Abstract
This paper proposes a new analysis of the structure of the Spanish control verb construction in which the matrix verb selects the infinitival clause. Starting from the fact that there is a difference in syntactic phenomena, that is, clitic climbing, between control verb constructions, it turns out to be related to the type of matrix verb. It is argued that both infinitival clause selected by the volitional verb and infinitival clause selected by the non-volitional verb project CP category. I suggest that syntactic difference captured in these two constructions is due to Merge applied in the derivation process. Following Epstein et al.(2016), I assume that internal Merge and external Merge are freely applied. Under the concept of phase cancellation proposed by Chomsky(2015) and Epstein et al.(2016), I argue that C becomes visible in the derivation for infinitival clause selected by non-volitional verb and C becomes invisible in the derivation for infinitival clause selected by volitional verb.
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