Belfast English and Standard English: Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax)

BELFAST ENGLISH ANDSTANDARD ENGLISH

OXFORD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE SYNTAXRichard Kayne, General Editor

Principles and Parameters of Syntactic SaturationGert Webelhuth

Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in theGermanic Languages

Sten Vikner

Parameters and Functional Heads: Essays inComparative Syntax

Edited by Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi

Discourse Configurational LanguagesEdited by Katalin E. Kiss

Clause Structure and Language ChangeEdited by Adrian Battye and Ian Roberts

Belfast English and Standard English: DialectVariation and Parameter Setting

Alison Henry


Dialect Variation andParameter Setting

ALISON HENRY

New York OxfordOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1995

Oxford University Press

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Copyright © 1995 by Alison Henry

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHenry, Alison.

Belfast English and standard English : dialect variation andparameter setting / Alison Henry.

p. cm.—(Oxford studies in comparative syntax)Includes bibliographical references and index,

ISBN 0-19-508291-5ISBN 0-19-508292-3 (pbk.)

1. English language—Dialects—Northern Ireland—Belfast.2. Belfast (Northern Ireland)—Social conditions.

T. Title.II. Series.

PE2589.B44H46 1995 427'. 94167—dc2094-8751

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Preface

One of the goals of linguistic theory is to establish the extent to whichall languages are similar, and the boundaries within which they may dif-fer. This book is a study of how the syntax of a non-standard dialect ofEnglish differs from standard English. The analysis presented is under-taken within the Principles and Parameters framework, but it is hopedthat it will also be of interest to those working in other frameworks, orinterested simply in a description of the grammar of Belfast English,something which has not hitherto been available. With this in mind,each chapter begins with a description of the differences betweenBelfast English and standard English in relation to the structure beingconsidered, before going on to consider their analysis.

This is, to the best of my knowledge, one of the few wide-rangingstudies of a non-standard dialect of English that has been undertakenwithin the Principles and Parameters framework; indeed, even article-length studies are very few. This is at first sight very surprising, giventhe vast amount of attention that has been devoted to standard English,and the potential contribution to the theory of studies of closely relatedvarieties of language, as evidenced by the large quantity of fruitfulresearch on the Romance languages, and on the Scandinavian lan-guages. A rich source of information has thus been largely unavailableto linguists hitherto; indeed, not only have treatments within the Princi-ples and Parameters framework been unavailable, but, because of thelow status generally accorded to non-standard dialects, even descriptiveaccounts have not been compiled. It is possible to find out somethingabout a standard language like English by looking at descriptive or ped-agogical grammars; but such grammars have not in general been written

viii PREFACE

for non-standard varieties, which have often been regarded simply asdegenerate versions of the standard (see Milroy & Milroy 1991).

Although this book discusses a particular variety of English, that spo-ken in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, many of the features dis-cussed occur in other varieties. Thus a number of them occur inHiberno-English in general—for example, inversion in embedded ques-tions—and others are also found in some North American dialects, forexample for to, which has also been documented in the Ozarks and theOttawa Valley, possibly as a result of emigration. It should thus be ofinterest to those working on other non-standard or regional varieties ofEnglish.

Earlier versions of Chapters 2 and 3 of this book were presented aspapers at the Linguistics Association of Great Britain Conference, and Iam grateful to audiences there for much useful feedback. Chapter 4 isadapted from a paper which appeared in Natural Language and Linguis-tic Theory (Henry 1992).

I am very grateful to Jim McCloskey, Nigel Duffield, Sten Vikner,Fritz Beukema, Marcel den Dikken, David Pesetsky, and Angelika vanHout for helpful comments and discussion on the topics considered inthe book.

Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Subject-Verb Agreement 16

3. Overt-Subject Imperatives 45

4. For-To Infinitives 81

5. Inversion in Embedded Questions 105

6. Subject Contact Relatives 124

7. Conclusion 136

Notes 759

References 142

Index 147




1

Introduction

The Study of Dialect Variation

One of the major goals of linguistic theory is to establish what is uni-versal in human language, and what are the limits on linguistic varia-tion, that is, in how far and in what ways the grammars of speakers maydiffer from one another.

