On Clausal Movement to the Subject Position in Raising Constructions

This paper is concerned with the contrast in clausal movement of the subject position in raising constructions. The clause cannot move out of the predicate internal position with seem, but it can with likely. Moro (1997, 2000) proposed that they have different internal structures, in that the clause is directly selected by likely, but seem selects a small clause where a clause forms a predicate with it. Although Moro’s analysis elegantly explains the contrast, it encounters new problems. In this paper, I argue that seem may select a small clause headed by an empty adjective head. Following Stowell (1991) and den Dikken (2006), the empty head is an affix that is required to move to the matrix V. The head movement extends a phase from a small clause to the higher VP (den Dikken 2006), and the phase extension would trap the clause inside the small clause. Therefore, the clause cannot move to the subject position. As for the clause directly selected by likely, no empty head is involved and nothing blocks the clause from raising to the subject position.