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Those Verbs Which Allow Or Require the Present Subjunctive In ON TRANSITIVE VERB PHRASE COMPLEMENTATION* SHUJI CHIBA Tsuda College Those verbs which allow or require the present subjunctive in the embedded clause may generally be expected, from their semantic properties, to take a transitive VP complement. However, this is not always the case. Besides transitive VP complements, some of them will be found to take other kinds of infinitival complements; we will find that these present subjunctive verbs can be divided into several different types as to their subcategorization properties. This paper explores these syntactic properties of some of those subjunctive- taking verbs, especially in the framework of the Government and Binding theory. 1. INTRODUCTION. Subcategorization properties of verbs may be expected to be completely predicted by the semantic characteristics of those verbs. However, since we lack, at present, the complete description of the semantic characteristics of verbs, we cannot predict their subcategorization properties to the smallest detail. For example, as Williams (1974: 38) points out, 'the three verbs decree, order, and demand are similar semantically, but their complement struc- tures differ radically,' as shown in 1: {decreed (1) a. John *ordered that Bill leave.1 demanded} {*decreed b. John *ordered of Bill that he leave. demanded} * This is a revised version of sections 1-7 of my paper, Chiba 1984 and is based on my talk at the annual meeting of the English Linguistic Society of Japan which was held at Tsukuba University in November, 1984. I am grateful to those people who gave me invaluable comments on my talk there. I would also like to thank Akira Ota, whose insightful comments helped shape this paper. Of course, the responsibility for remaining inadequacies is entirely my own. 1There is a dialect variation concerning the possibility of the subjunctive clause after the verb order, as we will see more closely in section 4. -81- 82 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 2 (1985) (*decreed c. John ordered Bill to leave. *demanded} {*decreed d. John *ordered to leave. demanded} The purpose of this paper is to investigate, in the framework of the Government and Binding theory (henceforth the GB-theory), the subcategorization properties of some of those verbs which have generally been considered to be transitive VP complementation verbs. Especially our attention will be drawn to those verbs which allow or require the present subjunctive in the embedded clause, as in 1a above. These verbs, it will be shown, do not behave in the same way as to the syntactic structures which they can take, although they are the same in that they take the subjunctive clause. The verbs which we take up in this paper are the following: advise, ask, beg, command, demand, dictate, insist, order, request, require, and urge. (In section 8, we will consider the case of force, although it usually does not allow the present subjunctive clause.) In the following sections we will pay attention to some of the important subcategorization properties of these verbs and try to describe these properties in the framework of the GB-theory. 2. SOME IMPORTANT GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN THE GB-THEORY. Before proceeding directly to this task of ours, it would be appropriate to briefly mention here some of the important general principles of the GB-theory which we will appeal to in the following sections, when we try to describe the subcategorization properties of those verbs mentioned above. In the GB-theory it is assumed that the properties and the distribu- tion of empty categories (i.e. PRO and trace) can be accounted for by the theories of government, binding, and Case. The theory of govern- ment contains the Empty Category Principle (ECP): (2) ECP: nonpronominal empty categories must be properly governed By way of illustration, consider the following examples: (3) a. Bill was believed [s t to be competent] b. *Bill was wanted [s'[s t to be competent]] In 3a, the trace t is properly governed by the main verb, while in 3b, t is ON TRANSITIVE VERB PHRASE COMPLEMENTATION 83 not so governed because of the boundary S'. (Note that believe is one of those verbs which can delete the S' category by S'-deletion.) Thus, the ill-formedness of 3b can be ascribed to the ECP. Next, as a second general principle in the GB-theory, let us consider the Binding Theory, especially its principles A and B: (4) Binding Theory (A) An anaphor is bound in its governing category (B) A pronominal is free in its governing category To see how principle A can account for the ill-formedness of relevant examples, compare the following two sentences: (5) a. It was believed that John is competent. b. *John was believed [s' (that) [s t is competent]] Principle A requires t