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Abstract: In response to Doron and Heycock (2010), this rejoinder reaffirms the conclusion of Landau (2009) that Hebrew has no Broad Subject construction. Both in distribution and interpretation, the alleged “broad subject” patterns with left-dislocated phrases and not with standard subjects. Doron and Heycock''s counterarguments are either inconclusive or confounded by independent factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier] more...

Hebrew has no multiple nominative construction (MNC) of the Japanese type, contrary to the claims of three recent studies. The alleged “broad subject” in the Hebrew constructions is nothing but a left-dislocated DP. A series of arguments is presented to the effect that this DP patterns with Ā-bar phrases and displays none of the subject properties characteristic of either standard or broad subjects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier] more...

Partial VP-fronting, in which a verb is fronted with one argument, stranding the other one, is subject to a curious restriction in both Hebrew and English: The fronted VP-portion must be a potential independent VP in the language. It is shown that both incremental merger and remnant VP-fronting cannot explain the restriction, whereas an analysis incorporating late adjunction of the stranded argument can. Late adjunction, in turn, cannot apply too deeply, which explains why the same set of environments inaccessible to partial VP-fronting force adjunct reconstruction. The analysis implies that not only Spell-Out, but also interpretive constraints, like the θ-Criterion, apply at the phase level. Furthermore, Condition A is shown to be another such constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Deriving the distribution of PRO in a principled manner is a central task for the theory of control. Traditionally, Case has been identified as the key to this problem: PRO was argued to bear no Case at all, or some special ("null") Case. I argue that PRO bears standard case like normal lexical DPs; clear evidence comes from languages with case-concord (Russian, Hungarian, Icelandic). Moreover, PRO (and obligatory control) may occur in finite clauses (Hebrew, Balkan languages). Conclusion: PRO's distribution must be completely divorced from Case, possibly because abstract Case does not exist. The alternative is to tie the distribution of PRO to the specific values of [T] and [Agr] on the I0 and C0 heads of the embedded clause ( Landau 2004 ). A feature-based algorithm predicts the distribution of PRO in a variety of clausal complements. It is shown that the system naturally explains some intriguing correlations between obligatory control and agreement in Basque and Welsh complementation structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

The copy theory of movement receives the strongest form of support from instances of movement leaving phonetically visible copies. Such is the case in Hebrew V(P)-fronting, where the fronted verb surfaces as an infinitive, and its “trace” is pronounced as an inflected verbal copy. This paper argues that V-doubling is explained by the same algorithm that determines pronunciation of single copies in canonical chains. The phonetic resolution of chains is PF-internal, strictly local, and need not appeal to cross-interface recoverability constraints. Crosslinguistic variation in predicate clefts largely reflects different morpho-phonological strategies of realizing the fronted predicate head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...