This book revives and reinterprets a persistent intuition running through much of the classical work: that the unitary appearance of Obligatory Control into complements conceals an underlying duality of structure and mechanism. I argue that control complements divide into two types: In attitude contexts, control is established by logophoric anchoring, while non-attitude contexts it boils down to predication. The distinction is also syntactically represented: Logophoric complements are constructed as a second tier above predicative complements. The theory derives the obligatory de se reading of PRO as a special kind of de re attitude without ascribing any inherent feature to PRO. At the same time, it provides a principled explanation, based on feature transmission, for the agreement properties of PRO, which are stipulated on competing semantic accounts. Finally, it derives a striking universal asymmetry: the fact that agreement on the embedded verb blocks control in attitude contexts but not in non-attitude contexts. This book is unique in being firmly grounded in both the formal semantic and the syntactic studies of control, offering an integrated view that will appeal to scholars in both areas. By bringing to bear current sophisticated grammatical analyses, it offers new insights into the classical problems of control theory.

The subject of nonfinite clauses is often missing, and yet is understood to refer to some linguistic or contextual referent (e.g. Bill preferred __ to remain silent is understood as Bill preferred that he himself would remain silent). This dependency is the subject matter of control theory. Extensive linguistic research into control constructions over the past five decades has unearthed a wealth of empirical findings in dozens of languages. Their proper classification and analysis, however, have been a matter of continuing debate within and across different theoretical schools. This comprehensive book pulls together, for the first time, all the important advances on the topic. Among the issues discussed are: the distinction between raising and control, obligatory and nonobligatory control, syntactic interactions with case, finiteness and nominalization, lexical determination of the controller, and phenomena like partial and implicit control. The critical discussions in this work will stimulate students and scholars to further explorations in this fascinating field.

Verbs of detaching (clear, wipe, squeeze, etc.) may occur in two frames in Hebrew. In the Change of Location (COL) frame, the stuff is a direct object and the location is a locative source PP. In the Change of State (COS) frame, the location is a direct object and the stuff is an oblique PP. We demonstrate that this PP is headed by a null preposition, which is responsible for a cluster of peculiar syntactic effects. COL and COS in the two frames instantiate scalar changes. Alternating verbs do not lexicalize any scalar change; nonalternating verbs lexicalize either COL (e.g., remove) or COS (e.g., relieve), failing to occur in the opposite frame due to a constraint against the encoding of multiple scalar changes per event. The advantages of this analysis are critically compared against previous accounts.

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.

English-speaking children's emerging knowledge of control is investigated by focusing on the complementation of the verb want, a verb that permits both obligatory control and raising to object (RtO) complements. Children show an intriguing developmental pattern in their use of the infinitival marker to. Initially children produce complements with and without to; our diary data show that among those complements without to are ones in which the null subject is not controlled by the matrix subject. These non-control utterances disappear as children's use of to increases over time. At the time when to reaches ceiling in control complements, it is entirely absent from raising to object complements. The developmental data are analyzed using Landau 2000, 2004, 2006 Agree-based theory of control. On Landau's account, different kinds of clausal complements (e.g. indicative, infinitive, etc.) result from different assignments of tense and agreement on the C and I heads. The acquisition stages are argued to reflect the child's progressive grammatical hypotheses about the feature composition of possible complements for want. For both control and RtO complements, children initially assign features that result in subjunctive complements. Children's ‘non-adult’ utterances are all viewed as legitimate complement types made available by Universal Grammar.

Copy raising sentences (Charlie looks like his prospects are bright) are ambiguous between a thematic and a nonthematic reading for the subject, corresponding to whether or not it is the perceptual source. On the basis of Hebrew and English data, this paper motivates a novel generalization: a pronominal copy in the complement is necessary if and only if the matrix subject is not thematic. This follows if (i) a nonthematic DP must be licensed by predication, (ii) the clausal complement is turned into a predicate by merging with a null operator, and (iii) the pronominal copy is the variable required by the operator. Contra previous analyses, I argue that the complement in copy raising may be propositional, forming an “aboutness” relation with the subject. When it is predicative, however, a null operator is necessary, since CPs are not natural predicates. The dichotomy between propositional and predicative CPs cuts across the gap/copy distinction, and is manifested in other constructions, also discussed (hanging topic vs. left dislocation, rationale vs. purpose clauses, and proleptic object constructions).

Experiencers — grammatical participants that undergo a certain psychological change or are in such a state — are grammatically special. As objects (John scared Mary; Loud music annoys me), experiencers display two peculiar clusters of nonobject properties across different languages: their syntax is often typical of oblique arguments and their semantic scope is typical of subjects. I investigate this puzzling correlation and argue that experiencers are syntactically coded as (mental) locations. Drawing on results from a range of languages and theoretical frameworks, the book examines the far-reaching repercussions of this simple claim. It shows that all experiencer objects are grammaticalized as locative phrases, introduced by a dative/locative preposition. “Bare” experiencer objects are in fact oblique, too, the preposition being null. This preposition accounts for the oblique psych(ological) properties, attested in case alternations, cliticization, resumption, restrictions on passive formation, and so on. As locatives, object experiencers may undergo locative inversion, giving rise to the common phenomenon of quirky experiencers. When covert, this inversion endows object experiencers with wide scope, attested in control, binding, and wh-quantifier interactions. This synthesis thus provides a novel solution to some of the oldest puzzles in the generative study of psychological verbs. This book offers the most comprehensive description of the syntax of psychological verbs to date, documenting their special properties in more than twenty languages. Its basic theoretical claim is readily translatable into alternative frameworks. Existing accounts of psychological verbs either consider very few languages or fail to incorporate other theoretical frameworks; this study takes a broader perspective, informed by findings of four decades of research.

Although they participate in control relations, implicit arguments are standardly viewed as unprojected Although they participate in control relations, implicit arguments are standardly viewed as unprojected q-roles, absent from the syntax. I challenge this view and argue that implicit arguments are syntactically represented. The argument rests on the observation that implicit arguments can exercise partial control, and the claim that partial control must be encoded in the syntax (given plausible assumptions on the limits of lexical relations). I further argue that the syntactic constitution of implicit arguments is more impoverished than that of pro, explaining their differential visibility to various syntactic processes.

A rich literature on Icelandic syntax has established that infinitival complements of obligatory control verbs constitute a case assignment domain independent from the matrix clause, and in this differ systematically from all types of A-movement, which manifest case dependence/preservation. As Landau (2003) has observed, these facts provide significant counterevidence to the movement theory of control (Hornstein 1999 and subsequent work). Boeckx and Hornstein (2006) attempt to defend this theory in light of data from Icelandic. We offer here a review of the relevant literature, and we show that Boeckx and Hornstein's reply fails on several counts. We further argue that contrary to their claims, PRO in Icelandic receives structural rather than default (nominative) case, leaving the movement theory with no account for the distinction between PRO and lexical subjects.