Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Syntax Square 10/16 - Neil Banerjee

Speaker: Neil Banerjee (MIT)
Title: Embedded subject licensing properties of hope
Date and Time: Tuesday, October 16, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:  
Iatridou (2017) notes that hope shows mixed properties in term of Pesetsky’s (1992) classification of verbs that take non-finite complements in that it allows both PRO and traces as subjects of the embedded infinitive.

(1) a. I hope to win the race.
    b. Alex is hoped to know the answer to your question.

In this talk, I will show that the behaviour of hope is systematically variable, but not mixed. Present-oriented uses behave like wager verbs in allowing traces but not PRO and future-oriented uses behave like demand verbs in allowing PRO but not traces.

(2) *Alex is hoped to win the race.

I adopt Pesetsky’s proposal that empty categories in this position are (anti-)licensed cross-clausally by the matrix verb and develop an account of the behaviour of hope based on Wurmbrand’s (2014) proposal that future infinitives contain a syntactic realisation of a future operator. I propose that a doxastic (un)certainty presupposition of the verb determines whether or not the future operator is optional, obligatory, or banned in the complement of a given verb, and that this operator is a barrier to licensing of traces. Thus, as noted by Martin (2001), only future infinitives will allow PRO in their subjects. Such an account links the cross-clausal empty category (anti-)licensing abilities of the verb to its semantics, rather than relying on syntactic selection as in Pesetsky (1992). This facilitates a movement away from theories that posit purely syntactic restrictions on the derivation to ones that are more interface-oriented.