One way of approaching this question is to look at languages whichare superficially very different from one another, and to find out to whatextent there are true deep-seated differences between the languages, andhow these differences can be accounted for. A complementary approachis to look at closely related languages or dialects and to examine thedegree of variation that is possible between grammars which are inmany other ways similar. The latter approach has been used produc-tively in relation to Romance and Scandinavian languages and dialects,but there has been comparatively little work in this framework ondialects of English, where most research has been on the standard vari-ety of the language. In this book, we consider how a non-standard vari-ety of English, Belfast English, differs from the standard language.

The study of dialect variation presents a particular challenge to aview of language which sees the ways in which languages may vary asbeing highly restricted. The Principles and Parameters approach togrammar views human language as essentially invariant, with the possi-ble ways in which grammars may vary from one another being limitedto the setting of a small number of innately specified parameters alongwhich language may vary. Dialects at first sight do not seem to varyfrom one another in precisely the way this view would predict.

3

4 BELFAST ENGLISH AND STANDARD ENGLISH

Although some researchers have hoped that studying dialect variationwill enable us to find dialects which differ in a single parameter, thissearch has not been easily fulfilled, and it will not be fulfilled in thisstudy. Rather, we will show that Belfast English differs from standardEnglish in a number of ways, but these are not all derivable from a sin-gle difference in parameter setting.

Moreover, within Belfast English, indeed within a single constructionsuch as the imperative, there are, as shown in Chapter 3, a number ofdifferent grammars possible.

What we will show, however, is that the different possible grammarsall result from parameter setting differences permitted by UniversalGrammar. That is, there is more variability in grammars between stan-dard and dialect, and even within dialect speakers, than one mightexpect. But the differences all clearly reflect possible choices of para-meter setting, rather than, for example, the presence or absence of lan-guage-particular rules.

What is noticeable about the differences between Belfast English andstandard English is that, in many cases, they derive from different char-acterisations of particular lexical elements, rather than of a functionalcategory as a whole. Thus, for example, Belfast English infinitives dif-fer from standard English infinitives in that for can be a clitic in the for-mer but not in the latter. Imperatives differ in that the imperative mor-pheme, which appears in C, can be strong in Belfast English, forcingmovement of the verb to C. The effect of this difference is that inimperatives, the main verb can raise to C as in the V2 languages; but,because this difference is tied to the property of a specific item, theimperative morpheme, rather than being a property of C holdingthroughout the language ("The V-feature of C is strong"), the superfi-cial difference between the dialects is not very great: overall the wordorder patterns are the same, except in imperatives.

The co-existence of different grammars in a speech community raisesinteresting questions about how language acquisition proceeds; childrenwill usually have input from more than one adult, and the adults whomthey hear will often have grammars with different parameter settings. Itcan be observed that where this is the case, children do not necessarilydevelop a grammar which covers all of the data in the input to whichthey have been exposed. Rather, they appear to select the parameter set-ting which is compatible with the majority of, but not necessarily all,the data in the input. This shows that language learning is strongly

Introduction 5

determined by innate factors; learners do not add language-particularrules which would enable them to develop grammars which could coverall the data, nor do they necessarily select the parameter setting whichwould cover the entire range of possibilities exemplified in the input.Rather, from the small range of possible grammars permitted by UG,they select the one which best fits the data. For a detailed discussion ofthis process of selection, see Chapter 3, where we discuss Belfast Eng-lish imperatives.

Apart from imperatives, Belfast English differs from standard Eng-lish in a number of other interesting ways, which will also be discussedin detail in subsequent chapters.

Subject-verb agreement is optional:

(1) The eggs is/are cracked.(2) The machines works/work well.

Inversion is possible in embedded questions, whereas it is restrictedto matrix questions in standard English

(3) I wonder did they go.(4) She asked had anybody called.

For to is possible before infinitives:

(5) They seem for to be late.(6) I want them for to win.

Relative clauses where the subject is relativised occur without overtrelative pronouns

(7) We had a window looked out on that side.(8) There's a woman in our street went to Spain last year.

and certain finite subordinate clauses occur with null subjects, in what isotherwise a non-pro-drop language.

