the contraints on overt noun phrases; thus, in (lla) (from Rizzi 1982:176 note 14), in the embedded finite clause, an overt subject would be licensed, and so would a subject trace. In (lib) on the other hand (Rizzi 1982:129 example (40b)), the embedded clause is an infinitival, and the licensing possibilities for subjects are much reduced. Accordingly, the null subject is impossible, and (lib) is bad, either because it violates the subject condition or because the embedded verb fails to assign its quasi-0-role (cf. the discussion in §2). (11) a.

None chiaro quando piovera. not is clear when rains 'It is not clear when it rains' b. * Non e chiaro quando piovere. not is clear when rain. INF

Italian

The result was to give a formal characterization to the 'null subject' intuition shared by Jespersen and others, based on language-internal empirical evidence. This makes it possible to contemplate the possibility that some sort of subject requirement holds for sentences like (lOa-b). In fact, even verb-subject ('Free Inversion') sentences in Italian, like the embedded clause in (lOa), might have an expletive subject in a position to the left of V, though this is controversial (see Manzini and Savoia, this volume, for a critical assessment). At any rate, it has often been assumed since the early 1980s that all languages are subject to the EPP, some licensing pro while others do not. The first serious problem faced was the existence of languages like Chinese, which do not have rich

INTRODUCTION

11

Agr, yet allow pro drop. Gilligan's (1987) cross-linguistic survey shows that of twenty-six languages with no subject agreement, fully seventeen of them allow null thematic subjects, or about 65 percent. However, Huang (1984, 1987) analyzed Chinese null arguments, showing that they could be accommodated under GB licensing theory. Interestingly, this type of pro drop is an areal feature: all of Gilligan's seventeen examples are from south and east Asia or Oceania (as Gilligan notes, p. 197), and twelve of them are also like Chinese in additionally allowing null objects, despite having no object agreement. McCloskey (1996) challenges the view of the EPP as a universal, arguing that Irish allows truly subjectless sentences, such as that in (12). (12)

Laghdaigh ar a neart. decreased on his strength 'His strength decreased'

Irish

It is possible to postulate a null expletive in (12), but McCloskey argues that there is no evidence for such an expletive element internal to Irish, and furthermore that there are reasons specifically to believe that expletive subjects (of the impersonal type) are systematically absent from Irish. For some languages, it is possible to analyze agreement morphology as pronominal, possibly directly satisfying the EPP; Irish is known for the complementary distribution of overt subjects and overt agreement morphology (McCloskey and Hale 1984), but the verb in examples like (12) is in the 'analytic' form, which does not show agreement. Nevertheless, the view that head movement is what obviates the EPP in examples like (12) is an attractive one (cf. Benedicto 1994 for an early exploration of this idea, and Svenonius 1994: ch. 3 for another). Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnastopoulou, in a paper presented at the Troms0 conference on which this volume is based (published as Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998), develop such a theory; on their theory, V-raising in Irish and other languages satisfies the EPP, because the finite verb bears the requisite nominal features for checking the EPP. Versions of this analysis are adopted by several of the chapters in this volume: Manzini and Savoia, Roberts and Roussou, and Vangsnes, though each with some variation.

4. The chapters 4.1. The conference The chapters in this volume originated as papers presented under a lingering arctic sun on June 6 and 7, 1997, at the conference in Troms0 bearing the same name as this volume. There were four other papers as well, which unfortunately could not be included. They were Hagit Borer's "Licensing Events: The Role of Locatives," Halldor Armann Sigurdsson's "Stylistic Fronting," Tor A. Afarli and Kristin M. Eide's "The EPP and Predication," and Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou's "V-Movement and EPP Checking." Borer's paper is referenced here as Borer 1997, and Sigurdsson's as Sigurdsson 1997. A version of the paper

12

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

presented by Afarli and Eide appears as Afarli and Eide 2000, and Alexiadou and Anagnastopoulou's paper is represented by Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998. Here I briefly summarize only the papers included in the volume, in the order of their appearance. 4.2. Taraldsen Tarald Taraldsen, in "The Que/Qui Alternation and the Distribution of Expletives," provides a unified analysis for several constructions in French in which there is no overt preverbal subject. It obviates the problematic account of Rizzi 1990 by which qui is an agreeing complementizer, and eliminates the null expletive and rightward movement needed by Kayne and Pollock 1978. Central to the analysis is the postulation of an expletive i in French, corresponding to the expletive id (i before consonants) in the Rhaeto-Romance language Vallader, seen in (13a). The expletive is argued to appear in colloquial French expressions like the one in (13b) (with a morphophonological formative /t/ to its left). (13) a.

b.

I turnaran quei temps docts it will, return those times learned Those learned times will return' Pourquoi tu dois-ti partir? why you must-Ti leave 'Why must you leave?'

Vallader

French

This element is argued to account for the que/qui alternation in French, where qui appears when a subject has been wh-moved: qui is que plus the expletive i. The distribution of qui and of ti have in common that they both require that the actual subject be in SpecCP. Taraldsen suggests that in those cases, the subject checks number features in the C projection; the strong number feature responsible for the EPP raises from Infl to C when the subject enters SpecCP (separating from V, developing a suggestion in Taraldsen 1996 that feature movement is overt rather than covert as in Chomsky 1995). The expletive / occupies the SpecIP position without checking any (interpretable) features; it is a 'pure expletive,' required because the subject has been extracted. In addition, Taraldsen treats cases of French Stylistic Inversion, where a subject may be postverbal in case some element has been wh-moved, as in (14a). In fact, there may even be no obvious candidate for subjecthood, as in (14b). (14) a.

b.

Ou crois-tu quevontse cacher les chats? French where think you that will RFX hide the cats 'Where do you think the cats will hide?' Quand crois-tu que sera precede a un reexamen de la when think you that will.be proceeded to a reexamination of the question? case 'When do you think that a reexamination of the case might occur?'

Again, this possibility hinges on there being wh-movement out of the clause. The classic analysis of Stylistic Inversion has a null expletive in SpecIP. Taraldsen ar-

INTRODUCTION

13

gues, however, that the VP, along with some functional projections, occupies SpecIP in such cases, number features being checked by virtue of the percolation of the number features of the trace of the subject. In this way, Taraldsen eliminates the need for a null expletive in the analysis of French, and along the way provides a new account for *que-trac& effects. 4.3. Vangsnes In "Icelandic Expletive Constructions and the Distribution of Subject Types," 0ystein Vangsnes discusses Icelandic expletive constructions, in particular the distribution of different types of subjects (quantified, definite, and so on) in two different positions: one, the 'intermediate' position, follows the position of the verb in second position and is identified with SpecTP (following Bobaljik and Jonas 1996); the other, the 'postverbal' position, is lower down, presumably inside the VP. Vangsnes demonstrates that the restrictions on the two positions are different. The lower, postverbal position shows the classical definiteness effects as discussed by Milsark: weakly quantified DPs are allowed, and strongly quantified DPs, as well as names, possessed DPs, definite descriptions, and partitives are excluded. However, the intermediate position shows a different type of restriction. Here, although definite descriptions, partitives, names, and possessed DPs are impossible, strongly quantified DPs are permissible. McNally (1992) pointed out that examples of strongly quantified noun phrases in existential statements in English, like that given in (2b) in §1 above, are restricted to 'kind' expressions (in Carlson's 1977 sense). Vangsnes makes it clear that this is not the case in Icelandic. As Vangsnes argues, this is a serious problem for accounts in which the definite effects noted in existential constructions are linked crucially to the presence of an expletive, since the expletive is the same whether the associate is in the intermediate or the postverbal position. There is an additional, surprising constraint on the intermediate position: 'bare' indefinites, which in Icelandic appear with no determiner at all even when singular (there is no indefinite article in Icelandic), are degraded in the intermediate position, but perfect in the postverbal position. This apparently has nothing to do with the determiner per se, as a modified noun is acceptable. For example, (15a) is degraded, but (15b) is good. (15) a. ? Pad er fiskur eldadur i eldhusinu. it is fish cooked in the. kitchen 'There has been fish cooked in the kitchen' a. Pad er uldinn fiskur eldadur i eldhusinu. it is rotten fish cooked in the.kitchen There has been rotten fish cooked in the kitchen'

