2 Alexander Grosu
are CPs headed by this argument-probing head, and that furthermore adjectival and
participial modifiers are also CP structures of this kind (albeit defective in their phi-
feature endowment).
A third topic, which has been most extensively studied by syntacticians, seman-
ticists, and pragmaticists, concerns the possible anaphoric relations between various
types of nominals in discourse, and in particular, the devices used by various lan-
guages for zeroing in on privileged anaphors and cataphors of expressions functioning
as antecedents. An illuminating illustration of this type of research is Abraham (2007),
which studies in detail the disambiguating potential of various kinds of anaphoric
expressions in a variety of languages, for example, the competition found in specific
situations in German between the definite article der, the demonstrative pronoun die-
ser, the personal pronoun er, and/or the emphatic article pronoun der.
The topics tackled by the contributions to this volume are devoted to various
aspects of the internal and external syntax of DPs in a wide variety of languages which
overlap in part with the first of the topics mentioned in the preceding paragraph and
are largely complementary to the other two topics. In particular, the contributions
address the internal configurational structure of various types of simplex and complex
DPs, as well as the position of DPs within larger structures, agreement in phi-features
and/or case between DPs and their predicates, as well as between sub-elements of DPs,
and/or the assignment of case to DPs in specific configurations. What follows in the
remainder of this introductory chapter is a brief outline of the concerns of the indi-
vidual papers, of the background claims and results on which they are built, and of the
theses they argue for. The first four chapters of the book focus (primarily) on matters
concerning the external syntax of DPs, and the remaining, on matters concerning their
internal syntax.
Steven Franks addresses a classic puzzle in the syntax of items known as ‘semi-predic-
atives’ in Russian infinitival clauses, which contrast in their case agreement properties
with ordinary adjectives. Basically, semi-predicatives agree in case with the null infini-
tival subject in the context of Obligatory Control, but exhibit dative in the absence of
a controller or in the context of Non-obligatory Control. Adopting a raising analysis
of Control (à la Hornstein 2001 and contra Landau 2003, 2008 ) and adapting it to
the more recent view of Movement as Re-Merger, resulting in multi-domination of a
single phrase, Franks proposes that Dative on semi-predicatives does not result from
agreement with the null infinitival subject. Rather, semi-predicatives may be either
adjectival or nominal, the adjectival form appearing in Obligatory Control construc-
tions and the nominal one elsewhere. In the latter case, the nominal semi-predicatives
are assigned Dative by the matrix verb, without involving the infinitival subject.
Anna Bondaruk deals with the internal structure and agreement properties of equa-
tive copular constructions in Polish containing the pronominal copula to, and with the