Case and Expletives: Notes Toward a Parametric Account

Abstract

It will be the purpose of this paper to explore a number of phenomena and problems revolving around the general issue of Case assignment, especially as concerns expletive NPs. The question of why expletives require Case, which has become a difficult one under several recent theories, will come under particular scrutiny. Recent proposals of Chomsky (1986) concerning expletives and of Belletti (1988) will (eventually) be considered in some detail. Evidence will be offered for Belletti’s proposal that Case transmission does not exist, and, consequently, that even arguments associated with expletives must be directly Case-marked. Certain problems that this raises for the analysis of expletives of Chomsky (1986) will be examined and a refinement of Chomsky’s expletive replacement will be offered.

This article appeared in slightly different form in Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 23, Number 3. I am grateful to Maria Bittner, Noam Chomsky, Catherine Chvany, Samuel D. Epstein, David Pesetsky, Mamoru Saito, Lisa Travis, two Linguistic Inquiry reviewers, and a reviewer for this volume for valuable suggestions. In addition to presentation at the Second Princeton Workshop on Comparative Grammar, portions of this material were presented in seminars and/or colloquia at the following universities: University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Tsukuba, International Christian University, University of Arizona, City University of New York, University of Toronto, University of Maryland, University of the Basque Country. The questions and suggestions of the audiences at those presentations have led to numerous improvements of the analysis.