On Control in Greek

Abstract

The term ‘control’ has been used in the literature to refer to two logically separate phenomena, namely: a) the semantic phenomenon of obligatory coreference between a higher clause argument and the empty subject in the complement clause, and b) a syntactic configuration with the empty category (ec) PRO in subject position of a complement clause following a verb of control (verb with the feature specification [+subject control] or [+object control]). The fact that in English, as Chomsky (1981) has argued, these phenomena coincide has led to the view that whenever there is obligatory coreference between main clause argument and a missing embedded subject, the latter must necessarily be a PRO. In this paper we will argue that the semantic and syntactic correlates of control are separable by providing evidence from Greek (Gr) which shows that, although obligatory coreference between main clause argument and an embedded empty subject obtains, the controlled ec has the properties of pro rather than PRO. In this context, it will also become clear that the functional category responsible for the characterisation of a clause as finite in Gr is that of person and number agreement (AGR). The question of finiteness is crucial in discussing the distribution of PRO because, in its standard definition, being [+anaphor, +pronominal], it must obey the “PRO theorem”, i.e. it must be ungoverned and uncased. This, in turn, means that PRO can only occur as the subject of a non-finite verb and that since all clauses in Gr, with the exception of gerunds not discussed here, contain verbs with rich AGR, PRO cannot be licensed as their subject. Even in theories such as Bouchard (1982), Manzini (1983), Koster (1984), Hornstein and Lightfoot (1987) and others, where it is argued that controlled PRO should be interpreted as an ec governed by the higher verb (more accurately the higher V’) establishing coreference via Principle A of the Binding Theory, PRO must still be ungoverned from within its own clause and must also be uncased.