Movement and Control
Author(s): Norbert Hornstein
Source: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 69-96
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4179050
Accessed: 07/04/2009 13:49
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Movement and Control
Norbert Hornstein
Since the earliest days of generative grammar, control has been distin-
guished from raising: the latter the product of movement operations,
the former the result of construal processes relating a PRO to an ante-
cedent. This article argues that obligatory control structures are also
formed by movement. Minimalism makes this approach viable by
removing D-Structure as a grammatical level. Implementing the sug-
gestion, however, requires eliminating the last vestiges of D-Structure
still extant in Chomsky’s (1995) version of the Minimalist Program.
In particular, it requires dispensing with the 0-Criterion and adopting
the view that 0-roles are featurelike in being able to license movement.
Keywords: obligatory control, nonobligatory control, Minimal Link
Condition, Greed
1 Introduction
This article is an exercise in grammatical downsizing. Since the earliest days of generative gram-
mar (Rosenbaum 1967), control and raising constructions have been treated differently, with
different rules and/or formatives involved in the two structures. In the beginning there was Equi-
NP Deletion. Equi, a deletion process, contrasted with Subject-to-Subject Raising, a movement
process. Subsequently, in most versions of the Extended Standard Theory, control was relegated
to binding theory-the binding of an abstract expression PRO-whereas raising remained an
instance of movement. This dual-track approach persisted into the Government-Binding (GB)
era.
In GB, control sentences like (la) have structures like (lb). These contrast with raising
sentences, (2a), and their phrase markers, (2b). In particular, the relation between John and the
embedded subject position in (la) is mediated through the binding of a grammatically distinctive
lexical formative in control configurations, namely, PRO. In raising structures like (2a) the relation
between the matrix and embedded subjects is a by-product of movement and results in an A-
chain in which the head, the antecedent, binds the tail, its trace.
(1) a. John expects to win.
b. Johni expects [PROi to win]
(2) a. John seemed to win.
b. Johni seemed [ti to win]
This article went through several incarnations and has, I believe, risen to a higher karmic plane owing to the kind
intervention of others. I especially thank Joseph Aoun, David Lightfoot, Jairo Nunes, and Juan Uriagereka. Special
thanks to Rozz Thornton, who started me thinking along the lines outlined here. This work was supported by NSF grant
SBR9601559.
Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 1999
69-96
? 1999 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 69