(9) They were lucky got away.(10) You were as well took the job when you were offered it.

The analysis of these constructions is relevant to a number of currentissues within syntactic theory in general and English syntax in particular.

A number of characteristics of English which have been claimed toderive either from universal principles or from parameter settings hold-ing for English seem to differ in Belfast English. Thus, it has been


claimed (by Rizzi & Roberts 1989 and Vikner 1991, among others) thatthe unavailability of inversion in embedded questions in English derivesfrom the Wh-criterion (Rizzi 1991; for a discussion of this feature, seeChapter 5). Although the Wh-criterion seems otherwise to apply inBelfast English just as in standard English, inversion is freely availablein embedded questions in Belfast English, calling into question thisanalysis unless some other factor can be brought in to account for itsavailability. Similarly, a number of accounts have been proposed forwhy main verbs in English (except be and have) never raise out out ofVP: for example, Pollock (1989) suggests that they cannot assign their0-roles from higher positions because AGR is weak in English; but asshown in Chapter 3, Belfast English imperatives seem to show suchmovement, and any account of why verb raising is not generally possi-ble must therefore take account of the fact that it does happen in thiscase. Examining such structures in detail will allow us to see whetherthe analyses proposed for standard English are correct, but additionalfactors in Belfast English mean that the facts look different, or whetherin fact the standard English analyses do not hold up when faced withdata from another dialect.

Before we go on to look in detail at the differences between BelfastEnglish and standard English (and within Belfast English), it will beuseful to set the scene by considering some background issues. Thus,although the study is concerned with the grammars of contemporaryspeakers of Belfast English rather than the historical development ofthat variety, it will be useful to consider briefly the historical and geo-graphical background of this variety. This is done in the next section.We also need to outline briefly the theoretical framework in which thestudy is undertaken; this will take up a later section, titled "Principlesand Parameters Theory." The final section of this chapter considers thespecial methodological issues and problems which arise in working onnon-standard dialects.

Belfast English: Some Background Information

Belfast English is the variety spoken in and around Belfast, the capitalof Northern Ireland. Belfast is a major commercial and industrial centrewith a population of some half a million people.

English speakers in Belfast are largely monolingual, and there is no

Introduction 1

community of native Irish speakers in the area, although there is a smallbut growing number of Irish-medium schools for children whose par-ents wish them to be educated in Irish. For most Belfast English speak-ers Irish is a subject learned at secondary school if at all; there are fewbilingual speakers, and thus any influence from Irish almost certainlyderives from historical, rather than contemporary, contact between thetwo languages.

The English spoken in this area of Ireland descends largely from thatintroduced by the plantations of Ireland, when English and Scottish set-tlers came to Ireland in the seventeenth century, bringing their languagewith them. The local population at that time was Irish-speaking, andindeed quite a few of the settlers learned Irish. The use of Irish in theBelfast area had however died out by the end of the nineteenth century.

The plantation took place on an extremely large scale; the censusreturns for 1658/9 show that of a total population of 31,221 in Antrimand Down, the counties which border Belfast, 13,614 were of Englishor Scottish descent. Although many of the settlers learned Irish, theintroduction of such a large number of English speakers, who held theeconomic and political power, marked the beginning of the decline inthe use of Irish in this area (Patterson 1880).

Rural Ulster speech is generally considered to consist of two maindialects, Ulster Scots, which is closely related to Scottish English, in theNorth-east, and the Central or Mid-Ulster dialect, which shows moreinfluence of Irish. Belfast, as the major city in Northern Ireland, hasattracted such an influx of population in search of work from manyother areas that its dialect cannot be clearly defined as belonging toeither of these two groups.

In relation to standard English and some other varieties, Belfast Eng-lish can be considered to be a conservative one (it is indeed part of thelocal folklore that we speak English as it was spoken in Shakespeareantimes). Thus, some of the constructions discussed here were used in ear-lier forms of standard English, and they have been retained only inBelfast English and other conservative dialects today. For example theuse of for to with infinitives was found in earlier stages of English. Fur-thermore, the co-occurrence of wh-elements with that and inversion inimperatives are also found in earlier stages of standard English.

