42 Steven Franks
b. Ljuba priexala, čtoby [*Bore/*ej obedat’].
Lyuba.nom came so_that Borya.dat/she.dat dine.inf
‘Ljuba came [*for Borya/*for her to have lunch].’
c. Želanie Igorja [*Bore/*emu pojti] nas očen’ rasstroilo.
desire Igor.gen Borya.dat/he.dat go.inf us very upset
‘Igor’s desire *for Borya/*for him to go upset us very much.’
d. Dlja nas utomitel’no [*Bore/*nam rabotat’].
for us exhausting Borya.dat/we.dat work
‘It is exhausting for us [*for Borya/*for us to work].’
e. Ivan dumaet, čto [*vsem /*emu /*nam
Ivan.nom thinks that all.dat/he.dat /we.dat
pojti domoj] nam važno.
go.inf home we.dat important
‘Ivan thinks that it is important to us [*for all /*for him/*for us to go
home].’
f. [*Tebe/*mne ostat’sja doma] rasstroilo by menja.
you.dat/I.dat st ay.inf home upset cond me
‘[*For you/*for me to stay at home] would upset me.’
Working within GB, in which PRO could not bear case and, moreover, it was specifi-
cally case features which allowed NPs to be overt, I was forced to regard the problem
that the SD occurs even in environments where no overt dative subject is possible as
damning for the agreement account, despite its intuitive appeal. Consider also exam-
ples such as (45), which should be acceptable if there were an independent source of
dative case within the infinitive:
(45) Mne važno [(*vam) žit’ odnomu].
I.dat important you.dat live.inf alone.dat
‘It is important for me [(*for you) to live alone].’
Yet there is a correlation between the potential in Russian for a dative subject and the
existence of the SD. Franks (1995: 256–259) therefore opted for a “direct assignment”
model, in which the SD was assigned to a (pronominal declension) adjective in the
same general configuration as that germane to dative subjects, but under looser licens-
ing conditions. Specifically, (argument) subjects and (adjunct) semipredicatives are
similar enough structurally to be targeted by the same case-assignment rule, and this
rule requires an additional licensing factor when it applies to arguments but not to
adjuncts. Restating these ideas somewhat, I argued that: (i) Infl(ection) assigns case
to its specifier; (ii) when Infl is [+agreement] that case is nominative and when it is
[–agreement] that case is dative; (iii) this only applies to subject NPs when Infl is also
[+tense]; and (iv) adjuncts that happen to occupy specifier position are insensitive to
the [+tense] licensing requirement. Thus, in most instances where overt dative subjects