Icelandic

This is reminiscent of the observation made by E. Kiss (this volume) that Hungarian bare N subjects remain VP-internal and cannot appear in higher subject positions. Vangsnes develops an account in which the definiteness effect on the low position comes from de Hoop's 1996 strong and weak Case; T can license strong Case, allowing strongly quantified elements in the high position. The restrictions on associates in the high position come from a licensing requirement that is specific to

14

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

definite expressions: unlike strongly quantified noun phrases, they must check deictic features as well as person and number features. Only in SpecAgrSP can these features be checked. 4.4. Holmberg and Nikanne Anders Holmberg and Urpo Nikanne discuss "Expletives, Subjects, and Topics in Finnish." They show that Finnish has overt expletives, both of the it type and the there type, despite the fact that it is a richly agreeing pro-drop language in the sense that first- and second-person subjects are freely omissible. Furthermore, under certain conditions these expletives are obligatory. This is unexpected on several accounts of the 'pro-drop parameter.' For example, in systems descending from Taraldsen's 1980 proposal, such as that of Rizzi 1982, pro drop is possible when empty categories can be licensed in subject positions. In such a language, overt expletives, if present at all, would necessarily be optional. Similarly, in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, pro drop is the result of a language checking the EPP feature through verb movement; this leaves unexplained the Finnish facts. Holmberg and Nikanne carefully show that the expletive competes with various topical elements for the structural position of the subject in Finnish, a position which can be distinguished from the operator position in SpecCP, from the specifier of TP, and from various focus positions. They argue that the topic position is the specifier of AgrSP, which they call FP (following Holmberg et al. 1993). Holmberg and Nikanne propose that EPP effects in Finnish are generally due to a negatively specified Focus feature, [-Foe]. The feature is semantically defined, but by the absence of content: an element that does not contribute any new information is minus focus. This feature must be checked by a topical element or an expletive in SpecFP, when present in F. It is not present when the sentence is allfocus, in which case there are no EPP effects. Although the F head is responsible for nominative case and for subject agreement inflection, they argue that these can be assigned at a distance, so the nominative subject need not move to SpecFP if some other element serves as the topic. 4.5. E. Kiss Katalin E. Kiss's "The EPP in a Topic-Prominent Language" examines the relevance of the EPP for Hungarian, a topic-prominent language. The EPP as stated in Chomsky 1981,1995 is a condition on IP, or on Infl, the locus of verbal inflectional morphology, and affects the thematically most prominent argument (requiring it to appear in SpecIP). Hungarian seems problematic for the EPP as stated in three respects. First, not all clauses have a VP-external subject: there are topicless (active) sentences in which no argument is external to the VP; though topics generally do have to move to a VP-external position. Second, sentences in which some element moves to a VP-external position do not seem to involve SpecIP; the positions are apparently distinct for quantified elements, focused elements, and topics, and there is no obvious link to Infl (i.e., there is no connection between the fronting of these elements and verbal morphology). Third, the movement of some element to a VP-external

INTRODUCTION

15

position is not limited to the thematically highest argument, although the thematically highest argument does always show morphological nominative case. E. Kiss splits the EPP into two different parts: one, a requirement that the VP be predicated over some argument, possibly the Davidsonian event argument, and two, a constraint on argument structure, requiring the thematically most prominent argument to be morphosytactically subject-marked. E. Kiss shows that Hungarian is consistent with the first aspect of the EPP, the predication requirement, if it is assumed that (i) in Topicless sentences, the VP is predicated over the event argument, and (ii) quantification (in sentences with quantifiers or focused elements) counts as predication in the relevant sense. Hungarian is consistent with the second version of the EPP, the subject-marking of the most prominent argument requirement, if it is assumed that this subject-marking (in the form of nominative case marking) can be instantiated without movement to SpecIP. E. Kiss argues that this occurs in the lexicon in Hungarian, where nominative case is associated with the thematically most prominent argument. Consistent with this analysis, there are no grammatical function-changing processes in Hungarian, such as passive, raising, ECM, or fowg/i-movement; the surface case of the thematically most prominent argument of a verb is always nominative. Thus, Hungarian differs from English in two parameters: first, in English, predication of a VP over the event argument can occur only in there-insertion contexts, and there are language-specific constraints on there-insertion, whereas in Hungarian, an active (not stative) VP can be predicated of the event argument with no expletive; and second, in English, subject-marking is effected by movement to SpecIP, while in Hungarian, it is effected by lexical assignment of nominative case. 4.6. Roberts andRoussou Ian Roberts and Anna Roussou's contribution is "The Extended Projection Principle as a Condition on the Tense Dependency." Roberts and Roussou argue that the EPP and V2 are both manifestations of the same condition, and furthermore that this condition derives naturally from the analysis of T as containing a tense variable, as in work by En$. This unification of the EPP and V2 is motivated by a straightforward observation: they both involve the obligatory filling of the specifier of the head containing tense (T). Halldor Sigurdsson, at the Troms0 conference, independently argued on the basis of Stylistic Fronting data from Icelandic for a merger of V2 and the EPP, though he analyzed them formally in terms of the checking of an Event feature E (Sigurdsson 1997). The basic idea is that the variable in T must be bound; if it is not, then it receives an arbitrary interpretation, which they argue to be the case in VI declaratives. A variable in a head position, for Roberts and Roussou, can be bound either by a higher head or by an element in a specifier position. As an example of the former, T in a subordinate clause is bound by C. In German, a subordinate clause with an overt complementizer shows no V2 effect, and in fact even the EPP is called off, in that expletives do not appear (cf. §2 above). An example of binding by an element in a specifier is provided by German main clauses: V moves to C, because of an independent requirement, taking T along with it; but V does not have the appropriate content to bind T, in Germanic. Therefore SpecCP must be filled with something

16

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

that can bind T. This is the V2 requirement. Roberts and Roussou account for a wide range of patterns of subject realization and main and embedded V2. One important proposal they put forth is that the PF-realization of functional features is a point of parametric variation, where at least AgrS, Force, Fin, and Wh are functional features (cf. Rizzi 1997). A feature X that requires PF realization is indicated thus: X*. For example, V2 languages have Fin*, requiring something with PF-features (the verb) to appear overtly in the Fin node, whereas languages like English have Fin. In the standard Minimalist Program, the difference between overt realization of features in a particular location and their absence at PF is dependent on two factors: one, whether the relevant features are 'strong' or 'weak' (in more recent parlance, whether there is an EPP feature or not), and two, whether there happen to be any elements with the appropriate features that are not phonologically pronounced. Thus, in principle, a language in which the subject remained quite low (in the VP, say) could either be one in which all D features were weak, or one in which there were strong D features but null expletives. For Roberts and Roussou, on the other hand, this difference is expressed directly, in the form of a single parameter: whether a feature requires PF realization or not. They refine this proposal in a variety of ways. For instance, it interacts with their assumption that Merge is more economical than Move: if there is an element that can realize X* simply by being inserted, it will be, but if not, some element may be moved into X* (or its specifier). Another proposal is that it is the highest F* in a dependency that must instantiate the LF feature of that dependency. In other words, it won't do just to have any pronounceable material in a node marked *; it must have inflection or content corresponding to the LF value of the functional feature. Verbal agreement can be pronominal and can have a referential interpretation, and when it does, verb movement satisfies the subject requirement directly, as in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, without pro (as in Manzini and Savoia, this volume). They discuss cross-linguistic variation in the satisfaction of various features in the C system, for example Force, comparing cases in which there are dedicated particles for this purpose (e.g., Welsh) with cases in which movement is forced (e.g., Danish) and cases in which the Force features are weak (e.g., German). 4.7. Manzini and Savoia Rita Manzini and Leonardo Savoia, in "Parameters of Subject Inflection in Italian Dialects," draw on a very detailed analysis of a large number of Italian dialects, especially northern ones, to propose a number of important developments of the Minimalist Program, considering in particular the empirical and theoretical status of the EPP. Northern Italian (NI) dialects show verbal agreement with the subject, as in Standard Italian, but in addition have a preverbal subject clitic which also indicates the person, number, and gender of the subject. This clitic appears regardless of whether there is also an overtly realized subject DP. Manzini and Savoia continue the deconstruction of Infl begun by Pollock 1989, splitting the traditional agreement categories into separate projections. Each pro-

