A Wholesale Late Merge theory of control
Suzana Fong
August 2023 

I propose a version of the Movement Theory of Control (Hornstein, 1999, et seq.) according to which a lone determiner can be merged in a thematic position in the embedded clause, move into an additional thematic position in the matrix clause, upon which point its NP complement is Wholesale Late Merged (Takahashi & Hulsey, 2009). Along with Takahashi (2019), I propose that Fox’s (2002) Trace Conversion consists in transforming the residue of movement into a set of features that are formally indistinguishable from a pronoun. Likewise, along with Erlewine & Gould (2016), I propose that this interpretive procedure can apply at the Narrow Syntax, so that its result is visible for Vocabulary Insertion. The result is a theory of control that can account for why obligatory control PRO in a language like English has pronominal properties, a property that can be accounted for by a theory of control such as Chomsky’s (1981) PRO-based GB theory, but not by the original version of the MTC. Furthermore, this paper investigates languages where PRO is not phonologically null, but, rather, an overt pronoun, pointing out hitherto unnoticed generalizations about the nature of the clause where pronounced PRO’s occur, as well as about its status with respect to other pronouns that occur in languages that display an overt PRO. The theory proposed, coupled with a realizational framework of the grammar (Halle & Marantz, 1993, 1994) and with independently needed assumptions about phasehood, provides an account of such generalizations.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007513 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	manuscript --- comments welcome!
keywords:	obligatory control, wholesale late merge, movement theory of control, pro, pronounced pro, overt pro, phase, minimal pronoun, weak phase impenetrability condition, syntax
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