Defective C-T in Romance

Abstract

This paper discusses Chomsky's (Minimalist inquiries: The framework, MIT Press, 2000; Derivation by phase, MIT Press, 2001) notion of defectiveness and its consequences for different syntactic phenomena of the Case-agreement systems within the context of Phase Theory (see Chomsky, Minimalist inquiries: The framework, MIT Press, 2000 and subsequent work). Particular attention will be paid to the status of defective T (T non selected by C, according to Chomsky, Minimalist inquiries: The framework, MIT Press, 2000; Derivation by phase, MIT Press, 2001) in Romance languages, whose existence has been questioned by Ausín (On A-Movement, 2001). It will be argued that Romance, though devoid of bona fide ECM dependents of the believe type (e.g., I believe Peter to be clever ), does manifest a defective version of T in raising contexts, which I take to be selected by a defective version of C. This hypothesis will be explored by addressing the status of the so-called experiencer paradox across Romance (see Ausín, On A-Movement, 2001, Boeckx, Studia Linguistica 53: 227–250, 1999, and Torrego, Experiencers and Raising Verbs, Kluwer, 1996; Arguments for a Derivational Approach to Syntactic Relations Based on Clitics, Blackwell, 2002).

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