The goal of this paper is twofold: empirically, it is shown that obligatory control (OC) into islands is not restricted to control into certain adjuncts, but can also involve non-adjoined islands. This poses a serious problem for the movement theory of control (MTC), whose analysis of OC into adjuncts crucially relies on the fact that adjunction is involved.
Second, the paper seeks to explore to what extent control theory is compatible with phase theory based on a strict version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). In order to reconcile these locality considerations with the observed control patterns in the context of islands, the paper assumes a moderately local relationship between controller and controllee. The basic idea of the proposed theory is that the controllee starts out as an empty argument which needs to be referentially identified under Agree. To this end, it moves from phase edge to phase edge (in accordance with the PIC) until it can be licensed by the controller.
In contrast to the MTC, the target position of controllee movement is not the controller position itself; thus, control into islands (including non-adjoined islands) can be derived more easily, since the control relation can already be established when the controller is at the edge of the highest phase inside the island and the controller is merged in the next higher phase. Hence, the theory is compatible with phase theory and can in particular account for the observed control patterns involving adjoined and non-adjoined islands.
Since the development of the movement theory of control (MTC), which argues that the controllee in obligatory control structures is but a residue of A-movement (see
In fact, one major conceptual goal of this paper is thus part of a bigger enterprise, namely to explore the consequences of taking the phase model seriously. The phase model adopts a local-derivational view of syntax in which the accessible domain is restricted by the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC; see
In a non-movement theory of control, controller and controllee typically occur in different clauses throughout the derivation, and their relationship is therefore non-local. This means that it is not compatible with the PIC without further assumptions.
This paper will therefore explore a hybrid theory of control (HTC) which will combine aspects of both the MTC and non-movement approaches to control. It will assume that there is movement (to model control in terms of a local relationship and thereby make it compatible with phase theory), but not all the way up to the controller’s position (to keep up the idea of strict islandhood). The basic idea is that the controllee is merged as an empty, referentially defective argument (EA) which probes upwards to find a suitable goal (=the controller) that licenses EA under Agree. As the search domain of EA is restricted by the PIC, EA has to move from phase edge to phase edge until it can be licensed; however, in contrast to the predictions of the MTC, it can stop moving when it is at the edge of the phase preceding the phase in which the controller enters the derivation. Hence, licensing of control and the availability of movement are dissociated – this means that even if EA is inside an island, it can be licensed by a controller as long as EA is at the edge of the island and thus still accessible when the controller enters the derivation.
Although the HTC contrasts with both the MTC and non-movement theories of control, the focus of this paper is on comparison with the MTC. Apart from the fact that PRO-based theories comprise a less homogeneous class of analyses, one basic insight of the paper is that control into non-adjoined islands is problematic for the MTC in particular.
The paper is organized as follows: section 2 starts with a brief overview of control into islands and presents the data involving obligatory control into non-adjoined islands. Section 3 reviews how the MTC accounts for OC into adjuncts and discusses why this strategy cannot be applied successfully in the case at hand. Moreover, the section reconsiders the Icelandic adjunct OC data involving extraposition discussed by Wood (
If we consider control into islands, the picture is bipartite. On the one hand, there are well-known examples of obligatory control into certain adjuncts that have been discussed in the literature before. These comprise sentences like (1) and (2) (the latter being an Icelandic example involving extraposition).
(1) | Hornstein ( |
John1 heard Mary2 [without PRO1/*2 entering the room]. |
(2)
Þeir1
they.
ákváðu
decided
(það)
it.
[að PRO1
to
heimsækja
visit
Ólaf].
Olaf.
‘They decided to visit Olaf.’
In view of these example, the question might arise of whether control is sensitive to syntactic islands at all. However, crucially, obligatory control relations cannot be established across all kinds of syntactic islands. Two cases in point are subject islands (see (3)) and speech act or sentence adverbial adjuncts (see (4), (5)), which involve non-obligatory control.
(3)
Peter1
Peter
behauptet,
claims
[PRO2/*1
ihn1
him
zu
to
wählen]
vote
würde
would
helfen.
help
‘Peter1 claims that it would help to vote for him1.’
(4)
Er1
he
ist,
is
[ohne
without
PRO
zu
to
übertreiben],
exaggerate
weit
widely
und
and
breit
broadly
der
the
beste
best
Billiard-Spieler.
billiard-player
‘He is, without exaggeration, the best billiard player in the world.’
(5) | Landau ( |
Potatoes1 are tastier [after PRO |
This shows that control is not completely insensitive to islands, which means that it is subject to syntactic locality restrictions.
Turning to the MTC, which derives OC via movement, it is a priori unexpected that we observe OC into islands at all, since extraction out of islands is generally blocked. In order to derive cases like (1), Hornstein (
In this section, the focus will be on data from German. The general scenario we want to look at involves infinitival clauses located inside an island in the verb’s complement position. Typically, these infinitival clauses can be extraposed in German (and sometimes have to be), but, crucially, extraposition is by no means always obligatory, as the broad range of examples shows.
(6)
a.
Peter1
Peter
hatte
had
[γP
darauf,
on it
[PRO1
dieses
this
Spiel
match
zu
to
gewinnen]],
win
sein
his
Leben
life
lang
long
gehofft.
hoped
‘Peter had hoped to win this match all his life.’
b.
*Welches
which
Spiel2
match
hatte
had
Peter1
Peter
[
darauf
on it
[PRO1 t2
zu
to
gewinnen]]
win
sein
his
Leben
life
lang
long
gehofft?
hoped
‘Peter had hoped to win which match all his life?’
c.
*Dieses
this
Spiel2
match
hatte
had
Peter1
Peter
[
darauf
on it
[PRO1 t2
zu
to
gewinnen]]
win
sein
his
Leben
life
lang
long
gehofft.
hoped
‘This match Peter had hoped to win all his life.’
(7)
a.
Hans1
Hans
hat
has
[
den
the
Gedanken
thought
(daran),
at it
[PRO1
sie
her
zu
to
besuchen]],
visit
wieder
again
verworfen.
discarded
‘Hans again discarded the thought of visiting her.’
.
b.
*Wen2
who
hat
has
Hans1
Hans
[
den
the
Gedanken
thought
(daran)
at it
[PRO1 t2
zu
to
besuchen]],
visit
wieder
again
verworfen?
discarded
‘Hans again discarded the thought of visiting whom?’
c.
*Maria2
Mary
hat
has
Hans1
Hans
[
den
the
Gedanken
thought
(daran)
at it
[PRO1 t2
zu
to
besuchen]]
visit
wieder
again
verworfen.
discarded
‘Hans again discarded the thought of visiting Mary.’
