In this squib, we argue for a syntactic account of what Chomsky (1999) refers to TH/EX. On the observation of the merits and demerits of the phonological and syntactic accounts of object displacement in English, we argue for Radford`s (2000) in-situ D...
In this squib, we argue for a syntactic account of what Chomsky (1999) refers to TH/EX. On the observation of the merits and demerits of the phonological and syntactic accounts of object displacement in English, we argue for Radford`s (2000) in-situ DO analysis on the ground that it is faithful to the minimalist thesis since it does not assume any ad hoc stipulations and unmotivated operations. Splitting the relevant expletive constructions into existentials and presentationals, we suggest that the definiteness effect can be captured by Case checking mechanism: the Case of the associate in existential constructions is checked by the verb which is in vP, hence they show the definiteness effect. The associate of presentational there, on the other hand, bears nominative Case to be checked by T, which frees the DO of the definiteness effect.