INTRODUCTION

17

jection is motivated by the overt realization of clitics, for example, the realization of first- and second-person clitics following negation, while third-person clitics are above negation, gives a Number head higher than the Person head. The highest head is D, the locus of definiteness, followed by N, followed by Num[ber], followed by Pferson]—all nominal categories, yielding an inversion, of sorts, of Abney 1987, where sentential-type functional heads were introduced into the noun phrase. On Manzini and Savoia's account, D is strong universally, requiring that something appear there overtly (following Roberts and Roussou, this volume, this has to do with PF realization rather than movement prior to Spell-out). The element may be a subject clitic, in NI, or a full DP as in English, or the finite verb, as in standard Italian. 0-role assignment, following Manzini and Roussou 1999 and drawing on Borer 1994, is modeled as association of an Asp[ectual] feature on the verb with D features, which enables the element bearing D features to be interpreted as an argument. This leads to some major differences between the system proposed here and Chomsky's model. First, since features, including Asp, can move from the nodes hosting them, there is no longer any need for arguments to be projected inside VP at any level; a subject may be merged in a specifier position in the I-domain and Asp may be moved up to it (taking agreement features along with it as free riders). Second, there is no need for pro, since the functional heads may be filled by items bearing D features; Asp can move to D and associate directly with the clitic there. Manzini and Savoia also discuss the distribution of overt subjects in the varieties under discussion. Examing preverbal subject, they show reason to believe that preverbal subjects in NI are topics, occupying a higher specifier position, whereas the preverbal subject in English and the full DP subject in French are in the specifier of I. Turning to postverbal subjects, they present a detailed and original account of impersonal constructions, contrasting their account with those of Chomsky 1995 and 1998. They argue, in particular, that person agreement is obligatory in constructions with a postverbal subject (as mentioned briefly in §2. above; cf. note 3), whereas number agreement varies cross-linguistically in such constructions. On their analysis, this is because agreement is effected by the movement of Asp features to different inflectional heads. Parametrically, Asp may or may not carry with it number features; they motivate this in terms of a distinction between features with referential import (including number) and predicative features (including the basic denotation of a noun). 4.8. Svenonius In "Subject Positions and the Placement of Adverbials," I examine issues of adverbial placement and the patterns of adverb-subject ordering within IP in various Germanic languages. Adverb placement in general and adverb-subject ordering in particular have been used to motivate analyses of clause structure in many influential accounts. I take a critical look at the reliability of adverbs as a diagnostic for clause structure, arguing that their distribution warrants a more semantically based treatment than is usually offered.

18

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

Specifically, I suggest that the strict relative ordering of adverbials should not be taken as an indication of separate functional heads, as in Cinque 1999. I argue that to do so requires the abandonment of the Head Movement Constraint, which is otherwise well motivated. I opt instead for a model in which multiple adjunction is permitted (contra Kayne 1994), and allow the relative ordering of adverbials to be determined by their semantics. This leads to the possibility that relative subject-adverb orders in the IP in Germanic are not the result of multiple specifier positions, as is assumed in Bobaljik and Jonas 1996, but simply the result of two alternative orders of attachment of the subject and the adverb. I show that the conditions on adverb-subject order involve a notion of topicality, grammaticized to different extents in different languages. For instance, in Norwegian, the formal topicality of an argument is determined by its discourse function. I provide an account in which topicality is linked to the EPP, in the form of a +Topic feature, and to the model-theoretic semantic interpretation of the clause. The connection of the topic feature to the model-theoretic interpretation provides the foundation for the analysis of the restrictions on adverb-subject order. The basic idea is that an adverb cannot attach to a clause that already has a topic specified, as that denotes a unit of the wrong semantic type. I link this analysis to earlier work (Svenonius 1994) on the (contextual) anchoring of propositions. I conclude that there is no evidence from adverb placement for two specifier positions in Germanic, calling into question one plank of support for Pollock's 1989 split-Infl hypothesis. This brings the chapter into a certain tension with those of Vangsnes and Manzini and Savoia, as they are built substantially around versions of that hypothesis. However, my findings do not establish the absence of multiple heads; Manzini and Savoia, in fact, even show that those heads can simultaneously be filled (as opposed to other work which demonstrates either specifiers, adjuncts, or alternate head positions). The presence of additional inflectional heads would not actually contradict the account.

5. What is the EPP? It is clear that the EPP straddles the interfaces, PF and LF—its PF nature is manifest in its requiring that a position be filled by an overt element, as is most clearly seen with expletives; and its LF nature is revealed by the connection to the topicality of the element satisfying it, or the lack of topicality in expletive constructions. Here I examine the different ways in which the authors in this volume have sought to deal with the empirical issues that subjects raise in their respective chapters. 5.1. The PF side of the EPP The EPP, as Holmberg (2000) puts it, clearly has a 'phonological half; there are many cases in which phonologically null elements are motivated for languages but where those same elements do not satisfy the EPP, for example trace in many cases.

INTRODUCTION

19

Taraldsen's article here can be taken as a case in point: on his analysis, the French complementizer qui includes an expletive, which means that cases in French which were previously analyzed as containing a subject gap don't actually have one. The usual assumption is that the EPP is satisfied by a trace bound by an overt subject or operator in an A-bar position, but cases such as these raise the possibility of reanalyzing some other cases of apparent subject traces; compare Taraldsen's 1990 analysis of Danish relative der as filling the subject position in relative clauses like manden der stjal bogen, literally 'the man there stole the.book,' with the well-known fact that the relative complementizer that in English cannot be omitted in the context of a subject gap, in, for example, the man *(that) stole the book. Conceivably, then, that fills the subject position overtly in English, and there are no real subject gaps. The reverse pattern in sentences like Who did you say left? might then be amenable to an analysis along the lines of Taraldsen's, in this volume, for Stylistic Inversion. Taraldsen also eliminates the possibility of LF satisfaction of the EPP, as he abandons covert movement, arguing that the strong/weak distinction can be recast as a question of how much material is pied-piped by feature movement (as in Taraldsen 1996). Roberts and Roussou, it will be recalled, also argue that a model which allows both a covert/overt movement distinction and a null/overt PF distinction for lexical items is inadequately restrictive. The phonological side of the EPP, on their account, is expressed by their diacritic '*,' which requires PF-interpretable (i.e., pronounceable) material and replaces the strong/weak feature distinction. One part of the EPP, in their system, is the universal requirement that some member of the T dependency bear * (i.e., be PF-interpretable). Manzini and Savoia follow the same general line of thinking, in particular in eliminating pro entirely, opting for 9-feature identification in functional heads. My account in this volume would be compatible with this; in particular, the difference between a language with overt expletives and one without them might be cast in terms of whether type-shifting were allowed without the overt insertion of a nominal element. Holmberg and Nikanne, however, do retain pro; they argue that AgrS in Finnish bears person features, and is sufficient to license first- and second-person pro, but not third. On their account, pro actually fills the EPP position in sentences like their example (7a) Olin vdsynyt, '[I] was tired.' 5.2. The LF side of the EPP Many of the chapters in this volume connect the EPP, in one way or another, to discourse notions such as topicality. Here the papers on Finno-Ugric languages are perhaps the most explicit; E. Kiss argues that part of the EPP comes from the semantic fact that declarative statements must be predications, and a predicate must be predicated of something. In Hungarian, this requirement can be satisfied by various types of quantification, or by predication over an event, or by predication over a topic. In English, licensing in SpecIP is formally associated with being the subject of predication. Manzini and