(8)
a.
Mathis1
Mathis
hat
has
[
das
the
Angebot,
offer
[PRO1
Hockey
hockey
mitzuspielen]],
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen.
accepted
‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to join the hockey game.’
b.
*Was2
what
hat
has
Mathis1
Mathis
[
das
the
Angebot
offer
[PRO1 t2
mitzuspielen]]
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen?
accepted
‘Mathis accepted gladly the offer to join in what?’
c.
*Hockey2
hockey
hat
has
Mathis1
Mathis
[
das
the
Angebot
offer
[PRO1 t2
mitzuspielen]]
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen.
accepted
‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to join the hockey game.’
Note that these structures are clear instances of obligatory control. This is confirmed in the following by applying several OC diagnostics from the literature (see, for instance,
(9)
[Peters2
Peter’s
Vater]1
father
hatte
had
[darauf,
on it
[PRO1/*2
dieses
this
Spiel
match
zu
to
gewinnen]],
win
sein
his
Leben
life
lang
long
gehofft.
hoped
‘Peter’s father had hoped to win this match all his life.’
(10)
Karl2
Karl
erzählte,
told
dass
that
Peter1
Peter
[darauf,
on it
[PRO1/*2/*
dieses
this
Spiel
match
zu
to
gewinnen]],
win
sein
his
Leben
life
lang
long
gehofft
hoped
hatte.
had
‘Karl said that Peter had hoped to win this match all his life.’
Moreover, in (11), Binding Theory helps to make this point even clearer. Note that the German verb
(11)
a.
Hans1
Hans
hat
has
[den
the
Gedanken
thought
(daran),
at it
[PRO1/*2
ihn*1/2
him
zu
to
blamieren]],
Embarrass
nicht
not
ertragen.
endured
‘Hans could not endure the thought of embarrassing him.’
b.
Hans1
Hans
hat
has
[den
the
Gedanken
thought
(daran),
at it
[PRO1/*2
sich1
zu
to
blamieren]],
embarrass
nicht
not
ertragen.
endured
‘Hans could not endure the thought of making a fool of himself.’
What is also well-known is that OC PRO only allows a sloppy interpretation under ellipsis; this is illustrated in (12). The meaning of (12-a) is represented in (12-b), and as the indexation shows, a sloppy reading of PRO is obligatory – hence, this must be obligatory control.
(12)
a.
Mathis1
Mathis
hat
has
[das
the
Angebot,
offer
[PRO1
Hockey
hockey
mitzuspielen]],
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen,
accepted
und
and
Lasse
Lasse
auch.
too
‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to join the hockey game, and Lasse did too.’
b.
Mathis1
Mathis
hat
has
[das
the
Angebot,
offer
[PRO1
Hockey
hockey
mitzuspielen]],
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen,
accepted
und
and
Lasse2
Lasse
hat
has
[das
the
Angebot,
offer
[PRO*1/2
Hockey
hockey
mitzuspielen]],
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen.
accepted
‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to join the hockey game, and Lasse accepted gladly the offer to join the hockey game.’
Finally, it has been observed that OC PRO need not be human (see
(13)
Der
the.
Roman1
novel
hat
has
[darauf,
on it
[PRO1
den
the.
Leser
reader
zu
to
manipulieren]],
manipulate
von
from
Beginn
beginning
an
on
abgezielt.
aimed at
‘The novel aimed at manipulating the reader from the very beginning.’
To sum up, this is what the data in this section tell us: (i) the controlled clauses in (6-a)–(8-a) involve OC (see (9)–(13)); (ii) the infinitival clauses are embedded inside islands because they block extraction (see (6-b)/(6-c)–(8-b)/(8-c)); (iii) and, as the word order clearly shows, these examples do not involve extraposition but are genuine examples of the type OC into a non-adjoined island.
Recall that, at first sight, OC into adjuncts (as in (14-a)) seems to be problematic for the MTC, since its central assumption is that control involves movement of the controllee to the controller’s position; however, extraction out of adjuncts is typically barred (see (14-b)).
(14) | Drummond & Hornstein ( |
|
a. | John laughed at Mary [without <John> falling over]. | |
b. | *Who did John laugh at Bill before Mary spoke to <who>]? |
The MTC’s answer to this dilemma is sideward movement. The underlying idea is that the controller DP (
(15) | Drummond & Hornstein ( |
|
Workspace 1: [vP laughed at Mary] | ||
Workspace 2: [PP without |
||
Workspace 1: [vP |
||
Workspace 2: [PP without <John> falling over] | ||
[vP [vP John laughed at Mary] [PP without <John> falling over]] |
In other words, the MTC argumentation allows us to distinguish between licit movement out of adjuncts and illicit movement out of adjuncts by considering the timing of extraction: if it occurs
The argumentation by Drummond & Hornstein (
The external merge scenario covers examples such as (16). The general underlying scheme is illustrated in (17).
(16) | a. | John1 heard Mary2 [without PRO1/*2 entering the room]. | (=(1)) |
b. | John1 laughed at Mary2 [without PRO1/*2 falling over]. | (=(14-a)) |
(17)
As shown above, the MTC can account for data like these by invoking sideward movement: before XP is merged with a projection of
The scenario which concerns adjuncts created by movement is illustrated in (18).
(18)
The crucial difference between (17) and (18) is that in the latter case concatenation of XP with the main derivation takes place much earlier, namely inside
There is, however, a third possibility to allow for movement from the controllee to the controller position in (18): if movement takes place after XP is merged into the derivation but before it is adjoined to
This leads to a third scenario involving control into islands: the one illustrated in (19). It does not involve control into an adjunct but rather control into a non-adjoined island. For the MTC, such a structure cannot exist (recall that we are talking about obligatory control): it is impossible to extract the controllee out of
(19)
To sum up, the MTC makes the following predictions: (i) OC into an extraposed adjunct (=scenario 2) can only be derived if the underlying constituent
But as mentioned above, even control into extraposed clauses is problematic for the MTC if the underlying constituent from which extraposition takes place is an island. This has already been reported for Icelandic in Wood (
The set of data from Icelandic considered here is taken from Wood (
(20)
Þeir1
they.
ákváðu
decided
(það)
it.
að
to
PRO1
heimsækja
visit
Ólaf.
Olaf.
(= (2))
‘They decided to visit Olaf.’
(21)
Ólaf2
Ólaf.
ákváðu
decided
þeir1
they.
(*það)
it.
að
to
PRO1
heimsækja t2.
visit
‘Olaf, they decided to visit.’
