On the Constituency of Infinitives

ing away from idiosyncratic properties which govern the choice of particular A, V, or N, it is clear that 13a-f exhaust the well-formed structures permissible under Case Theory. Then 13a-c are the structures in 12; in each instance, the complement subject is assigned Case by the lexical complementizerfor. Structures 13d-f are illustrated by these examples: (14) a. It is illegal/silly [s e to leave the country]. b. John promised/seemed/tried [s e to leave the country]. c. the desire/intention [S e to leave the country] In each instance, there is a sentential complement with a null complementizer. Since for is absent, no Case can be assigned to the complement subject. But then it follows that a null category is possible in these positions, since only lexical NP's must have Case; no such stricture holds for non-lexical NP's. 7 Apparently languages may differ as to which lexical categories are Case assigners; cf. Riemsdijk 1981, in which Case assignment by adjectives in German is discussed. 8 We take S to be the maximal projection of S, and ultimately of INFL (as distinct from VP, the maximal projection of V). 9 Variations can be imagined for fixing Case assignment and well-formedness (cf. Fiengo & Battistella 1980, Lasnik & Freidin 1981). 10 We follow here a suggestion of J.-R. Vergnaud. Notice that Case assignment is across S. which is not a maximal projection. 119 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.191 on Tue, 11 Oct 2016 04:45:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms LANGUAGE, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 1 (1982) The structures of 13g-i are exemplified below: (15) a. *It is illegal/silly/likely [s him to leave the country]. b. *John promised/tried [s him to leave the country]. c. *the desire/intention [him to leave the country] The ill-formedness of these examples follows directly from the Case filter, which requires Case-marking for lexical realization. Since no for complementizer is present, no Case is assigned to the complement subject. Hence each contains a lexical NP without Case, in violation of the filter. Missing from the inventory in 13 are the following configurations containing for-to strings: (16) a. ... A [for e to VP] b. .. V [for e to VP] c. ... N [for e to VP]