Summary

We have seen that null constituents (i.e. constituents which have no overt phonetic form but have specific grammatical and semantic properties) play a central role in syntax. We began by looking at null (finite, imperative, truncated and non-finite) subjects, arguing in particular that control infinitive clauses have a null PRO subject which can refer to some expression within a higher clause, or refer to some entity in the domain of discourse, or have arbitrary reference. We have showed that elliptical clauses like that bracketed in He could have helped her or [she have helped him] are TPs headed by a null (ellipsed) tense auxiliary. We will extended this null T analysis to auxiliariless finite clauses like He enjoys syntax, arguing that they contain a TP headed by an abstract tense affix which is lowered onto the main verb by the morphological operation of Affix Hopping in the PF component. We have argued that bare (to-less) infinitive clauses like that bracketed in I have never known [him tell a lie] are TPs headed by a null variant of infinitival to. We concluded that all finite and infinitive clauses contain a TP headed by an overt or null T constituent carrying finite or non-finite tense. We have argued that all finite clauses are CPs, and that those which are not introduced by an overt complementizer are CPs headed by a null complementizer which encodes the force of the clause (so that a sentence like He enjoys syntax is declarative in force by virtue of being a CP headed by a null declarative C). We saw that for infinitives, the infinitive complements of want-class verbs and control infinitives are also CPs, and went on to posit that all canonical clauses are CPs.

However, We have argued that ECM (Exceptional Case-Marking) clauses with accusative subjects like that bracketed in I believe [him to be innocent] are defective clauses which have the status of TPs rather than CPs. We have examined case-marking, arguing that a transitive head assigns accusative case to a noun or pronoun expression which it c-commands, an intransitive finite complementizer assigns nominative case to a noun or pronoun expression which it c-commands, and a null intransitive non-finite complementizer assigns null case to a pronoun expression which it c-commands. We also noted that in consequence of Pesetsky’s Earliness Principle, noun and pronoun expressions are case-marked by the closest case-assigner which c-commands them. We have looked briefly at the syntax of nominals, arguing that bare nominal arguments (like Italians and opera in Italians love opera) are DPs headed by a null determiner which has the grammatical property of being a third-person determiner, the selectional property of requiring as its complement a nominal headed by a singular mass noun or plural count noun, and the semantic property that it has a generic or partitive interpretation. We concluded that canonical nominals (more particularly, nominal arguments) are D-expressions, comprising either an overt or null D-pronoun (like he or PRO) used without a complement, or an overt or null determiner (like the or ø) used with a noun expression as its complement; however, we noted the claims by Chomsky and Longobardi that only referential nominal arguments are DPs, not quantified nominals, vocatives, exclamatives or predicate nominals.