(22)
Hún1
she.
virðist
appeared
(*það)
it.
t1
elska
love
Svein.
Sveinn.
‘She appeared to love Sveinn.’
Let us now take a look at similar data from the literature on German. We can observe that, in German, we also find sentential pronouns of the
(23)
a.
Ich
I
bereue
regret
(es),
it
dass
that
Maria
Maria
wegfährt.
goes away
‘I regret that Maria is going away.’
b.
Dass
that
Maria
Maria
wegfährt,
goes away
bereue
regret
ich
I
(*es).
it
‘I regret that Maria is going away.’
While (23) involves only finite complement clauses, (24)–(26) show that the pattern can also be extended to non-finite complement clauses and topicalization involving extraction out of the embedded CP: as in Icelandic, the latter is illicit (see (24-b)–(26-b)), whereas control across the intervening pronoun is not blocked (see (24-a)–(26-a)).
(24)
a.
Er1
he
hat
has
(es)
it
bereut/bedauert,
regretted
PRO1
Maria
Maria
verletzt
hurt
zu
to
haben.
have
‘He regretted having hurt Maria.’
b.
Maria2
Maria
hat
has
er1
he
(*es)
it
bereut/bedauert
regretted
PRO1 t2
verletzt
hurt
zu
to
haben.
have
‘He regretted having hurt Maria.’
(25)
a.
Er1
he
bittet
asks
dich
you
(darum),
for it
PRO1
die
the
Unterlagen
documents
morgen
tomorrow
mitzubringen.
with.to.bring
‘He is asking you to bring the documents tomorrow.’
b.
Bierwisch (
Die
the
Unterlagen2
documents
bittet
asks
er1
he
dich
you
(*darum),
for it
PRO1
t2
morgen
tomorrow
mitzubringen.
with.to.bring
‘He is asking you to bring the documents tomorrow.’
(26)
a.
Lasse1
Lasse
hatte
had
(darauf)
on it
gehofft,
hoped
PRO1
dieses
this
Hockeyspiel
hockey match
zu
to
gewinnen.
win
‘Lasse had hoped to win this hockey match.’
b.
Dieses
this
Hockeyspiel2
hockey match
hatte
had
Lasse1
Lasse
(*darauf)
on it
gehofft
hoped
PRO1 t2
zu
to
gewinnen.
win
‘Lasse had hoped to win this hockey match.’
In fact, the observed intervention effect does not only occur with topicalization; other instances of A′-movement are equally affected, as example (27) involving wh-movement shows.
(27)
Wen2
who
hat
has
er1
he
(*es)
it
bereut,
regretted
PRO1 t2
verletzt
hurt
zu
to
haben?
have
‘Who did he regret having hurt?’
(28)
Es1
it
begann
began
(*damit), t1
with it
heftig
heavily
zu
to
regnen.
rain
‘It began to rain heavily.’
(29)
Er1
he
begann
began
(damit),
with it
PRO1
Briefe
letters
zu
to
schreiben.
write
‘He began to write letters.’
To sum up, it has been shown that these extraposition data from German behave like Icelandic in neither allowing A- nor A′-movement out of the extraposed infinitive. This means that there is no point in the derivation at which extraction is possible, which suggests that the underlying constituent from which extraposition takes place must be an island for leftward movement.
After having considered the empirical data that motivate the development of an alternative, let us now briefly return to the second issue of this paper: control and its compatibility with phase theory. In general, the typical control scheme looks as illustrated in (30): the controller is part of the matrix clause and the controllee functions as the subject of an infinitival complement clause.
(30) | a. | John1 tries [CP [TP PRO1 to win]]. |
b. | [ |
From a phase-theoretic point of view, this is problematic, because it implies that controller and controllee are separated from each other by a phase boundary (the embedded CP) and thus occur in different phases (recall the definitions from footnote 1). Since the controllee does not occur at the edge of the lower CP but rather in SpecT, the canonical subject position, it is no longer accessible when the controller enters the derivation in the next higher phase (see the illustration in (31), in which crossed out material represents those parts of the derivation that have already become inaccessible). So we can conclude that, following the standard view, control involves a dependency that is not readily compatible with phase theory.
(31) | [vP controller … [CP |
Although focus here is on the comparison with the MTC, let us briefly take a look at traditional PRO-based theories of control. Here, the locality problem is relatively obvious. Without further assumptions, the distance between controller and controllee (=PRO) is too large to be compatible with phase theory, see (31).
Of course, considerations like these were not an issue when the first PRO-based theories were proposed in the 1980s. However, since the development of phase theory, little attention has been devoted to its compatibility with control theory. In fact, two PRO-based theories which have adopted the phase model at an underlying level are those by Landau (
However, both views involve a relativization of the underlying locality restrictions (which means that the representational residue is enlarged, i.e. the amount of representation that must be kept in the workspace in between the spellout of two phases; see also footnote 1). So what this paper sets out to do is answer the following question: is it possible to model control in a strictly phase-based theory in which extra assumptions that ease locality restrictions are not needed? This is the conceptual motivation for sketching this alternative model, although Landau (
In his two-tiered theory of control, Landau (
So in contrast to Landau (
On the other hand, the central data that lead to the postulation of the hybrid theory of control (OC into islands) is not discussed in Landau (
Since the basic assumption of the MTC is that controller and controllee are related via movement, this puts the locality question in a different light. If the MTC is right, the control relation does not have to be established once the controller is merged into the derivation – instead, the only thing that must be guaranteed is that movement is an available option. In other words, the potential problem is not that the distance between controller and controllee might be too large to ultimately license control; that control involves a non-local dependency instead implies that movement has to be split into available movement steps, and the potential danger is that the designated controller position might not be accessible via movement. To stick with example (30-a) (
(32) | a. | John tries [CP <John> to win]. |
b. | [vP John tries [CP <John> |
A movement-based approach to control is therefore compatible in principle with phase theory as long as it is assumed that the non-local movement relation between controller and controllee is broken up into smaller movement steps which proceed from phase edge to phase edge. So far, so good; up to this point the MTC seems to be ideally suited to a local derivational approach to control. However, as Drummond & Hornstein (
(33) | Drummond & Hornstein ( |
||
a. | John laughed at Mary [without <John> falling over]. | (=(14-a)) | |
b. | *Who did John laugh at Bill [before Mary spoke to <who>]? | (=(14-b)) |
The MTC accounts for this contrast in grammaticality as follows: (32-a) can be derived via sideward movement, as the adjunction site (adjunction to vP) is above the target of sideward movement (=Specv). When deriving (32-b), however, the target position of wh-movement is SpecC, i.e. the adjunction site (=adjunction to vP) is below this position. Therefore, the only available order of operations is (i) concatenating adjunct and main clause and then (ii) extracting
Note that in order to derive the ungrammaticality of (32-b), it is absolutely essential that wh-movement targets a position above the adjunction site. As regards the site of adjunction, Drummond & Hornstein (
In this section, we want to take a look at such an alternative approach, the so-called hybrid theory of control. It illustrates what a theory of control could look like that is compatible with both a strict interpretation of phase theory and all three control scenarios discussed in section 3.1. In this section, the basic underlying assumptions of the HTC will be introduced, followed by the data considered before. Basically, the idea is the following: the controllee has to move closer to the controller position to be able to establish the control relation in a local configuration (in accordance with the PIC); however, the controllee is not forced to move out of islands to license control into islands – just being at their edge suffices.