One of the interesting characteristics of Belfast English is that,although Belfast is known to be in many ways a divided society, withoften little contact between the Protestant and Catholic communities,


Belfast English is not distinguished, either phonologically or grammati-cally, along religious lines. All of the constructions discussed in thisbook are used by both communities, and where there is any distinctionin usage, it is between working and middle-class speakers or older andyounger speakers, rather than along religious lines. It is simply not pos-sible to tell to which community persons belong by how they speakEnglish. Belfast English is thus very much something which the com-munities have in common, something which tends not to be noticedbecause of two factors: First, the fact that the allegiance of one commu-nity to England (and standard English), or sometimes to the rural UlsterScots dialect with its clear Scottish roots, and the other to Ireland (andIrish) means that the local variety of speech is championed by no one.Second, and perhaps more important, this is a variety of English whichhas little status and which is not officially recognised. Schools, bothProtestant and Catholic, devote a great deal of time to the teaching of"correct" (=standard) English, and the ability to use standard syntax isconsidered to be a mark of education; conversely the use of local syntaxis considered a badge of the lack of education. Many people consider itquite legitimate to discriminate against users of local syntax in employ-ment. Milroy & Milroy (1991) quote the following letter from a localnewspaper as typical. The issue in question is the use of non-standardpast tense forms; many verbs have different past tense and past partici-ple forms from those found in standard English. For example, the pasttense of see is seen and the past participle saw, whereas the opposite isthe case in standard English (for details see Finlay 1988).

For many years I have been disgusted with the bad grammar used byschool-leavers and teachers too sometimes, but recently on the lunch-time news, when a secretary, who had just started work with a firm, wasinterviewed her first words were: "I looked up and seen two men" etc.It's unbelievable to think, with so many people out of work, that shecould get such a job. ("Have went," Saintfield, N. Ireland)

Although there are now a few government-funded Irish-mediumschools in Belfast, there is no right to be educated in the local dialect ofEnglish; all education is based on standard British English. Childrenwho use the structures discussed in this book in school work, with acouple of exceptions that have acquired the status of a local standard,will simply be marked wrong. Things appear to be changing slowly,with the requirement in the new Common Curriculum that children

Introduction 9

learn something about local dialects, and a local dialect dictionary isbeing compiled; but there is a long way to go before Belfast English isseen as anything other than a deviation from the standard. Hence, thedisbelief with which most local people greeted the news that I was writ-ing a book about the grammar of Belfast English; in their view, it hadn'tgot any.

This book, then, is about a dialect which is widely spoken but whichhas no official status; thus, studies of its syntax have been few. Therehas been some excellent sociolinguistic work on Belfast English (seeMilroy 1980, Milroy 1981), but much of it has focussed on phonology.It is hoped that, apart from the analyses it discusses, this book willmake available a description of the syntactic characteristics of BelfastEnglish which will be of value also to readers outside the focus of Prin-ciples and Parameters theory.

Principles and Parameters Theory

This book is written within the framework of Principles and Parameterstheory, in particular its latest version, the Minimalist program of Chom-sky (1992). This theory views language as largely invariant, with thedifferences between languages deriving from choices between a smallnumber of innately determined parameter settings.

It is beyond the scope of this introduction to provide a wide-rangingaccount of that theory, and the reader is referred to works such as Rad-ford (1988) and Haegeman (1991) for comparatively introductoryaccounts, or to Chomsky (1986, 1992) for more technical statements ofthe nature of the theory. However, it is worthwhile to draw attentionhere to some relevant aspects of the framework which will be assumedin this book, particularly insofar as they represent differences betweenthe Minimalist approach and earlier approaches with which some read-ers may be more familiar.

The only levels of representation recognised within the Minimalistapproach are "interface levels," where the linguistic system interfaceswith other systems: these are the level of Phonological Form, where itinterfaces with the pronunciation system, or at Logical Form, where itinterfaces with other cognitive systems. Thus, there is no level of D-structure or S-structure as assumed in earlier models.

Chomsky (1992) argues that all languages are similar at Logical


Form; the differences between languages result from the fact that someprocesses apply earlier in some languages than others; those processeswhich apply early are overtly visible, while those which apply later arenot.

