Lorena Castillo: El caso de las subordinadas: evidencia de ECM en español

Seminari del CLT

El caso de las subordinadas: evidencia de ECM en español
LORENA CASTILLO (UAB)

Divendres, 23 de novembre de 2018

Since Stowell (1981), in the literature it is assumed that the clauses cannot receive Case, but in this talk we will argue that, at least in Spanish, they do. In order to provide evidence for that we will talk about infinitive-ECM structures in Spanish, where, unlike in English, the embedded subject passivization is not possible:

(1) a. Clarice heard lambs screech.

    b. Lambs were seen ti screech.

(2) a. Clarice oyó a los corderos chillar.

    b. *Los corderos fueron oídos chillar.

In this talk, we will propose that ECM subjects in Spanish may receive accusative or dative Case, depending on the categorial status of the embedded clause (cf. Chomsky 1986). Building on Ormazabal & Romero (2007), we argue that if the embedded clause is a TP, the ECM-ed DP receives dative Case while if the embedded clause is an XP (where X is a predicative category, V, Asp or P), then the ECM-ed DP receives accusative structural Case (STR).

In sum, we will argue that ECM structures in Spanish provide new evidence in favour of the view that assignment of structural Case is subject to locality constraints.