Technically, this is implemented as follows: the controllee is merged in the derivation as an empty argument (= EA) which is referentially defective. This is encoded in syntax in terms of the feature specification {D,
(34) | |
A feature [F:_ ] on |
|
(i) |
|
(ii) γ is the closest goal, and | |
(iii) |
The derivation of obligatory control then proceeds as follows: the D-feature allows EA to be merged into an argument position; from here it probes upwards to find a goal/licensor (as to upward probing, cf. also
Comparing the HTC to its predecessors, we can conclude that, as in the MTC, the controllee has to move to be licensed, the licensing conditions are not control-specific (i.e., no independent control module is needed), and non-obligatory control might involve last resort if no syntactic licensor can be found (see section 7 for details). As in PRO-based theories, however, it is assumed that the controllee is an independent argument receiving its own
Before we turn to concrete examples that demonstrate how the HTC works in practice, let us briefly address the following questions: how is movement of EA triggered, why does it stop at the edge of islands, and is it ensured that it stops in time to prevent overgeneration?
The question of what triggers successive-cyclic movement is presumably as old as the idea that movement stops in intermediate positions. One possible implementation has been proposed by Chomsky (
(35) | |
( |
|
The head X of phase XP may be assigned an edge feature after the phase XP is otherwise complete, but only if the assignment has an effect on outcome. |
As Müller (
Successive-cyclic movement of EA either stops if a potential goal enters the derivation or if EA occurs at the edge of an island and any further step involved movement out of this island. Let us have a closer look at the second scenario. What is crucial for the HTC is that the availability of Agree and movement are dissociated since extraction out of islands must be prohibited, whereas licensing of control into (certain) islands under Agree must be possible. Therefore it is important to keep in mind that although accessibility (i.e. being at the very least at the phase edge of the previous phase) is a precondition for both Agree and movement, this is not yet a sufficient condition for the latter. In the case of islands, movement within the island (i.e. in particular to the edge of the highest phase contained in it) is not restricted; it is movement beyond which is forbidden.
In fact, for the HTC it is not really important what exactly this extra requirement for movement is which finally blocks extraction out of islands, but, to be concrete, let us follow Müller’s (
But what about direct movement out of the island into a higher phase (i.e. without intermediate stop at the current phase’s edge)? This is also ruled out since material inside the island is no longer accessible after the completion of the current phase – so we would end up with a violation of the PIC. Hence, movement out of islands is predicted to be ungrammatical (even if the element we try to extract is located at the island’s edge), while Agree into an island is possible (of course only as long as its edge is still accessible); we will return to the latter scenario in section 6.3.
Since successive-cyclic movement of EA is apparently only stopped if the latter is trapped in an island or Agree can be established, the question arises of whether the theory overgenerates in the following sense: if there is no island involved, we expect EA to be able to move successive-cyclically from phase edge to phase edge until it finally finds a goal. In fact, examples involving long EA-movement are rare, because the standard scenario is this: the embedded clause containing EA is an internal argument of the control verb (unless the clause containing EA is a subject clause, which is an island and thus stops EA-movement anyway);
(36) | John1 hopes [CP EA1 [TP t |
(36) is an example in which EA is base-generated in the most deeply embedded clause, raises (via SpecT) into the medial clause, moves to the phase edge SpecC, and finally finds a goal in the matrix clause. Hence, the HTC predicts that the sentence should be grammatical, which it is. Note, moreover, that (36) illustrates again the locality problem of the standard PRO-based theories alluded to in the beginning – if we do not assume EA-movement to SpecC, the controllee is no longer accessible when the controller
However, what about examples like (37) or (38), which are ungrammatical? Since no island restricts movement, it should be possible for EA to move to SpecC, from where it could probe upwards and agree with
(37) | *John1 hopes [CP EA1 for [TP there to seem [TP t |
(intended: ‘John hopes to seem to be smart.’) |
(38) | *John1 hopes [CP EA1 that it seems [TP t |
(intended: ‘John hopes that he seems to be smart.’) |
What distinguishes the grammatical example of long EA-movement in (36) from the ungrammatical ones in (37) and (38) is the occurrence of an expletive in the latter case. Why should an expletive block licensing of EA by the matrix subject? A potential explanation would be to assume that the expletive is, at first sight, a potential goal for EA. This would imply that expletives bear valued
Moreover, I think that sentences like (37) (which involves the expletive
Although empirically, the main focus of the present paper is on control into (non-)adjoined islands, any control theory should be able to derive standard subject control configurations. Let us therefore briefly go back to our initial example (30-a), repeated in (39-a), to see how subject control is derived under the HTC. As for EA, it is assumed that this referentially defective argument is part of the lexicon, and inserting it into the numeration is in principle optional. However, if it is not inserted in (39-b), the derivation will crash later on because of a violation of the Theta Criterion. Hence, only the numeration in (39-b) can derive (39-a).
(39) | a. | John tries to win. |
b. | ||
Num = {{John, tries}, {EA, to, win}} |
The derivation then proceeds as follows. In Specv, EA is inserted as the external argument of
(40) | a. | [vP EA |
b. | [TP EA[ |
|
c. | [CP EA[ |
Now the matrix clause is derived. After merging the matrix verb
(41) | [vP |
So EA’s
So far, we have only considered examples in which the control verb takes two arguments, the infinitival clause and an external argument; the controller was therefore always the external argument, i.e. the subject of the matrix clause. In this section, we will briefly turn to control verbs that select in addition a second internal argument.
Let us first turn to standard object control constructions and see how examples like (42) can be derived.
