Since null Case was identified to account for the syntactic behavior of PRO in the early days of the Minimalist Program, there has been a vast amount of research on this covert nominal. However, the majority of researchers have dealt with various issues focused on controlled PRO rather than arbitrary PRO. This paper proposes a unified approach to null Case assignment for PRO, while arguing that both arbitrary PRO and controlled PRO get null Case in exactly the same fashion under the probe-and-goal theory. The proposed analysis relies on the feature-based classification of complementizers whose phi-features play a central role via the mechanism of feature inheritance from C to T in determining what type of Case is assigned to the subject as well as what pattern of clause emerges in the derivation.
1. Introduction
2. Motivation of PRO Movement
3. Issues with Null Case
4. The Null Case Assigner
5. CP, FP, and Feature Inheritance
6. Defective Phi-Features in Nonfinite T and PRO
7. Infinitivals and Case Assignment
8. Raising and ECM Constructions
9. Residual Problems
10. Concluding Remarks