Polish equatives as symmetrical structures 81
In (32) the two DPs mutually c-command each other and, hence, in accordance with
(33), they do not bind each other and therefore no Principle C violation arises.
As far as case marking in identity statements such as (31) is concerned, Perelts-
vaig considers nominative to be the unmarked form. She notes that this case can be
found with two types of nominals, namely: “(i) those whose nominative is licensed by
a certain syntactic configuration, and (ii) those that need not be marked for case at
all” (Pereltsvaig 2001: 213). For her, ‘bare’ copular sentences constitute the latter set, as
the two DPs found in them are not arguments, and hence do not need case. For this
reason, they are associated with the default nominative case. Consequently, in Perelts-
vaig’s model case valuation takes place independently of Agree, and so does movement
to the [Spec, TP] position, as has been mentioned above (for the idea that Move is
parasitic on Agree, cf. Chomsky 1995, however, Chomsky 2008, following Lavine &
Freidin 2002, opts for the dissociation of Move and Agree).
5.2 Pereltsvaig’s analysis applied to Polish
Let us now try to apply Pereltsvaig’s account to Polish equatives with the copula to
like those in (2)–(4) and (8). It seems that the structure she offers in (32) needs to be
modified to accommodate both być ‘to be’ and to. The structure of (3) would then look
as in (34):
(34) TP
DP T′vPvty tiTDPjestem DP DPtoJaiThe structure in (34) contains the unaccusative verb być ‘to be’, which is a head of vP,
and to, which is placed in T, in a way analogous to predicational to-clauses such as (11).
The difference between the predicational sentence (11) and the equative in (34) lies
in the type of complement the verb być takes. In the former it is followed by a PredP
complement, while in the latter it requires a ‘bare’ small clause complement.
So far it has been shown that Pereltsvaig’s account can be applied to Polish equa-
tives with some minor modifications. Let us now point out some problematic issues
her analysis raises for Polish and in general. First of all, Pereltsvaig suggests that the
two DPs in a symmetrical relation must have identical features. This certainly cannot