(42) | John1 forced Bill2 [EA*1/2 to surrender]. |
The derivation of (42) proceeds as follows: first, the embedded clause is built (which is identical to the derivation of the embedded clause in subject control structures). In Specv, EA is inserted as the external argument of
(43) | a. | [vP EA |
b. | [TP EA[ |
|
c. | [CP EA[ |
Next,
(44) | [vP |
I do not have much to add to the discussion of
(45) | John1 promised Mary2 [EA1/*2 to call Anna]. |
What is unexpected at first sight is that EA apparently does not choose
(46) | DP |
Crucially, this structure reveals that the closest binder for EA is not an argument in the matrix clause, but rather the attitude holder inside the embedded CP (which bears a valued
(47) | [CP |
Whether the attitude holder is the referent of the matrix subject is determined by semantic/pragmatic factors. I will defer a more thorough discussion to future research since a full-fledged analysis of these data is beyond the scope of this paper.
Let us now return to the focus of this paper: the three different scenarios from section 3 involving control into adjuncts and non-adjoined islands. The following three subsections address each of these three scenarios and their analysis under the HTC.
We start with control into adjuncts created by external merge. This is exemplified by example (48) (repeated from (16-a)).
(48) | Hornstein ( |
John1 heard Mary2 [without PRO1/*2 entering the room]. |
Again, we are free to choose between numeration (49-a) and (49-b); however, in (49-a), the derivation will crash because it will inevitably violate the Theta Criterion, since there is no external argument for
(49) | a. | Num1 = {{John, heard, Mary}, {without, entering, the, room}} |
b. | Num2 = {{John, heard, Mary}, { |
The adjunct is then derived as follows: EA is inserted in Specv, where it gets its
(50) | ||
a. | [vP EA |
|
b. | [TP EA[ |
|
c. | [CP EA[ |
As for the main clause,
(51) | [vP John heard [VP t |
Now the adjunct is merged into the derivation, which is illustrated in (52).
(52)
Here we have the following configuration: both
(53) | |
X c-commands Y iff X and Y are categories and X excludes Y and every category dominating X dominates Y. |
(54) | Chomsky ( |
|
a. | X excludes Y if no segment of X dominates Y. | |
b. | X is dominated by Y only if it is dominated by every segment of Y. |
For (52), this has the following effect: since only one segment of v′ dominates
Let us now turn to control into a non-adjoined island (i.e. scenario 3 from section 3, which could not be derived by the MTC since sideward movement cannot circumvent such an island). As an example, consider (55) (repeated from (8-a)).
(55)
Mathis1
Mathis
hat
has
[DP
das
the
Angebot,
offer
[CP EA1
Hockey
hockey
mitzuspielen]],
with.to.play
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen.
accepted
‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to join the hockey game.’
EA is inserted as the external argument of the embedded predicate, and since its
(56) | [vP Mathis[ |
(57)
Note that the intervening DP
(58)
[DP
das
the
Angebot
offer
(?an ihn1)
on him
[CP EA1
Hockey
hocky
mitzuspielen]]
with.to.play
‘the offer to join the hockey game’
(59)
[DP
der
the
Gedanke
thought
(*an ihn1)
on him
[CP EA1
sie
her.
zu
to
besuchen]]
visit
‘the thought of visiting her’
But what about more deeply embedded infinitival clauses, i.e. scenarios in which more phases intervene between EA and the matrix subject? Consider the pair of sentences in (60). The verb inside the infinitival clause is chosen in such a way that it can be used reflexively (
Let us first have a look at (60-a). It has the same structure as the examples discussed so far in this subsection: EA is inside a complex DP that functions as a direct object (
(60)
a.
Peter1
Peter
hat
has
[vP t1
das
the
Angebot,
offer
[CP
him
weiterzubilden]
further.to.train
gerne
gladly
angenommen].
accepted
‘Peter accepted gladly the offer to undergo further training.’
b.
Peter1
Peter
hat
has
[vP t1
die
the
Frau2,
woman
[CP
die2
who
das
the
Angebot,
offer
[CP
him
weiterzubilden]
further.to.train
gemacht
made
hat],
has
neulich
recently
erst
only
im
in.the
Supermarkt
supermarket
getroffen].
met
‘Only recently, Peter has met the woman in the supermarket who offered to further educate him/herself.’
In (60-b), the infinitival clause is more deeply embedded since the complex DP in which it is located is part of a relative clause that modifies the matrix object. As a result, two phase boundaries intervene between the subject trace (t1) and EA. Following the HTC, we thus expect that subject control by
To sum up, (60-a) shows that obligatory control holds if EA and the controller are only separated by one phase boundary; if more phase boundaries intervene, as in (60-b), obligatory control by the matrix subject is blocked.
Finally, let us take a look at the second scenario introduced in section 3, namely control into adjuncts created by movement (see (61), repeated from (18)). I suggest that this is also the underlying structure for control configurations involving extraposition.
(61)
In the literature, different ways to account for extraposition have been proposed. I will follow the movement-based approach (cf., among others,
(62)
Er1
he
hat
has
[DP
es
it
t
bedauert,
regretted
[CP EA1
Maria
Maria
verletzt
hurt
zu
to
haben].
have
‘He regretted having hurt Maria.’
(63)
Mathis1
Mathis
hat
has
[DP
das
the
Angebot t
offer
natürlich
of course
gerne
gladly
angenommen,
accepted
[CP EA1
mit
with
den
the
größeren
older
Jungs
boys
Hockey
hockey
zu
to
spielen]].
play
‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to play hockey with the older boys.’
As already mentioned in section 2.2, extraposition of the infinitival clause is sometimes obligatory (as in (62)) and sometimes optional (as in (63)).
However, this does not play any role in the derivation of the control pattern, which means that (62) and (63) are eventually derived in the same way. In the following, I will first focus on (62), since the occurrence of the sentential pronoun requires some additional remarks.
As far as the underlying structure of examples with a sentential pronoun is concerned (as in (62)), I assume (following
(64)
And how is the control relation in examples like (62) and (63) derived? In fact, the analysis of control into extraposed adjuncts does not differ from the analysis of control into non-adjoined islands, since the control relation can already be established before extraposition takes place. Inside the infinitival clause, the empty argument EA is inserted as external argument of the predicate
(65)
Finally, it is worth mentioning that, in contrast to scenario 1, both scenario 2 and 3 might also involve object control (depending on the control predicate involved). This is illustrated by the German data in (66): (66-a) involves object control into a non-extraposed CP, while (66-b) involves object control into an extraposed CP.
(66)
a.
Er1
he
wollte
wanted
ihr2
her.