20

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

Savoia also link subjects with topicality in that they argue that preverbal subjects in various Romance languages occupy a topic position. Holmberg and Nikanne connect the EPP in Finnish to the notion of focus, which is in effect the inverse of topicality. Nonfocus elements evacuate the VP, and a high functional head F attracts a nonfocus element to its specifier. For Roberts and Roussou, Tense is a kind of pronominal element and in order to get a specific reference, it must be bound. The usual binder, in a V2 language, is a topical element, as this gives the right kind of anchoring to the context of the utterance. In a non-V2 language like English, the Case system conspires to make the subject the only possible binder for T. Similarly, Vangsnes postulates a licensing requirement on AgrS that forces it to enter into a checking-type relation. This relation may be satisfied by a variety of elements; a definite subject can satisfy all of them, or an expletive or adverbial may supply deictic features while a logical subject supplies such features as Case. Finally, in my own account I link the EPP with a topic feature, but argue that that feature has become grammaticized in languages like Danish and English to the point where it no longer corresponds to discourse topicality. 5.3. The syntactic nature of the EPP The usual treatment of the EPP is syntactic. Chomsky (1995) suggested an uninterpretable categorial D feature as the formal core of the EPP, while Rothstein (1983) has modeled it as a syntactic predication requirement; Afarli and Eide, at the Troms0 conference, argued that the predication requirement is semantic, but allowed it to be satisfied in a purely formal way by expletive subjects (Afarli and Eide 2000). Various other accounts have tried to derive the EPP from Case requirements (e.g., Lasnik 1992, Martin 1999). The most serious problem for a Case-based account is the fact that EPP effects are observed in small clause environments, as I discussed in Svenonius 1996. Some examples are shown in (16). (16) a. His efforts only got him glared at. a.' * His efforts only got glared at him. b. With *(it) as cold as it is, even warm coffee freezes quickly. c. *(It) being Easter break makes *(it) likely that they won't be home. Case requirements are satisfied in the starred examples, yet they are still bad. All of these examples are plausibly handled by semantic requirements of the type discussed here. In (16a), the matrix verb s-selects for a complement denoting a State of Affairs (cf. Svenonius 1994 for discussion and references); the participial predicate glared at him in (16a') does not denote a State of Affairs, but the small clause him glared at can; compare Heycock 1992 and E. Kiss's (this volume) predication requirements. Assuming that weather predicates like cold assign quasi-0-roles, as discussed in §2 above, leaving the subject out of the absolute construction in (16b) would violate the s-selectional restrictions of the predicate. Similarly, the gerundive expression in (16c) does not contain a true expletive. The extraposition it in the comple-

INTRODUCTION

21

ment of (16c) is required by the fact that make s-selects a State of Affairs, as with (16a). However, there are small clause examples with what are likely to be true expletives, like those in (17). As with the examples in (16), the expletives are obligatory. (17) a. b.

c.

If the band cancels, we can watch *(there) be a huge brawl. leg h0rte *(det) bli snakket om deg. Norwegian I heard it become spoken about you 'I heard people talking about you' Jag sag *(det) dansas pa skeppet. Swedish I saw it be.danced on the.ship 'I saw there be dancing on the ship'

Assuming that the expletives here are 'pure' expletives, not forced by selectional requirements of the embedded predicate, and not contributing any content for predication, such examples seem to represent the irreducible core of the EPP. Note that such examples are possible only with verbal predicates; even participles are excluded, as indicated in (18). Example (18a) shows that a passive participle is a legitimate predicate in a small clause complement to have; (18b) shows that there is excluded from this type of small clause. Examples (18c-d) show that this is not due to some incompatibility between the impersonal construction and the sselectional requirements of the matrix verb. Examples (18d-e) show that gerunds are verbal in the requisite sense. (18) a. They had horns blown upon their arrival. b. * They had there blown horns upon their arrival. c. They had there be horns blown upon their arrival. d. They had there being horns blown upon their arrival. e. There being a riot shouldn't deter you. Nor are adjectives, nouns, or prepositional phrases possible impersonal predicates, in the absence of a verb.5 (19) a. * I want there available a fireman at all times. b. * We would consider there a woman the best candidate. c. * There seems a draft in this room. Scandinavian shows the same restriction. Infinitives, including s-passive infinitive forms, are possible in Scandinavian (cf. (17b-c) above and (20b) below), though just as in English, passive participles are not (cf. (20a) below). (20) a. * leg h0rte del snakket om deg. I heard it spoken about you b. leg h0rte det snakkes om deg. / heard it be. spoken about you 'I heard people talking about you'

Norwegian

Without an expletive, an example like (20a) would violate the s-selectional requirements of the matrix verb, because the complement would not denote a State

22

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

of Affairs. But an expletive cannot be inserted anyway. Apparently, a verb is necessary (in the small clause) in order for an impersonal expletive to appear, in contrast to the situation for extraposition and weather expletives. One characteristic that separates verbs from other categories is the possibility of specifying them for tense; this can be represented by saying that all and only verbs carry the Davidsonian e, and that tense binds e; this connects impersonal expletives with E. Kiss's (this volume) predication over the event as well as with Roberts and Roussou's (this volume) connection between the EPP and binding of T.6

6. Conclusion At its core, the EPP stands out as a canonical example of a doughtily syntactic requirement, irreducible to any constraints of logic, discourse, or phonology; so much so that Chomsky (1998) has adopted the expression "EPP-feature" for strong features in general, those which trigger overt movement. Strikingly, the authors in this volume have nevertheless resisted postulating uninterpretable features to account for EPP effects, arguing in most cases that it is a semantic requirement at some level. The autonomy of the syntax generally resides in what makes the satisfaction of the requirement overt rather than covert, that is, why the PF material must be pied-piped, for Taraldsen, why D is strong for Manzini and Savoia, why the T dependency must be * for Roberts and Roussou, and so on. To a certain extent, the shifting of the burden of the EPP to such notions as event anchoring, categorical predication, and discourse topicality may be an act of sweeping the syntactic problems under a semantic carpet; certainly, those semantic notions need to be better understood before we can claim to have solved the riddle of the EPP. But the contributions in this volume (along with the other work referenced here, and much more that I have only alluded to) have clearly made progress not only in defining the problems but also in narrowing the range of plausible solutions.

Notes 1. Cf. Woodbury 1977 and also Dixon 1994:137; the thematic system may underdetermine the possibilities; Kibrik 1985 shows that Tindi also allows Theme controllees. 2. See Christensen and Taraldsen 1989 for the Scandinavian facts, McCloskey 1991 on agreement with it vs. there in English, Cardinaletti 1997 on the distinction in general, and Manzini and Savoia (this volume) for comment. 3. Cf. Sigurasson 1990-1991, 1992, Taraldsen 1994 for similar observations about Icelandic, and Holmberg and Nikanne, this volume, on Finnish. 4. Though blood was shed in the fourth century over whether the essences of the Father and the Son were homoousious (i.e., of the same substance) or homoiousious (i.e., of similar substance), today's academic debates rarely lead to homicide. 5. In fact, the requirement in modern spoken English is even stronger: many, if not most, speakers require be in order for impersonal there to occur, rejecting sentences like There exist three counterexamples or There emerged a gopher from its hole as irredeemably literary. Even so, there is a contrast between the literary I saw there emerge a gopher and the impossible examples in (19); furthermore, ex-

INTRODUCTION

23

amples of the There emerged a gopher are ordinary in the other Germanic languages, while those of the type in (19) are impossible. 6. See Svenonius 1994: ch. 1 on the formal dependency of verbal small clauses as opposed to nonverbal ones. If nonverbal stage-level predicates do not bear e, then e cannot be used for adverbial modification in examples like / want him off my boat immediately. Furthermore, if all verbs carry e, then it cannot be used to distinguish stage-level from individual-level predicates. These observations suggest that Kratzer's 1995 locative / for stage-level predicates should be distinguished from the verbal e.

References Abney, Steven. 1987. The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Afarli, Tor A., & Kristin M. Eide. 2000. Subject requirement and predication. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 23, 27-48. Alexiadou, Artemis, & Elena Anagnostopoulou. 1998. Parametrizing AGR: Word order, Vmovement and EPP-checking. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 16, 491-539. Anderson, Stephen R. 1976. On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and Topic, 1-23. Academic Press, New York. Benedicto, Elena E. 1994. Agr, phi-features, and V-movement: Identifying pro. In Elena E. Benedicto & Jeffrey T. Runner (eds.), Functional Projections, 1-18. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Bennis, Hans. 1986. Gaps and Dummies. Foris, Dordrecht. Bobaljik, Jonathan David, & Dianne Jonas. 1996. Subject positions and the roles of TP. Linguistic Inquiry 27, 195-236. Bolinger, Dwight. 1973. Ambient it is meaningful too. Journal of Linguistics 9, 261-270. Borer, Hagit. 1994. The projection of arguments. In Elena E. Benedicto & Jeffrey T. Runner (eds.), Functional Projections, 19^-7. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Borer, Hagit. 1997. Licensing events: The role of locatives. Paper presented at the Workshop on Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP, Troms0. Bresnan, Joan. 1972. Theory of Complementation in English Syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.

Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Reidel, Dordrecht. Cardinaletti, Anna. 1997. Agreement and control in expletive constructions. Linguistic Inquiry 28, 521-533. Carlson, Gregory. 1977. Reference to Kinds in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. Mouton, The Hague. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. In Roderick A. Jacobs & Peter S. Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar, 184-221. Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht. Chomsky, Noam. 1982. Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origins, and Use. Praeger, New York. Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Chomsky, Noam. 1998. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 15, 1-56. [Reprinted 2000 in Roger Martin, David Michaels, & Juan

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SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

Uriagereka (eds.), Step by Step: Minimalist Essays in Honor of Howard Lasnik, 89-155. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.] Christensen, Kirsti Koch. 1991. AGR, adjunction, and the structure of Scandinavian existential sentences. Lingua 84, 137-158. Christensen, Kirsti Koch, & Knut Tarald Taraldsen. 1989. Expletive chain formation and past participle agreement in Scandinavian dialects. In Paola Beninca (ed.), Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar, 53-83. Foris, Dordrecht. Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford University Press, New York. Dixon, R. M. W. 1972. The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Falk, Cecilia. 1993. Non-referential Subjects in the History of Swedish. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Lund. Gilligan, Gary. 1987. A Cross-Linguistic Approach to the Pro-drop Parameter. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California. Haider, Hubert. 1987. Theta-tracking systems—Evidence from German. In Pieter Muysken & L£szlo Maracz (eds.), Configurationality, 185-206. Foris, Dordrecht. Hale, Kenneth. 1973. Person marking in Walbiri. In Stephen R. Anderson & Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 308-344. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, New York. Harris, Zellig. 1946. From morpheme to utterance. Language 22, 161-183. Heycock, Caroline. 1992. Layers of Predication: The Non-lexical Syntax of Clauses. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Hoekstra, Teun. 1983. The distribution of sentential complements. In Hans Bennis & W. U. S. van Lessen Kloeke (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 1983, 93-103. Foris, Dordrecht. Hoekstra, Teun, and Rene Mulder. 1990. Unergatives as copular verbs. Linguistic Review 7, 1-79. Holmberg, Anders. 2000. Scandinavian Stylistic Fronting: How any category can become an expletive. Linguistic Inquiry 31, 445—483. Holmberg, Anders, Urpo Nikanne, Irmeli Oraviita, Hannu Reime, & Trond Trosterud. 1993. The structure of INFL and the finite clause in Finnish. In Anders Holmberg & Urpo Nikanne (eds.), Case and Other Functional Categories in Finnish Syntax, 177-206. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. Holmberg, Anders, & Christer Platzack. 1995. The Role of Inflection in Scandinavian Syntax. Oxford University Press, New York. Hoop, Helen de. 1996. Case Configuration and Noun Phrase Interpretation. Garland, New York. Huang, C. T. James. 1984. On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 15, 531-574. Huang, C. T. James. 1987. Remarks on empty categories in Chinese. Linguistic Inquiry 18, 321-337. Jaeggli, Osvaldo, & Kenneth J. Safir. 1989. The null subject parameter and parametric theory. In Osvaldo Jaeggli and Kenneth J. Safir (eds.), The Null Subject Parameter, 1-44. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The Philosophy of Grammar. [Reprinted 1992 University of Chicago Press, Chicago.]

INTRODUCTION

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Jespersen, Otto. 1927. A Modern English Grammar: On Historical Principles. Vol. 3. George Allen & Unwin, London. Jespersen, Otto. 1937. Analytic Syntax. [Reprinted 1984 University of Chicago Press, Chicago.] Jespersen, Otto. 1949. A Modern English Grammar: On Historical Principles. Vol. 7. George Allen & Unwin, London. Kayne, Richard S. 1975. French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Kayne, Richard S., & Jean-Yves Pollock. 1978. Stylistic Inversion, successive cyclicity, and Move NP in French. Linguistic Inquiry 9, 595-621. Kibrik, A. E. 1985. Toward a typology of ergativity. In Johanna Nichols & Anthony C. Woodbury (eds.), Grammar Inside and Outside the Clause: Some Approaches to Theory from the Field, 268-323. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kiss, Katalin E. 1987. Configurationality in Hungarian. Reidel, Dordrecht. Kiss, Katalin E. (ed.). 1995a. Discourse Configurational Languages. Oxford University Press, New York. Kiss, Katalin E. 1995b. Discourse configurational languages: Introduction. In E. Kiss 1995a, 3-27. Koster, Jan. 1978. Why subject sentences don't exist. In Samuel Jay Keyser (ed.), Recent Transformational Studies in European Languages, 53-64. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Kratzer, Angelika. 1995. Stage-level and individual-level predicates. In Gregory N. Carlson & Francis Jeffry Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book, 125-175. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Lasnik, Howard. 1992. Case and expletives: Notes toward a parametric account. Linguistic Inquiry 23, 381-405. Li, Charles N., & Sandra A. Thompson. 1976. Subject and topic: Anew typology of language. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and Topic, 457-489. Academic Press, New York. Manning, Christopher D. 1996. Ergativity: Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations. CSLI, Stanford, Calif. Manzini, M. Rita, & Anna Roussou. 1999. A Minimalist theory of A-movement and control. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 11, 403-440. Martin, Roger. 1999. Case, the Extended Projection Principle, and Minimalism. In Samuel David Epstein & Norbert Hornstein (eds.), Working Minimalism, 1-25. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Matisoff, James A. 1973. The Grammar ofLahu. University of California Press, Berkeley. McCloskey, James. 1991. There, it, and agreement. Linguistic Inquiry 22, 563-567. McCloskey, James. 1996. Subjects and subject positions in Irish. In Robert D. Borsley & Ian Roberts (eds.), The Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective, 241-283. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. McCloskey, James. 1997. Subjecthood and subject positions. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar: Handbook in Generative Syntax, 197-235. Kluwer, Dordrecht. McCloskey, James, & Kenneth Hale. 1984. On the syntax of person-number inflection in Modern Irish. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 1, 487-534. McNally, Louise. 1992. An Interpretation for the English Existential Construction. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Moro, Andrea. 1997. The Raising of Predicates: Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Nakamura, Masanori. 1996. Economy of Chain Formation. Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University. Nickel, Klaus Peter. 1990. Samisk grammatikk. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo. Park, Byzing-Soo. 1973. Multiple subject constructions in Korean. Linguistics 100, 63-76. Platzack, Christer. 1985. The Scandinavian languages and the null subject parameter. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 20. Platzack, Christer. 2000. Multiple interfaces. In Urpo Nikanne & Emile van der Zee (eds.) Cognitive Interfaces: Constraints on Linking Cognitive Information, 21-53. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, Universal Grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365-424. Postal, Paul M., & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 1988. Expletive noun phrases in subcategorized positions. Linguistic Inquiry 19, 635-670. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Foris, Dordrecht. Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized Minimality. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar: Handbook in Generative Syntax, 281-337. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Rosenbaum, Peter S. 1968. The Grammar of English Predicate Complement Constructions. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Rothstein, Susan. 1983. The Syntactic Forms of Predication. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Safir, Kenneth J. 1982. Syntactic Chains and the Definiteness Effect. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Safir, Kenneth J. 1985. Syntactic Chains. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Safir, Kenneth J. 1987. What explains the Definiteness Effect? In Eric J. Reuland & Alice G. B. ter Meulen (eds.), The Representation of (In)definiteness, 71-97. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Sigurdsson, Halld6r Armann. 1990-1991. Beygingarsamraemi. Islenskt mdl og almenn mdlfrcedi 12-13, 31-77. Sigurdsson, Halldor Armann. 1992. Um beygingarsamraemi og malkunnattu. Islenskt mdl og almenn mdlfrcedi 14, 63-87. Sigurdsson, Halldor Armann. 1997. Stylistic Fronting. Paper presented at Workshop on Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP, Troms0. Simpson, Jane. 1983. Resultatives. In Beth Levin, Malka Rappaport, & Annie Zaenen (eds.), Papers in Lexical-Functional Grammar, 143-157. Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington. Stowell, Tim. 1981. Origins of Phrase Structure. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Stowell, Tim. 1983. Subjects across categories. Linguistic Review 2, 285-312. Svenonius, Peter. 1994. Dependent Nexus: Subordinate Predication Structures in English and the Scandinavian Languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. Svenonius, Peter. 1996. Predication and functional heads. In Jose Camacho, Lina Choueiri, & Maki Watanabe (eds.), The Proceedings of the Fourteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 493-507. CSLI, Stanford, Calif. Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1980. On the Nominative Island Condition, Vacuous Application and the Thai-Trace Filter. Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington.

