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  • Icelandic case-marked CP1
  • Anton Karl Ingason

1. Introduction

The similarities and differences of noun phrases and clauses are an old puzzle. Work on nominalizations has examined the extent to which the two may share internal structure (Chomsky 1970), and the external distribution of the CP resembles that of the DP, as Thráinsson (1979) argued for at length, focusing on Icelandic (using the terminology of the time).2 Yet the CP and the DP are not identical, and one difference is that CP is not obviously associated with morphological case.

This squib shows that the evidence that Sigurðsson (1991) used to reveal the case of PRO can be extended to the Icelandic CP. Just as certain elements overtly agree with the case of PRO, the same types of elements overtly agree with the case of CP. This is shown in (1), where the dative case of a CP subject is realized morphologically on the element báðu 'both'.3 [End Page 444]

(1) [CP  Að   hann hefði logið og    svikið       loforð]              var  báðu         haldið 
[CP that he      had   lied    and betrayed promise].dat was both.dat held fram.
forth
'It was claimed both that he had lied and broken a promise.'

The case agreement with the CP is interesting because it is exactly this type of evidence that provides the strongest support for the case-marking of PRO. Such evidence can thus be extended to support the view that CP can be case-marked and that the case of a CP can be realized morphologically. The present study does not contradict the view that a CP may not (always) need case (cf. Pesetsky 1982); rather, it provides evidence that when a CP is case-marked, it is not only in terms of some abstract licensing mechanism but also in terms of a morphologically realizable property.

Here, I adopt the view that CP can be case-marked directly. However, the main contribution of the squib is not to explore the structural details of configurations in which a CP appears to be in a case position, but rather to show that case is indeed assigned in environments where the argument is a CP rather than a DP. These findings may also support theories wherein the CP itself would not be case-marked, but rather linked to some silent element that has a case value, for example, a CP trace or a silent pronoun. Such theories will be discussed below.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents some background on the syntax of case in Icelandic and the types of diagnostics that have been applied in the literature to detect elusive case-marking as in the case of PRO. Section 3 presents the core evidence for overt case agreement with CP. Section 4 discusses some theoretical implications of the findings. Section 5 concludes.

2. Background on case and its empirical diagnostics

Icelandic grammatical subjects are not always nominative; they can appear in any morphological case (Andrews 1990 [1976]; Thráinsson 1979; Zaenen et al. 1985; Sigurðsson 1989). While subjects in the language are nominative by default and direct objects accusative, some verbs assign other cases to their subjects as demonstrated by the verb leiðast 'to be bored' in (2) which takes a dative subject.

(2) Henni/*Hún                  leiddist.
 her.dat/*she.nom bored.
'She was bored.'                                                                                                                                                                                     (Sigurðsson 1991: 328)

Analyzing a dative as a grammatical subject does not carry much weight unless we agree on some diagnostics for subjecthood. The literature takes the compatibility of an argument with the position of PRO in control infinitives to be a reliable sign of subject status. In Icelandic, PRO can correspond to a nominative (3) as well as a dative (4) element.

(3) Strákana         langar ekki til   [að  PRO           segja sögu].
boys.the.acc wants  not for  [to  PRO.nom tell    story]
'The boys do not want to tell a story.' [End Page 445]

(4) Hana      langar ekki til   [að PRO         leiðast].
her.acc wants not   for [to PRO.dat bore]
'She does not want to be bored.'                                                                                                                                                         (Sigurðsson 1991: 328)

We know from (2) that 'to be bored...

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