[DP
die
the
Chance
chance
[CP EA*1/2
sich2
zu
to
verbessern]]
improve
auf
on
keinen
no
Fall
case
geben].
give
‘By no means did he want to give her the chance to improve.’
b.
Er1
he
wollte
wanted
ihr2
her.
[DP
die
the
Chance tCP]
chance
auf
on
keinen
no
Fall
case
geben,
give
[CP EA*1/2
sich2
zu
to
verbessern].
improve
‘By no means did he want to give her the chance to improve.’
In (66-a), EA moves to the highest phase edge inside the complex DP (i.e. to SpecC) in search of a suitable goal. In this position it is still accessible when the indirect object DP
To sum up, the gist of the HTC analysis is that EA does not have to move all the way up to the controller position; instead, it is enough to move to the edge of the preceding phase, which means, with respect to the island examples discussed above, that extraction out of the island is not required to establish the control relation. An MTC account, by contrast, would, by definition, have to assume that EA moves out of the island, which is impossible if the sideward movement strategy cannot be applied (as in the case of non-adjoined islands).
So far it has been tacitly assumed that by probing EA finds a suitable goal to value its
A first case in point is the following example, which does not have a single DP argument that could function as a controller.
(67) | [EA to shave oneself] is dangerous. |
That EA must be part of the numeration follows from Theta Theory (a derivation without EA inevitably crashes since it violates the Theta Criterion), Binding Theory (EA helps to satisfy Principle A since it can be the local antecedent of an anaphor, see below), and the EPP (EA satisfies the EPP in the subject clause). As regards its interpretation, the non-overt subject refers to an arbitrary individual, so this is a case of arbitrary control.
How is this derived under the HTC? Following Preminger (
Under the HTC, the derivation of (67) is as follows: when the subject clause is derived, EA is inserted in Specv, where it is
(68) | |
[vP EA |
|
[TP EA[ |
|
[CP EA[ |
The subject clause is then merged into the external argument position of the predicate
(69)
Apart from arbitrary control, NOC also comprises examples like (70)–(72), in which the interpretation of EA seems to depend on discourse factors. In (70), the controller of EA,
(70)
Amy1
Amy
sagte,
said
dass
that
es
it
Spaß
fun
machte,
made
[EA1
mit
with
Dan
Dan
zu
to
tanzen].
dance
‘Amy said that dancing with Dan had been fun.’
(71) | Culicover & Jackendoff ( |
Ohio State1 is in a lot of trouble, according to today’s newspaper. Apparently, [EA1 firing the football coach] has turned off a lot of potential donors. |
(72)
Er1
he
ist,
is
[ohne
without
EA
zu
to
übertreiben],
exaggerate
weit
widely
und
and
breit
broadly
der
the
beste
best
Billiard-Spieler. (=(4))
billiard-player
‘He is, without exaggeration, the best billiard player in the world.’
What all of these examples have in common is that they involve a salient entity in the discourse (which can be the speaker or a non-local antecedent) whose attitude is being reflected; in other words, we are dealing with attitudinal contexts. As outlined already in section 5.4, I assume that in such contexts, a logophoric center is projected in the left periphery which introduces this attitude holder syntactically in a specifier position (see also the references cited in section 5.4). As a result, this attitude holder can function as a goal for EA and the latter can be licensed under Agree. So strictly speaking, this is OC involving the attitude holder as controller; but since the attitude holder is not realized overtly, it gives the impression that there is no local, obligatory controller around (see also
So if we compare the derivation of arbitrary control in (69) with that of example (71), which also involves a subject clause containing EA, the difference is simply that the latter involves an attitude holder which can license EA under Agree (see (73)).
(73)
Note, moreover, that theories that take NOC to be logophoric in nature make the following prediction: if a sentence is changed in such a way that the attitude holder changes, it is predicted that EA must be interpreted differently as well. This is borne out in the following example, which contrasts with (70) (
(74)
Amy1
Amy
wurde
was
erzählt,
told
dass
that
es
it
Spaß
fun
machte,
made
[EA*1/2
mit
with
Dan
Dan
zu
to
tanzen].
dance
‘Amy was told that dancing with Dan had been fun.’
Crucially, the main goal of this paper was to develop a theory of control which is compatible with a certain conceptual perspective (cf. its PIC-oriented nature) capturing a specific set of empirical observations (particularly control into (non-)adjoined islands). Following Chomsky (
Still, there are related issues which concern the context in which EA occurs.
Returning to the underlying assumption that EA can be inserted freely into the numeration, the following question arises. What ensures that EA surfaces in the subject position of infinitivals and not in another argument position? In particular, why is OC into finite clauses, as illustrated in (75), ruled out?
(75) | *John1 said that EA1 likes pizza. |
In fact, what goes wrong in examples like these is not necessarily the licensing of EA; instead, the problem rather seems to be that finite T cannot be properly licensed if EA is the subject. It is standardly assumed that T bears
However, what if EA did not only correspond to PRO (hence also the more neutral term EA)? Could it also be the origin of other (empty) categories? After all, structures like (76) might not be completely out. The remaining section is devoted to some very tentative ideas concerning these questions.
(76) | a. | EA sings. |
b. | John hates EA. |
Of course, languages like English or German do not allow these structures. On closer inspection, though, it is not at all that clear why we would want to rule out (76) completely. What (76-a) actually displays is a sentence with a non-overt argument in the subject position of a finite clause. This is exactly what is found in
(77)
Canto.
sing.
‘I sing.’
The standard analysis (following
Turning briefly to (76-b), the situation is the following: the object position is occupied by a non-overt argument which ends up being bound by the subject
In any case, the central insight is that EA need not be control-specific (unlike PRO), and therefore it could well be the case that it also appears in other constructions. So EA might be considered the source of OC PRO and NOC PRO as well as of
This paper set out to develop a theory of control that (i) is compatible with phase theory and (ii) can straightforwardly account for control into adjoined and non-adjoined islands, two aspects which have proved to be problematic for the MTC.
It has been assumed that the lexicon hosts an empty argument (EA), which is referentially defective and therefore bears an unvalued
Since EA is not control-specific, the theory can presumably also be extended to include
If the HTC is on the right track, the answer to the locality question is this: control is more local than traditional PRO-based theories would have us believe, but less local than suggested by the MTC. The conceptual advantage of the HTC is that it allows us to take the PIC seriously; thus, the HTC can be considered to be part of a bigger program which aims at reanalyzing all kinds of syntactic phenomena in a local-derivational way. At the same time, it allows us to take islandhood seriously – after all, control into islands does not involve extraction out of them, but only movement to the edge of the highest phase within them. As a consequence, under the HTC it does not matter whether an island is adjoined or non-adjoined.
