Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exceptional and Small Clauses

So it appears that the non-finite inflection does not have the capacity to assign Case as
if it could, (8c) would be grammatical.
But if this is true, where does the accusative Case on the subject of the non-finite
clause in (6b) come from? We know that accusative Case is assigned by light verbs in
other situations, could the accusative Case come from a light verb in this structure?
Consider the structure in more detail. The verb believe has an experiencer subject and
hence there is a light verb which assigns this -role. The clausal complement of the
verb sits in its specifier position and the verb will move to support the light verb:

(9) vP

DP v'

the outlaws v VP

believe 1 -e CP V'

C' V

C IP t 1

e DP I'

him I vP

v'

v VP

to be on their trail

While in principle this might be possible, it does place the Case assigning light verb
and the DP to which it assigns Case in rather distant positions. This would not be
advisable as on the whole it appears that Case assignment is a local affair and thus
there are limitations on how distant the Case assigner and assignee can be. In
particular, if the situation pictured in (9) were accurate, we would expect any light
verb to be able to assign an accusative case to the subject of a clause appearing in the
specifier of its VP complement. But this is not so:

(10) a *the outlaws think 1 -e [VP [CP him is on their trail] t 1 ]

b *the outlaws hope 1 -e [VP [CP him to be on the wrong trail] t 1 ]

Note that this has nothing to do with the finiteness of the complement clause, (10b) is
just as ungrammatical as (10a) and the latter involves a non-finite clause. There is
clearly a difference between verbs like believe which can take non-finite complement
clauses with accusative subjects and verbs like hope which cannot. One observable

accusative