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Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1990. Second thoughts on der. In Hans-Georg Obenauer and Anne Zribi-Hertz (eds.), Structure de la phrase et theorie du liage, 217-249. Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, Paris. Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1994. Reflexives, pronouns, and subject/verb agreement in Icelandic and Faroese. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 54, 43-58. Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1996. How to keep linguists happy: Review of The Minimalist Program by Noam Chomsky. GLOTInternational 2.3, 12-15. Thrainsson, Hoskuldur. 1979. On Complementation in Icelandic. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University. [Published 1979, Garland, New York.] Vikner, Sten. 1995. Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. Oxford University Press, New York. Woodbury, Anthony C. 1977. Greenlandic Eskimo, ergativity, and Relational Grammar. In Peter Cole & Jerrold M. Sadock (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 8: Grammatical Relations, 307-336. Academic Press, New York. Zaenen, Annie, Joan Maling, & Hoskuldur Thrainsson. 1985. Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 3, 441-483.

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2 The QuelQui Alternation and the Distribution of Expletives Knut Tarald Taraldsen

1. Introduction According to Rizzi (1990), qui is an agreeing form of C replacing que in (2) to provide a 'formal licenser' for a trace in SpecIP: (1)

Quel livre crois-tu que/*qui les filles vont acheter? which book think-you that the girls will buy

(2)

Quelles filles crois-tu *que/qui vont acheter ce livre-la? which girls think-you that will buy that book-there

There are various conceptual and empirical reasons to be dissatisfied with the analysis of qui as an agreeing C as well as with Rizzi's theory of formal licensing of traces. For example, que, being invariant and incompatible with a following subject, lacks the characteristic morphosyntactic properties of agreeing C in Germanic. And there is an alternative account of (l)-(2), essentially for free, that explains all properties of qui and is consistent with theories of trace-licensing where agreeing C plays no role. This analysis, which is suggested by certain observations about Vallader, a Romance language closely related to French, has it that qui is actually que followed by an expletive i. Thus, we will end up explaining the que/qui alternation by using a Minimalist version of Kayne and Pollock 1978 to answer the seemingly independent question why the null expletive of (3) must be replaced by its overt counterpart, in French, when the extracted w/i-phrase is the subject: (3)

Ou crois-tu que vont se cacher les chats? where think-you that will themselves hide the cats

29

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SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

2. Why qui is not an agreeing C Rizzi's analysis of qui, essentially rephrasing Pesetsky 1982, leads to some expectations that are not fulfilled. It is striking, for instance, that qui does not actually show any morphophonemic reflexes of the person/number features it would acquire through agreement. Of course, this could be accidental. After all, within the West Germanic group of languages, where a particularly good case can be made for an agreeing C, there is a great deal of dialect variation with respect to the morphophonemic realization, ranging from a full paradigm of six distinct forms (West Flemish) to a single invariant form (e.g., Standard Dutch). Yet, it remains striking that not a single dialect of French (or any other Romance language) has any morphophonemic reflex of agreement in its complementizer system. Qui also has a syntactic property which is not shared by agreeing complementizers in West Germanic. It cannot occur unless the subject of the clause has been wh-moved. Rizzi accounts for the contrast (1) versus (2) in terms of Relativized Minimality. Taking SpecCP as an A-position whenever C holds agreement features, he points out that (1), with qui instead of que, would be well-formed only if the object could move to an A-position across an intervening closer A-position (the subject). But that raises the question why West Germanic counterparts of (1) are perfectly fine with agreement in C,1 and the assumption about Spec of agreeing C being an A-position would seem to stand in the way of an improper movement account of (4): (4) * Les filles semblent qui vont acheter ce livre-la. the girls seem that will buy that book-there On the conceptual side, there is the question why a trace in SpecIP (AgrSP) should be allowed just in case C agrees with it (via its agreement with SpecCP). In Rizzi's analysis, agreeing C shares with the lexical heads the property of being formal licensers. But why should this be? To the extent that a subject trace governed by agreeing C is formally licensed just because the two are coindexed (assuming agreement to be represented by coindexing), we bring back a conceptual problem that Rizzi's formulation of the ECP was designed to eliminate, the one concerning the disjunction between lexical government and antecedent government in the classical statement of the ECP. Rizzi's analysis eliminates the disjunction from the statement of his Identification Requirement, but it is now seen to return in disguise in the formulation of Formal Licensing, as a direct consequence of Rizzi's analysis of qui.

3. The chalchi alternation In Vallader, a Rhaeto-Romance variety spoken in the Engadine, we find a similar alternation between cha (= que) and chi (= qui) in sentences like (5) and (6): (5)

Qual cudesch crajast cha/*chi las mattas cumpraran? which book think.you that the girls will.buy

(6)

Qualas mattas crajast chi/*cha cumpraran quel cudesch? which girls think.you that will.buy that book

Vallader

THE QUE/QUI ALTERNATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXPLETIVES

31

In the absence of further information, one might well attempt to apply Rizzi's analysis here, too. But Vallader also has chi introducing sentences from which nothing has been extracted, provided the subject is not preverbal, as well as a 'free' expletive subject i, strongly suggesting that the chi of (7) is simply elided cha followed by expletive i:2 (7) . . . la spranza chi/*cha turnaran quels temps docts Vallader the hope that \vill.return those times learned (8)

I turnaran quei temps docts it will, return those times learned

This suggestion is reinforced by the observation that i and chi share the idiosyncratic morphophonemic property of adding a -d before vowels:3 (9)

. . .il vast territori. . . pro'l qual id appartaignava eir Iowa the vast territory to which it belonged also Iowa (10) El disch chid es turna Peider he says that.it is returned Peter

Vallader

This idiosyncracy is also shared by the chi of (6): (11) Qualas mattas crajast chid ban cumpra quel cudesch? which girls think.you that.it have bought that book

Vallader

So Vallader probably w/i-moves subjects from a position lower than SpecIP, just like Italian.4 According to Rizzi 1982, an Italian sentence like (12) would have an analysis like the one in (13), with a covert expletive (pro) in SpecIP:5 (12) Quali ragazze credi che compreranno quel libro? Italian which girls think.you that will.buy that book (13) quali ragazze . . . [CP che dp pro compreranno+I [VP tpro tv quel libro. . . The corresponding Vallader example in (6) should be analyzed the same way, except that Vallader, not a null-subject language, requires an overt expletive in SpecIP: (14) qualas mattas . . . [CP cha [jp i cumpraran+I [VP t\ ?v Quel cudesch]]] As in Italian, the subject trace causes no that-trace problem because it is not in SpecIP.

4. French qui = qu(e) i Rethinking the French quelqui alternation along similar lines, we would take qui as qu(e) i, with expletive i in SpecIP:6 (15) quelles filles . . . [CP que [jP i vont+I [VP t\ fy acheter . . . The expletive / is different from the usual French expletive il in three respects: It never has a final -1 (in any register), it does not control subject/verb agreement (always 3so with il), and it does not require an indefinite associate (cf. *Quelles filles est-ce qu'il est arrive? vs. Qu'est-ce qu'il est arrive?}. An immediate advantage of this analysis is that the ungrammatically of qui in (1) becomes straightforward, provided a preverbal subject must be in SpecIP rather

32

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

than in the low position held by the w/i-trace in (15), leaving no room for the expletive.7 This approach is also in a sense immanent in Kayne and Pollock's 1978 analysis of (3) as having a null expletive which fails to control verbal agreement or induce an indefiniteness requirement on its associate: (3)

Ou crois-tu que vont se cacher les chats? where think.you that will themselves hide the cats

(16) ou . . . [CP que [\ppro vont+I [VP les chats tv se cacher . . . The structure in (16) is licensed by w/i-movement out of the embedded clause. In (3), the relevant w/z-phrase is ou 'where,' an adverbial complement. If the w/i-phrase is the subject of the embedded clause, it should still be possible to have (the trace of) the subject in the low subject position, to the extent that this depends only on having a w/i-phrase passing through the embedded SpecCP. Yet, the structure in (17) must be ill-formed, since otherwise (2) (repeated below) would be expected to be possible with que: (2)

