A Challenge to Null Case Theory

Proposals of Noam Chomsky (1995), Roger Martin, & others, whereby PRO would receive a null case that can only be checked by impoverished infinitival inflection, are challenged by an analysis of case agreement in Latin control complements showing that in Latin, PRO always shares the case of its controller. Italian sentences of the types promisi di essere io il vincitore 'I guaranteed the winner to be me' vs ordinai a lui di essere me nel film 'I asked him to be me in the movie' are held to preserve the Latin case dependency of PRO on its controller. Implications for theories in which PRO is case resistant are considered, & it is suggested that an adequate explanation might be formulated in the framework of Norbert Hornstein's (1999) treatment of control as raising. 15 References. J. Hitchcock