The Subject of Defective T(ense) in Slavic*

In this paper we argue that the EPP requirement of Tense (that it occur with a specifier) is an independent syntactic primitive that is operative in the absence of both nominative Case and subject-predicate agreement. This proposal is supported empirically by a class of accusative-Case-assigning unaccusatives in Russian and Ukrainian. For these predicate types, the direct internal argument bears accusative case, but occurs in Spec-TP at PF. This results only when T lacks agreement features, thereby establishing a correlation between a defective Tense, which is φ-incomplete, and a φ-complete light-v, which values accusative Case of a complement. We conclude that there is no such thing as “Case absorption”. This displacement, which is not predicted by Burzio’s Generalization, is driven by the EPP, rather than Case or agreement.