Exceptional and Small ClausesThis means that the VP doesn’t act as a barrier to government. From observations
given in (8) above, we can conclude that the for complementiser assigns Case to the
subject of its non-finite clause complement, as the DP subject is only grammatical
when the complementiser is present. If this is so, then IP does not count as a barrier
either as the complementiser can Case mark the subject through the IP:
(14) CP
C'
C IP
for DP I'
But if neither VP nor IP is a barrier to government, then we expect that the Case
marking relationship depicted in (12) should be perfectly possible. There is no reason
however to believe that any element can assign Case from outside a CP to any element
within the CP and indeed it is a standard assumption that CP does count as a barrier to
government. This supports the assumption that the non-finite complement clause of a
verb like believe has an IP status and is not a full CP.
Given that clauses are normally CPs, a clause which only has an IP status is an
exception. Hence, such clauses are known as exceptional clauses and the verbs which
take exceptional clauses as their complements, i.e. verbs like believe, are known as
exceptional verbs. Finally the process of assigning Case to the subject of an
exceptional clause is sometimes called Exceptional Case Marking, or ECM for short.
Below are a few examples of exceptional verbs:
(15) a the sheriff expects [the outlaws to be in hiding]
b the horse supposed [the sheriff to be lost]
c the deputy assumed [his horse to be outside the saloon]
d the bartender understood [the horse to be brighter than the deputy]
e the law requires [the sheriff to arrest the outlaws]
In all these cases the complementiser for would be ungrammatical if used to
introduce the non-finite complement. All of these verbs also may have a finite
complement clause, which is obviously a CP as the that complementiser can appear:
(16) a the sheriff expects [that the outlaws are in hiding]
b the horse supposed [that the sheriff was lost]
c the deputy assumed [that his horse was outside the saloon]
d the bartender understood [that the horse was brighter than the deputy]
e the law requires [that the sheriff should arrest the outlaws]
Thus it is only the non-finite complement of exceptional verbs that are IPs.
Another observation that supports the claim that the subject of the exceptional
clause is Case marked by the light verb of the exceptional verb is that these verbs can
undergo passivisation. Recall that in English it is only verbs which have a Case
assigning light verb that can undergo the process, which we described as the