Intervention Effects in Experiencer Constructions and Their Implications for the Theory of Move and Agree

Intervention Effects in Experiencer Constructions and Their Implications for the Theory of Move and Agree

This paper is to propose an account for the asymmetry between Move and Agree in English and Icelandic experiencer constructions. The proposed account is based on a couple of claims. We first argue that Move applies before Agree, departing from Chomsky's (2000, 2001a, b) definition of Move. Second, we attribute the agreement intervention effects in both languages to a violation of the Defective Intervention Constraint. Building on the proposed analysis, we turn to explore the similarities and differences among French, Italian and Spanish in experiencer constructions. In doing so, we ascribe the cross-linguistic differences in blocking effects among these languages to the availability of the dative subject as well as the selectional property of seem-type verbs.