Quelles filles crois-tu *que/qui vont acheter ce livre-la? which girls think.you that will buy that book-there

(17) quelles filles . . . [CP que [\ppro vont+I [VP tpro tv acheter ce livre-la In particular, there should be no *that-trace effect. Kayne (1980) suggests that the null expletive fails to be licensed in structures like (17). But then, the natural expectation should be that an overt expletive with the same properties as the covert expletive of (16) would show up in connection with subject extraction in French, especially since Vallader shows that subject extraction from a 'low' position does not depend on the expletive being null. On the analysis of qui as qu(e) i, this expectation is fulfilled, since i is an overt expletive which, like the pro of (16), but unlike il, does not control verbal agreement or require an indefinite associate.8

5. Another manifestation of French expletive i Unlike Vallader, Standard French does not seem to have an expletive in isolation from que: (18) *Elle dit qui sont arrivees ses copines. she says that.i are arrived her girlfriends (19) * I sont arrivees ses copines. i are arrived her girlfriends But in 'complex subject inversion' environments, colloquial styles of French allow an invariant (f)i: (20) Pourquoi tu dois-ti partir? why you must-ti leave Putting aside the status of the initial t-,9 one can profitably look at this i as another manifestation of the expletive / following que in (2). In particular, it is invariably /,

THE QUE/QUI ALTERNATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXPLETIVES

33

and it does not control verbal agreement or induce an indefiniteness requirement on its associate. The classical analysis of complex inversion (Kayne 1983, Rizzi and Roberts 1989) would parse the Standard French sentence (21) as (22): (21) Pourquoi tes copines doivent-elles partir? why your girlfriends must-they leave (22) [CP pourquoi [CP tes copines [c doivent] [IP elles . . . The standard analysis of complex inversion applies to the '^'-construction' as well, once the morphological differences between i and expletive il are taken into consideration, so that the (t)i of (20) is licensed in the following context with C filled by the finite V: (23) . . . S T J B J C [ I P i I . . . f S U B J In particular, the ^-construction, just like the standard construction, is confined to main clauses, a property generally attributed to V-to-C movement.10 Unlike the standard construction, however, the ^'-construction allows the preverbal subject to be a pronoun, and (f)i, unlike standard subject clitics, does not appear unless there is an additional subject: (24) * Pourquoi tu dois-il /tu partir? why you must-he/you leave (25) *Pourquoi elle doit-il /elle partir? why she must-he/she leave (20) Pourquoi tu dois-ti partir? why you must-Ti leave (26) Pourquoi elle doit-(t)i partir? why she must-Ti leave (27) Dans quel pays habite-t-il? in which country lives-T-he (28) *Dans quel pays habite-ti? in which country lives-Ti Both contrasts follow from (t)i having a more impoverished morphology than the other subject clitics. In particular, it lacks gender and number specifications. If arguments must be endowed with such features, (28) is a straightforward violation of the 0-criterion.11 The ill-formedness of (24)-(25) has been taken to reflect a general prohibition against spelling out a morphological feature in more than one position in a chain (Kayne 1983). In (24)-(25) gender and number features are spelled out both by the preverbal subject pronoun and by the postverbal subject clitic, hence twice within the same chain, since the subject pronoun and the subject clitic are associated with the same 0-role.12 In (20)-(26), on the other hand, the gender and number of the chain are specified only by the preverbal subject pronoun, since (f)i lacks these features.

34

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

6. The distribution of French expletive i According to Rizzi 1990, the w/i-moved subject in (2) moves through the embedded SpecCP: (15) quelles filles . . . [CP *SUBJ que [IP i vont+I [VP fSUBJ tv acheter . . . If so, we have that the i in (2) occurs in the same environment (16) which licenses the (t)i of colloquial complex inversion, modulo C = que versus C = V (but see note 8). Why should this be the only context licensing French expletive i! And why should French differ from Vallader? In section 5, we found reasons to maintain that French expletive / does not have (specified) gender and number features. In particular, the contrasts between i and other subject clitics exhibited by (24)-(28) follow from that hypothesis. We will now argue that the limited distribution of French expletive i follows in toto from its impoverished morphology. If i has no number feature, and finite I has an uninterpretable number feature that must be checked before Spell-out, then sentences like (18)-(19) (repeated below) have no convergent derivation: (18) *Elle dit qui sont arrivees ses copines she says that are arrived her girlfriends (19) * I sont arrivees ses copines I are arrived her girlfriends In structures subsumed under (23), however, the number feature may raise from I to C, where it is checked pre-Spell-out by the raised subject DP, as is implicit in standard accounts of complex inversion.13 This raises the question why the number feature of I couldn't be checked by raising the number feature of the subject DP before Spell-out. Chomsky (1995) stipulates that pure feature movement is possible only after Spell-out, but the analysis just proposed for structures conforming to (23) would be incompatible with that. Rather, the analysis presupposes that the dichotomy 'weak' versus 'strong' is reinterpreted according to a suggestion in Taraldsen (1996), who proposes to identify covert movement with pre-Spell-out pure feature movement, eliminating LF-movement: A strong feature is one that cannot raise without pied-piping its host category. From this point of view, our claim really is that D has a strong number feature in this new sense in French, but not in Vallader, while I in both languages has an uninterpretable number feature that can raise without pied-piping its host.14 In order to account for the obligatory presence of / in (23), we also have to assume that I has an EPP feature which does not raise to C. (29) displays the movements and checking relations relevant to licensing structures of the form (23) in French: (29) Checking:

number EPP . . . SUBJ C [IP i I . . . tS U B J • • • raising of I's number feature

In this perspective, the limited distribution of French expletive i follows from its being a 'pure expletive,' in Chomsky's (1995: ch. 4) sense, in a language where a

THE QUE/QUI ALTERNATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXPLETIVES

35

number feature cannot raise from D without pied-piping the DP. This might make it tempting to account for the contrast between French and Vallader i by identifying French i with y 'there' versus Vallader i(d) = 'it,' an expletive endowed with a number feature. This temptation should probably be resisted, however. If Vallader i(d) had a number feature like it, it would presumably be singular. But the number feature of I in Vallader sentences with expletive i(d) is not always singular, but corresponds to the number of the associate of the expletive, as in the case of 'pure expletives,' as we already saw in (7)-(8) (repeated below), where the verb occurs in a plural form, agreeing with the postverbal subject: (7)

. . . la spranza chi/*cha turnaran quels temps docts the hope that will, return.PL those times learned

(8)

I turnaran quei temps docts it will, return. PL those times learned

Vallader

Thus, Vallader i(d) does not have a specified number feature either. To account for the contrast between French and Vallader, we therefore need the assumption that in Vallader, the number feature of a postverbal subject DP can raise to I without pied-piping the DP.15 In Vallader, there is no counterpart to French v, that is, no other numberless form to which i(d) might be assimilated. Rather, we take it that i(d) descends from Latin id 'it,' but has lost its gender/number features in the transition from the Latin three-gender system to the Romance two-gender system. More specifically, we suggest that the Latin neuter pronoun lost its gender feature altogether by refusing to become masculine, and that the number feature is dependent upon gender, and therefore was lost, too. If this is correct, there is now no reason not to consider the French expletive a result of the same development.

