Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 6

It is assumed that the subject Mary moves from the Spec,VP position of the

embedded sentence to the Spec,IP of the main sentence. The motivation for this

movement is Case. DPs must have Case. Subject DPs cannot get Case in Spec,VP,

they have to move to Spec,IP to get nominative Case. But the infinitival marker, as it is

non-finite (present, past, future), cannot assign Case (*It seems Mary to hate big cats.).

The subject DP must move to the subject position of the main sentence. As the verb

seem does not have thematic subject, the subject DP of the embedded sentence can

move to the Spec,IP of the main sentence to get nominative Case. As this movement is

motivated for Case it is DP-movement.

In sentence (1e) there are three verbs. The lexical entries of the three verbs are in

(6a), (6b) and (6c), respectively:

(6) a know cat: [–F, –N, +V]


-grid: <experiencer, theme>

subcat: nominal

b believed cat: [–F, –N, +V]


-grid: <proposition>

subcat: sentential

c invent cat: [–F, –N, +V]


-grid: <experiencer, propositional>

subcat: sentential

The subject DP and the object DP of the verb know are in their canonical positions,

in Spec,IP and in Spec,VP, respectively. The lexical head of the object DP is modified

by a complex relative sentence. The lexical verb believed of the main sentence is

followed by a sentence as is required by its lexical entry. Notice that the passive form

of the verb believe has no thematic subject. In the most embedded sentence the verb

invent has a thematic subject, which should be in Spec,vP in the initial position to get

thematic role. Intuitively, we know that the subject of invent is the relative pronoun

who. It has the agent role ‘inventor’. It is marked for +wh feature, therefore it moves to

the sentence initial position as in (1).

Exercise 6

(1) a The diamonds were stolen yesterday.

b Will you meet Mary in Paris?

c Linguistic textbooks, I never read.

d I won’t trust you.

e Who does John like?

f Never have I been treated so rudely.

In sentence (1a) the DP the diamonds is the theme argument of the verb steal. It is a

passive sentence in which the theme argument moves to the canonical subject position,

as it cannot get case in its base position. The common wisdom about passivisation is

that the past participial form of the verb cannot assign thematic role to its agent

argument and cannot assign accusative case to its theme argument. As the Spec,IP

position of the sentence is empty, the theme argument can move there to get