38 Steven Franks
Finally, in my published work I did not recognize the overgeneration problem,
nor do I currently have any idea how to restrict the sister of infinitival I’ characteriza-
tion of the SD context from applying in OC contexts. Franks (1995) was however writ-
ten under the view that case was a highly local Spec-head or sisterhood relation. With
minimalism’s probe-goal system, one can instead invoke C (or C+T) as implicated in
assigning the dative. This easily avoids the look-ahead problem, provided (as assumed
by Franks, Hornstein, and Babby) that OC involves a smaller projection than CP.
What can we take from this overview? Recall the fundamental problem: assuming
a bottom-up or cyclic syntax in which PRO is evaluated for case and the semipred-
icative agrees with it, the local dative should prevail or at least always be an option,
overgenerating dative semipredicatives even in OC structures. It would seem that only
by looking-ahead to determine whether PRO indeed has a controller, can it be decided
whether to assign PRO dative locally. Moreover, if PRO does not get case until its
cased controller enters the structure, then the case of the predicate adjective cannot
be determined until that point in the derivation. In short, (and putting aside option-
ality) we need PRODAT not to be available under OC. We saw above that this can be
accomplished under VB if route A – which means V merges directly with VP – is taken
whenever possible. Let us reject Babby’s InfP in favour of a more traditional hierarchy
of verbal projections, including at least CP, TP, vP, and VP, as in (32). One enticing pos-
sibility within the VB-system is then that a theta-role can only be passed up the tree,
for subsequent discharging, from a lexical projection, never a functional one.^20 For
the ambiguous cases, where for some speakers both routes are viable, we would need
to claim either that there are two possible structures, one with a mediating functional
category (which forces the SD) and one without, or that some heads can be analysed
either as lexical or a functional.
Note that this still does not explain why VB trumps the merger of a functional
head, allowing SD even when not required. The problem remains of ensuring that
route A is taken whenever available (assuming as above and contra Landau that the
possibility of taking either route implies two distinct structures). One way to make this
a principled choice under bottom-up syntax might be constructed along the follow-
ing lines. First, adopt Bošković’s (1997: 37–39) “Minimal Structure Principle” (MSP),
which states that only independently required phrase structure is projected.^21 His par-
ticular derivation of the MSP is as follows:- Assuming v is functional, what this means is when v merges with VP, then v’ must dis-
charge its role onto whatever merges into [Spec,vP]. Alternatively, if v counted as lexical, the re-
striction might be reworded “a theta-role can only be passed up the tree to a lexical projection.” - Bošković’s MSP is based on Law (1991), as well as proposals by a diverse list of syntacti-
cians including Speas, Radford, Grimshaw, Doherty, Safir, and Chomsky, and finds its concep-
tual origins in Pesetsky’s (1982) theory of selection.