I-Subjects

Among the issues addressed are the nature of the superscripting system proposed by N. Chomsky (Lectures on Government and Binding, Dordrecht: Foris, 1981); the relationship between insertion of an expletive empty category in subject position in ergative languages (or unaccusative constructions in null-subject langs); & insertion of pleonastic subjects such as there in Eng. A rule of universal grammar: "Coindex NP with Infl in the accessible domain of Infl" is proposed & motivated. It is shown that this rule interacts with other grammatical systems in a way that ultimately simplifies that grammar. It is suggested that Chomsky's superscripting system can be replaced by subscripting. Data from a variety of languages including Eng, Hebrew, & Spanish support the arguments. A typology of pleonastic elements is proposed, based on their interaction with binding conditions. 57 References. B. Annesser Murray