The Interaction of Th/Ex and Locative Inversion

Abstract

THE INTERACTION OF TH/EX AND LOCATIVE INVERSION Milan Rezac University of the Basque Country and Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes/Naoned In English expletive constructions involving passive participles, the (highest) object surfaces in the pre-participial position (lb), rather than in the post-participial one expected from active constructions such as (la). Following Chomsky (2001), I refer to the pre-participial position as the Th(ematization)lEx(traction) position and to the movement if there is one as ThlEx.' The proper analysis of Th/Ex plays a crucial role in recent discussion of phases (Svenonius 2000, Chomsky 2001, Holmberg 2002), which harks back to its earlier role in discussions of cyclicity (see Milsark 1974:173-179, 235n6), of the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) and specifier-head agreement (Lasnik 1992, 1999:chap. 4, Holmberg 1994, 2002), and of the analysis of expletive constructions (Milsark 1974, Burzio 1986:154-158, Boeckx 1999, Law 1999, Caponigro and Schutze 2003).