That-clauses in English exhibit perplexing syntactic behavior. They appear to lack phi-features associated with Case assignment, as confirmed by the fact that a preposition cannot select a that-clause as its complement. However, a that-clause can function as a clausal subject that agrees in person and number with a verb, and this empirical fact is taken to indicate that that-clauses carry a subset of phi-features. The author proposes that phi-incomplete C bearing uninterpretable person and number features enters into an Agree relation with a that-clause argument, and attracts this clausal element directly to Spec-C. The author also suggests that this operation takes place because the phi-features originating in C cannot be inherited by T unless they constitute a phi-complete set.
1. Introduction
2. The Syntactic Position of a That-Clause as a Subject
3. The Featural Specification of That-Clauses
4. The Origin of Phi-Features and Feature Inheritance
5. Feature Inheritance vs. Feature Raising
6. Three Types of Syntactic Operations for Feature Inheritance
7. Concluding Remarks