7. French Stylistic Inversion The claim that French does not allow a number feature to raise from postverbal subject DP without pied-piping the DP appears to be contradicted by the existence of sentences with Stylistic Inversion, such as (3): (3)

Oii crois-tu que vont se cacher les chats? where think.you that will themselves hide the cats

According to the classical analysis of Stylistic Inversion (Kayne and Pollock 1978), (3) would have a structure like (16) (repeated below), where pro would be a 'true expletive,' like i, and the number feature of I would be checked by covert raising of the associate (les chats) or its number feature: (16) ou . . . [CP que [IP pro vont+I [Vp les chats ?v se cacher . . . The classical analysis, however, encounters certain difficulties that lead us to think that it should be discarded for independent reasons. Most notably, it fails to explain why a null expletive should be possible in structures where a w/i-phrase has been raised to the immediately higher SpecCP (possibly as a step in successive cyclic w/i-movement), but not elsewhere.16 Kayne (1980) suggests that the raised

36

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

w/z-phrase triggers covert movement of the expletive's associate, which in turn licenses pro. In French, according to this analysis, the null expletive would otherwise be illicit, since French is not a null-subject language. But how can post-Spellout movement be relevant to whether an expletive is pronounced or not, a PF-property? (On the approach taken in section 5, where covert movement is replaced by pre-Spell-out feature movement, this problem does not necessarily arise, as pointed out by P. Svenonius (p.c.), but there would instead be another problem: Why should formal features of the postverbal DP be able to rise to I without pied-piping the DP only in Stylistic Inversion contexts?) Besides, if Kayne 1994 is correct, we need to be able to account for the fact that the whole VP (excluding a V-movement account) precedes the postverbal subject in sentences like (3) without appealing to rightward movement of the subject. We will assume that Stylistic Inversion is in fact as required by Kayne's 1994 theory: The subject moves out of the VP to a relatively low Spec-position, and the VP subsequently crosses over it to a higher Spec-position.17 In particular, one may assume that VP-raising can be scrambling to a position lower than I: (30) . . . Spec I . . . [VP t . . . ] . . . SUBJ . . . rvp . . . In that case, SpecIP must be filled by an expletive which can be covert in a nullsubject language like Italian, but not in French or Vallader. Whereas Vallader can always use i(d), since the uninterpretable number feature of I can be checked by pure feature movement from the postverbal subject in Vallader, French can resort to i only if the subject raises to SpecCP before Spell-out. Thus, (30) represents a legitimate stage in the derivation of the structures subsumed under (23), and only those. Sentences like (3) must be analyzed as in (31), with the VP raised to SpecIP: (31) . . . [ CP que [IP [VP tSUBI vont se cacher] I . . . les chats . . . fvp . . . In (31), the number feature of I is checked by the number feature of the subject trace in SpecVP: On Kayne's 1994 theory, the Spec of the Spec of XP is in the checking domain of X.18 Since the trace is a copy of the subject, the appearance of agreement with the low subject is created. Alternatively, SpecVP licenses a number feature on the head of VP, and this number feature projects to VP and licenses the number feature of I in (31). Again, I will appear to agree with the low subject. When the VP is scrambled, as in (30), the chain linking the low subject to its trace in SpecVP is recoverable via reconstruction, since scrambling generally allows for reconstruction. Movement to SpecIP, an A-position, should not reconstruct, however.19 Therefore, structures like (31) end up violating the ©-criterion unless the low subject eventually raises to a position c-commanding the trace inside the VP in SpecIP, if we adopt the traditional assumption that the head of a chain must c-command all other members of the chain at LF. Like Kayne 1980, we may assume that the subject raises (covertly) just in case a w/i-phrase has been raised to the immediately higher SpecCP.20 But unlike Kayne 1994, we succeed in accounting for the restrictions on Stylistic Inversion without having LF-movement sanction a PF-property.

THE QUE/QUI ALTERNATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXPLETIVES

37

Even though we have so far analyzed French Stylistic Inversion as VPmovement to SpecIP, it is clear that what raises must be an extended projection of the V including a number of functional heads above the bare VP. In particular, the constituent raised to SpecIP must contain the position(s) that clitic pronouns move to, and therefore, also all adverbial positions occurring in between the clitic position and the VP:21 (32) Pourquoi se sont caches les chats? why themselves are hidden the cats (33) *Pourquoi sont caches les chats se? why are hidden the cats themselves Hence, a French finite clause must in general be as in (34), where either a DP or the complement of F raises overtly to SpecIP (unless an expletive is inserted): (34) . . . [IP Spec I [pp Spec F [xp . . . Cl. . . VP Taking the second option after the subject DP has moved to SpecFP gives rise to Stylistic Inversion.22 In (34), I and a functional head F' in the complement of F must both bear agreement features, F1 licensing the corresponding features of the V. The existence of F' follows from the standard Minimalist assumption (modulo Chomsky 1995: ch. 4) that the agreement features of the V must be checked against the features of a functional head to which V adjoins, plus the fact that if the XP containing the V raises to SpecIP, V cannot adjoin to I (or F). Taking F1 to be X, the head of the complement of F, we may exploit this property to find a way around an outstanding problem for the analysis outlined above: (35) Quand crois-tu que sera precede a un reexamen de la when thinLyou that will.be proceeded to a reexamination of the question? case The distribution of impersonal sentences without expletive il, like the embedded clause in (35), is subject to the same limitations as are sentences with Stylistic Inversion (cf. Kayne and Pollock 1978). Our analysis of Stylistic Inversion should therefore extend to (35), but (35) seems to lack both a (visible) subject DP that could raise to SpecFP, and a trace of that subject in SpecXP that would license the number feature of I after raising of XP to SpecIP. We might now say that the number feature of I in Stylistic Inversion contexts is not licensed by the SpecXP, but rather by the number feature of X projected onto XP (the second of the two possibilities mentioned above), and allow X, but still not I, to be singular by default. Assuming that F attracts PP (a un reexamen de la question in the case of (35)) as well as DP, to SpecFP, the similarity with the Stylistic Inversion paradigm will be accounted for. Thus, we end up with an analysis according to which a finite clause contains two functional heads, I and F, associated with EPP features, whose exact nature remains to be investigated further. Similarly, two distinct functional heads, I and X, carry number features. Unlike X, however, I does not allow default licensing of its num-

38

SUBJECTS, EXPLETIVES, AND THE EPP

her feature. Like all uninterpretable features, the number feature of I must therefore be checked before Spell-out, that is, SpecIP must be filled by a YP bearing a number feature, DP or XP, or the number feature of I raises to C and is checked by an appropriate phrase in SpecCP, as indicated in (29). Given the ungrammaticality of Stylistic Inversion with transitive verbs in French, a property illustrated by (36) below, it is perhaps possible to identify the functional head X with AgrO: (36)* Ou crois-tu que vont cacher leurs jouets les chats? where think-you that will hide their toys the cats If AgrO, like I, can Case-license a nominative DP checking its number feature, as suggested by Icelandic sentences with oblique subjects, like (37), the ungrammaticality of (36) could be attributed to the postverbal subject failing to have its Case licensed. It is neither in SpecIP nor in SpecAgrOP: (37) Okkur lika hestarnir. we. DATIVE like. 3PL horses, the

Icelandic

8. The *que-trace effect In section 4, we saw that Kayne and Pollock's (1978) analysis of Stylistic Inversion raises the question why the position of the postverbal subject of a sentence like (3) cannot be filled by a w/i-trace so that (38) would be analyzable as (39), which does not violate the ECP/*that-trace filter: (3)

Ou crois-tu que vont se cacher les chats? where think.you that will themselves hide the cats

(38) *Quels chats crois-tu que vont se cacher? which cats think.you that will themselves hide (39) quels chats . . . [CP que [\ppro vont+I [VP t V se cacher . . . The analysis of Stylistic Inversion in section 7 raises a similar question. Why cannot (38) receive the analysis in (40)? (40) quels chats...[cp que [ip {vp tsSUBj vont se cacher] I ...t...tvp... Again, we assume that the ECP/*that-trace filter would not be violated. If (40) is to come out well-formed at LF, the subject trace inside the raised VP must have an antecedent in a c-commanding A-position. Since the w/z-phrase itself is not likely to be in an A-position or to have left behind traces in A-positions c-commanding the embedded IP, the trace in the low subject position must move covertly to a IP-external A-position, a movement triggered by the presence of (the trace of) a w/i-phrase in SpecCP. If it cannot, (40) has no well-formed LF-representation. For the required movement to take place in (40), (a trace of) the w/z-phrase must attract the low subject the same way it does in the grammatical instances of Stylistic Inversion discussed above. But if attraction ought to culminate in 'quantifier absorption,' as suggested by Kayne (1980), one would not expect to see its ef-

THE QUE/QUI ALTERNATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXPLETIVES

39

fects in (40), where the low subject is not interpretable as a separate quantifier to be absorbed, but rather as the variable to be bound by the w/i-quantifier. More generally, whatever turns out to be the correct answer to the independent question why (40) cannot converge will combine with the ECP/*that-trace filter to explain the *