in 5b, which is an anaphor, to find its antecedent in its governing category, the embedded S in this case. This requirement, however, is not satisfied; hence principle A of the Binding Theory is violated. (You will find that 5b violates the ECP also.) PRO, a pronominal without a phonetic matrix, is considered a pronominal anaphor. From this dual characteristics of PRO, we eventually get the following derivative principle: (6) PRO is ungoverned Since PRO is governed in 7b-c (by the main verb in the former case, and by the agreement element AGR in the embedded S in the latter case), both of the sentences are ungrammatical: (7) a. We wanted [s'[s PRO to be competent]] b. *We believed [s PRO to be competent] c. *We believed [s'[s PRO is competent]] On the other hand, 7a is grammatical, because PRO is not governed. The last general principle we consider here is the Case Filter, which is stated as follows: (8) The Case Filter *NP, where NP has phonetic content, but no Case The Case Filter has the effect of blocking a sentence which contains an NP with a phonetic matrix which, however, has no Case. Consider, for example, the following sentences: (9) a. John expected [s Bill to help Mary] b. *John tried [s'[s Bill to help Mary]] In 9a, Bill can be assigned the objective Case by the main verb expected, because the category S' has been deleted by S'-deletion. In 9b, however, Bill will be left with no Case assigned to it, since it 84 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 2 (1985) does not appear in a position to which Case can be assigned. (Note that try is not an S'-deletion verb.) So the sentence is blocked by the Case Filter. With these general principles as our guidelines, let us now turn to the description of those subjunctive verbs which we mentioned above. 3. THE VERBS Demand, Dictate, AND Insist. In this section, let us investigate the syntactic characteristics of the verbs demand, dictate, and insist. First, let us consider the following examples: {a) demanded (10) *John b) dictated Tom to leave immediately. c) insisted} As these examples show, demand, dictate, and insist cannot appear in this sentence structure. Next consider the following examples: {a) demanded (11) *Tom was b) dictated to leave immediately. c) insisted} The fact that the sentences in 11 are ungrammatical implies that the S-structures in 12a, b cannot be appropriate for these verbs: (12) a. Tom was Ven [NPt] [s' PRO to leave immediately] b. Tom was Yen [s t to leave immediately] c. Tom was Yen [s' [s t to leave immediately]] The reason for this is that t in 12a, b and PRO in 12a satisfy the general principles shown in section 2; if the S-structure of 11a-c is either 12a or 12b, the sentences in 11 would wrongly be predicted grammatical. On the other hand, the S-structure in 12c would correctly predict the ill-formedness of these sentences. That is, t in 12c is not properly governed, which is a violation of the ECP; cf. 3b in section 2. This structure would also go well with the fact that 10a, b, c, which are repeated below as 13a, b, c, respectively, with their presumed S-structure, are ungrammatical: {a) demanded (13) *John b) dictated [s'[s Tom to leave immediately]] c) insisted} That is, in 13a-c, the embedded subject Tom cannot be assigned a proper Case, thus a violation of the Case Filter; cf. 9b in section 2. This structure also seems to explain the fact that the sentences in 14 are ungrammatical: ON TRANSITIVE VERB PHRASE COMPLEMENTATION 85 {a) demand (14) *Who did John b) dictate [s'[s t to leave immediately]]? c) insist} Note that, in 14a-c, t must be properly governed, according to the ECP, which, however, is not satisfied in this structure; thus 14a-c are ungrammatical.2 So far, so good. However, consider the following sentences in 15 with their supposed structure shown in 16: {a) demanded (15) John b) *dictated to leave immediately. c) *insisted} {a) demanded (16) John b) dictated [s'[s RPO to leave immediately]] c) insisted} Supposing, as we did above, that the embedded structure [s'[s...]] is correct for these verbs, it should predict that all of these sentences are grammatical, since PRO in this structure satisfies the principle in 6 in section 2. But, in reality, only the a-sentence is grammatical. To be especially noticed here is that we cannot regard the S-structure of sentences like 15b, c as the one in 17: {a) dictated (17) John b) insisted}[NPPROi] [s'PROi to leave immediately] A structure like this is generally prohibited, because here the first PRO is governed, which is a violation of the general principle concerning PRO. Given these properties of demand, dictate, and insist, it would be natural to assign the structure [s/[s...]] only to demand among these three, and to regard the other two as those verbs which do not occur in any infinitival constructions.
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