The uniform Case-licensing of subjects in Welsh

This paper investigates the properties of Welsh infinitival clauses within a generative framework. In particular it addresses a long-standing paradox first noted by Borsley (1986), namely that PRO and lexical subjects appear to have an identical distribution in Welsh infinitival clauses. Previous analyses such as Rouveret (1990, 1994), Harlow (1992) and Hendrick (1988) try to predict the distribution of PRO and lexical subjects in Welsh on the basis of external government of the infinitival clause. I argue that these accounts fail to capture the correct distribution of the inflected infinitivals in Welsh, and present an alternative analysis in which the subjects of all Welsh clause types are Case-licensed clause-internally. A second issue concerns finiteness, tense and agreement. Welsh inflected infinitivals display subject agreement; some are finite, others non-finite, although none contains a tensed verb. A major question is therefore which clausal properties are involved in Case-licensing

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