trace pronoun

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:36 PM -0500 2/16/02, sagehen wrote:
>  >In a message dated 2/16/2002 1:55:27 PM, sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM writes:
>>
>><< I think HIM is the subject of [to] resign. >>
>>
>>If it is the subject, then why is it marked as an oblique? I can't imagine
>>anyone saying, "...  whose superiors refuse to let he resign."
>~~~~~~~~~
>The question of whether infinitives have objective case subjects has come
>up here before.  I hold that they do.  As in "I want him to resign."  I
>think arnold zwicky had some contrary evidence for other sorts of
>constructions.
>AM

It's really a theoretical question that can't really be answered in
isolation.  For a long time, generative grammarians were split into
camps differing on, inter alia, whether the "him" in the above
sentence is a (surface structure) main clause object, as its case
(and other factors) suggest (see Postal's _On Raising_, 1974), or the
subject of "resign" that gets accusative case via "exceptional case
marking" (Chomsky's term) by specific verbs (e.g. "want" and
"expect") into a non-finite and/or non-tensed clause.  There is some
evidence that the accusative/objective/oblique is the default case in
English, showing up in citation forms, in post-copular predicate
nominals (if you're not an English teacher), in conjoined subject
noun phrases (although the nominative occurs there too, depending on
register and dialect), after comparatives, etc.  For some speakers,
the nominative case is used for subjects of tensed clauses, and
that's about it.  (But then there's hypercorrectio--"between you and
I"--and all sorts of other complications.)

larry