I follow the standard definitions in (i)–(iv). Note that (i) is the more restrictive version of the PIC that Chomsky proposes. Following Müller (
(i)
The domain of a head X of a phase XP is not accessible to operations outside XP; only X and its edge are accessible to such operations.
(ii)
The domain of a head corresponds to its c-command domain.
(iii)
The edge of a head X is the residue outside X′; it comprises specifiers and elements adjoined to XP.
(iv)
CPs and vPs are phases.
This might not be the case to the same extent in all control scenarios since not all clause boundaries necessarily coincide with phase boundaries (cf., for instance, restructuring; see
This central underlying idea that syntactic licensing requires movement from phase edge to phase edge until the appropriate licensing configuration can be established has already been proposed for binding relations in Fischer (
I will not discuss OC diagnostics for these examples; their status has already been considered in the literature. As for similar data from German, see section 3.2.
I will return to non-obligatory control (NOC) in section 7. As regards the discussion of when adjunct control involves OC or NOC, see also Fischer & Flaate Høyem (
Note that Wood (
Different factors seem to influence the acceptability of the non-extraposed examples. Haider, who also lists some German examples of this type (see (i)), points out “[they] may sound somewhat clumsy to an informant because of their complexity” (
(i) Man one hat has ihn him [davon, from it [das the Land country zu to verlassen]], leave abgehalten. prevented ‘He was prevented from leaving the country.’ (ii) Man one hat has ihn him [davon, from it [das the Land country zu to verlassen]], leave auf on hinterhältige perfidious Weise way abgehalten. prevented ‘In a perfidious way, he was prevented from leaving the country.’
This contrasts with the NOC scenario in (3), where this test has also been applied: in NOC structures, a coindexed pronoun in the infinitival clause is licit.
Note that German
See Huang (
The labeling in the trees follows Bare Phrase Structure, according to which the labels are defined on the basis of their relative positions. The different projections can thus be defined as follows:
Landau (
Note that these data are quite robust and the contrasts in grammaticality very clear for native speakers. All examples in this section crucially also involve obligatory control; see (i) and (ii), which illustrate some of the standard tests: (i) shows that the matrix subject and PRO are obligatorily coreferent; (ii) illustrates that we only get a sloppy reading of PRO under ellipsis (the only available reading is the one according to which Peter regrets having hurt Maria).
(i) a. Peter1 Peter hat has (es) it bereut regretted [PRO1/*2 Maria Maria verletzt hurt zu to haben]. have ‘Peter regretted having hurt Maria.’ b. Maria3 Maria hat has Peter1 Peter (*es) it bereut/bedauert regretted PRO1/*2 t3 verletzt hurt zu to haben. have ‘Peter regretted having hurt Maria.’ (ii) a. Peter1 Peter hat has (es) it bereut regretted [PRO1 Maria Maria verletzt hurt zu to haben], have und and Hans Hans auch. too ‘Peter regretted having hurt Maria, and Hans did too.’ b. Peter1 Peter hat has (es) it bereut regretted [PRO1 Maria Maria verletzt hurt zu to haben], have und and Hans2 Hans hat has (es) it bereut regretted [PRO*1/2 Maria Maria verletzt hurt zu to haben]. have
Similar examples have been reported from Dutch as well. As Bennis (
(i) Wat what betreurde regretted jij you (*het) it dat that hij he gezegd said had? had ‘You regretted that he had said what?’ That rightward and leftward movement behave differently is well-known; while rightward movement seems to be less sensitive to island restrictions, it is, on the other hand, strictly clause-bounded (cf. the Right Roof Constraint), which is not true for leftward movement. I have nothing to say about why this is the case, but see, for instance, Müller ( They comprise, for instance, the trigger of the underlying Agree relation in Landau ( If controller and controllee are referentially identical, the result is exhaustive control; see (i-a). In examples like (i-b), by contrast, the controller is just a proper subpart of the set of people denoted by the controllee – this is partial control.
(i)
a.
John1 tries PRO1 to win.
b.
The chair1 preferred PRO1+ to gather at 6.
Following Landau (
(i) Karl1 Karl versucht, tries PRO1+ sich bis until Weihnachten Christmas wieder again zu to versöhnen. make.up ‘Karl tries to become reconciled again until Christmas.’
Note that, in the recent literature, the terms PC/EC predicate have typically been replaced by the terms attitudinal vs. non-attitudinal predicate, which also suggests that this split among predicates is not exclusively responsible for a PC/EC reading, but has other impacts as well. In any case, the fact that I follow a semantic treatment of PC does not mean that I dismiss the observed split between attitudinal vs. non-attitudinal predicates; see also section 5.4 and 7.2.
Note that an early version of the HTC has already been presented in 2011 at the University of Tübingen.
See also Fischer (
Note that this empty argument is not a control-specific formative but could in principle also surface as
Following Pesetsky & Torrego (
Cf. also Bošković (
As regards the potential occurrence of EA in finite contexts, see section 8.
Note that van Urk’s (
As noted in the literature before, this presumably means that a minimal violation of the Inclusiveness Condition must be taken into account in order to satisfy the requirement that also intermediate movement steps are feature-driven (see
In contrast to the MTC, the trigger for movement is thus completely independent of Case considerations.
That is, edge feature insertion must apply
That subjects and adjuncts are islands for extraction is an old observation (see, for instance,
In Müller’s approach, last-merged specifiers in a phase turn out to be islands for extraction, and this is exactly how subjects and adjuncts can be characterized: external merge of the subject in Specv is typically the last operation (in the relevant sense, see below) that takes place in the vP phase (only vP adjuncts might additionally be inserted afterwards). As far as adjuncts are concerned, I deviate from Müller’s theory in that I do not assume that they are last-merged specifiers of further functional projections (as proposed, for instance, in
See section 7 as regards examples involving subject clauses.
However, note also that movement of EA through the intermediate SpecT positions is required independently by the EPP, which shows once more that it is hardly possible to come up with an example that involves long EA-movement independently.
In fact, one reviewer suggests that the information from the controllee might alternatively be transmitted via every phase head on the path to the controller, or via null categories in the specifier of every phase. The question (s)he raises is whether this could do away with the locality problem. The latter scenario (with null categories in every phase edge on the path) seems to me similar to the assumption that EA itself moves to these specifiers; however, it would mean that we would have to posit additional empty elements in these positions. If the phase heads on the path to the controller are taken as mediating elements, we would have to come up with some motivation and technical implementation for that; in any case, the outcome would not be different on the assumption that this kind of feature transmission is restricted by the PIC just like movement (for instance, we would expect it not to be blocked in the case of non-adjoined islands, but in the case of subject islands, where EA would no longer be in the accessible domain when the next phase head entered the derivation; see (i)).
