Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 8

One of the long-standing questions in the syntax and semantics of English is how the CONTROLLER in control constructions is determined, and why it is determined in that manner. In literature, there are generally two lines of approaches to this issue: a syntactic approach based onMinimalDistance Principle (MDP; Rosembaum1967), which states that the controller is the closest c-commanding NP with respect to PRO, and the lexicalist approach (e.g., Chierchia 1984, Dowty 1985) that seeks an account in terms of the specific lexical semantics of each control verb. However, although both of these theories basically assume a dichotomy between obligatory and nonobligatory control, there is actually a control pattern in which the restriction on the controller selection lies somewhere intermediate between obligatory and nonobligatory control: a control patternwhich Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) call NEARLY FREE CONTROL, exemplified in (1).