(i)
A third option might be to assume massive mediation by every node on the path from controllee to controller. This would imply that control relations involve uniform rather than punctuated movement paths in the sense of Abels (
Note that this makes sense insofar as it is not the case that their reference is not (yet) determined as in the case of EA, which therefore bears an unvalued
Following Hazout (
The numeration involves two different lexical subarrays for the two clauses.
In the following, this is illustrated with
Nothing hinges on this movement step; if a language does not have an EPP-feature on T (as has been argued for German by
Note that there is a further locality restriction involved, as a DP cannot license EA if they are both at the edge of the same phase. That licensing in this configuration is blocked has been observed before; cf. McGinnis’ (
(i) Maria1 Maria habe have ich2 I [t′1 EA*1/2 t1 zu to küssen] kiss versucht. tried ‘I tried to kiss Mary.’
One test that can be applied to distinguish attitude from non-attitude verbs refers to the observation that attitude complements are tensed, whereas complements of non-attitude verbs are not (cf.
(i)
a.
Yesterday, John promised Mary to call Anna tomorrow.
b.
#Yesterday, John tried to call Anna tomorrow.
c.
#Yesterday, John forced Bill to surrender tomorrow.
As far as the idea is concerned that logophoric anchoring should be encoded in syntax in terms of a perspectival or logophoric center, cf., for instance, Speas (
Cf. also Landau’s (
Details concerning the structure of gerunds will not be covered here.
Recall that, following Bare Phrase Structure,
In fact, category-based versions of c-command have often been proposed when licensing mechanisms under c-command involving adjoined structures have been investigated. It has been empirically important, for instance, in May’s (
Note that this is the last point in the derivation when EA is still accessible; when T merges with vP, EA is rendered inaccessible, which explains why EA cannot move out of the adjunct (=island) directly into a higher phase. On the other hand, intermediate movement to the edge of vP is not possible either, following Müller’s (
Note that the object, by contrast, is not in a position where it could license EA; i.e., obligatory object control into adjuncts is ruled out. This does not imply, however, that the object cannot bind variables inside the adjunct – LF movement to Specv can derive these readings; cf., for instance,
Moreover, one reviewer has raised an interesting question: what about Object Shift in languages like Scandinavian? If the object raises to Specv, can it control EA inside a vP adjunct? In Norwegian, this is not the case (see (i)): as in English, we only get subject control even if the object has undergone Object Shift.
(i) Jon1 John1 hørte heard henne2 her2 aldri/ikke never/not [uten without EA1/*2 å to gå go inn i into rommet]. room.the ‘John did not hear her/has never heard her without entering the room.’
So how can it be excluded that the object is a potential goal for EA? First, it is far from clear whether Specv is the final landing site of Object Shift; following, for instance, Bošković (
(ii)
Recall that DP is not assumed to be a phase; only CP and vP are (see the definition in footnote 1).
To indicate the phase boundaries that intervene between EA and the matrix subject, these (plus matrix vP) are marked in (60) with labeled brackets.
Note, however, that we get obligatory control by
Alternatively, two other strategies have been suggested in the literature: (i) the base-generation approach, according to which the extraposed XP is considered to be base-generated in its surface position (cf., for instance,
In fact, the base-generation approach does not seem to be an option for data like (62), since it has been argued in the literature that the sentential pronoun and the embedded CP underlyingly form a constituent (see
Recall that in the latter case, different additional factors have an impact on the naturalness of the sentence. In (63) (which is basically the extraposed variant of (55) from section 6.2), I have therefore added the phrase
(i) Mathis1 Mathis hat has [DP das the Angebot, offer [CP EA1 mit with den the größeren older Jungs boys Hockey hockey zu to spielen]] play natürlich of course gerne gladly angenommen. accepted ‘Of course, Mathis accepted gladly the offer to play hockey with the older boys.’
Underlyingly, (63) has the same structure as (55); see tree (57) in section 6.2.
Note that, following Bare Phrase Structure, it makes no difference whether the CP is considered to be an argument of the pronoun or adjoined to DP; the underlying structure would look the same. In fact, the structure outlined in (64) has also been proposed by Ross (
Recall that in (62), the sentential pronoun blocks leftward movement and turns the DP into an island; in (63), the infinitival clause is part of a complex DP, which is also an island.
Note that in principle, there are two points in the derivation when control into an extraposed adjunct could be licensed: either before adjunction (i.e. extraposition) has occurred (as outlined explicitly in this section), or after adjunction has taken place (which would then correspond to the scenario discussed in section 6.1 and would mean that it takes place at the point in the derivation illustrated in tree (64)). However, on the assumption that syntactic licensing takes place as soon as possible (i.e. as soon as the appropriate licensing configuration holds in the course of the derivation), the more plausible analysis is the former one, which has therefore been presented in this section.
Alternatively, it could be assumed that there is a
Note that to construe NOC as a last resort means that the model makes clear-cut predictions regarding the distinction between OC and NOC. Although the technical definitions of OC and NOC vary in the literature (cf., for instance,
In (68), I ignore the fact that the concrete form of the anaphor is assumed to be determined later in the derivation, since this issue is orthogonal to the control debate. But let me briefly sketch out the underlying assumptions concerning anaphoric binding in this framework. Following Fischer (
As for discourse factors licensing logophoricity in general, see Kuno (
Chomsky (
For a different view, see Preminger (
As regards analyses along the same line and empirical arguments for this view, see Duguine (
Special thanks to my colleagues from the control project, Artemis Alexiadou, Patrick Lindert, and Marcel Pitteroff, and to Gereon Müller for careful reading and valuable discussions. For helpful comments, I would also like to thank Jeannique Darby, Hubert Haider, Jutta Hartmann, Inghild Flaate Høyem, Amanda Kahrsch, Terje Lohndal, Maria Polinsky, Michelle Sheehan, three anonymous reviewers, and audiences at Tübingen University (October 2011), Freiburg University (GGS 40, May 2012), Frankfurt/Main University (GGS 41, May 2013), Leipzig University (June 2012; Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop 28, October 2013), and Stuttgart University, where earlier versions of this paper have been presented. All remaining errors are my own.
Research for this paper was supported by a DGF grant for the project “Modelling Control Theory” (AL 554/10-1; FI 1959/2-1).
The author has no competing interests to declare.