While earlier models envisaged words being introduced from the lex-icon in their base form, and moving in the course of the derivation toacquire Case-marking or to pick up affixes, the Minimalist model envis-ages words being inserted from the lexicon in their fully specified,inflected form, and moving for checking to affixes; once checked, theaffixes delete. What determines whether movement for checkingapplies early or late is whether the affix in question is weak or strong. Ifstrong, it is visible at PF if undeleted, and it will be identified as anunattached affix at that level, causing the derivation to crash; therefore,where a functional element is strong, it triggers overt movement, beforewhat is called spell-out. If it is weak, movement does not occur untilLF.

The reason that movement is delayed until LF if possible is the Pro-crastinate Principle: movement occurs as late as possible, LF movementbeing in some sense "less costly" than overt movement and thereforepreferred.

Another important principle with a "least effort" flavour within Mini-malism is that movement only occurs if forced; there is no optionalmovement.

An important difference between the Minimalist approach and otherframeworks which will be relevant for our study here relates to Case.Earlier approaches incorporated a Case filter operating at surface struc-ture, which excluded structures in which an overt Noun phrase had notCase. At S-structure, in order to have Case, NPs had to be in a Caseposition, or be part of a chain of which one element was in such a posi-tion.

While the Minimalist approach requires Case to be checked, this canbe done either in the overt syntax or later. Since NPs are inserted fromthe lexicon with all their inflectional properties, the fact that an NP isovertly Case-marked does not mean it has to be in a Case position orpart of a Case-marked chain. It can raise to check Case at LF, subjectsraising to SPEC/AGRS and objects to SPEC/AGR0. As we shall see, this

seems to work well for Belfast English where in imperatives, subjectscan be in a non-Case-marked position at S-structure, something whichwould have presented a problem in earlier approaches to syntax.

Introduction 11

In accordance with the Minimalist proposals, the phrase structureconfiguration we will be assuming in our discussions is as shown in(11), with a range of functional projections above the verb phrase.

Since the Minimalist approach is relatively new, some areas, forexample that of infinitives, have not received extensive treatment in thenew framework. In discussing these areas we will also discuss possibleanalyses in an earlier framework.

The Minimalist approach presents a particularly restrictive approachto cross-linguistic variation: language varieties can only differ in rela-tion to the strength or weakness of the morphological properties offunctional elements; it will thus be interesting to see whether such arestrictive theory can accommodate the range of variation foundbetween dialects.


Before we go on to consider this possibility, however, we need tolook at some particular issues involved in the study of non-standard lan-guages.

Studying Non-Standard Language Varieties

A number of problems arise in working with non-standard dialects,which do not manifest themselves, at least to the same extent, in study-ing standard language, and it is worth noting them here.

First, there are problems in relation to obtaining judgements on sen-tences from native speakers. Speakers of Belfast English are aware thatmany of the things they say are regarded as ungrammatical in the pre-scriptive sense. When asked whether a sentence is grammatical or not,their first reaction is to say whether they think it would be correct instandard English. It is of course possible to overcome this in part byexplaining that what one is interested in is what people actually say inthe local variety of speech, not in what is commonly regarded as "cor-rect" English. There is nevertheless a strong tendency towards what Ihave termed "negative overreporting" (Henry 1992), that is, indicatingthat structures are ungrammatical when in fact the speaker actually usesthem; it is thus important to check judgements against naturally occur-ring data where possible, particularly to ensure that structures said to beungrammatical have not in fact been so judged simply because they arenon-standard. An example of this occurred when I was studying for toinfinitives; I asked a native speaker whether it was possible to have sen-tences where for to occurs directly after a verb like want; the speakersaid that sentences like:

(12) I want for to go.

were ungrammatical. But only a few minutes later, he remarked

(13) 1 want for to be helpful.

and this was not just a performance error; when we went back to theoriginal examples, he agreed that he would use them, although, headded, "Of course they wouldn't be right."

It is in my view particularly important to make sure that the data areaccurate in studying non-standard dialects, because once data andanalyses are available, they tend to be discussed and reanalysed without

Introduction 13

the original data necessarily being able to be checked. Such checking isparticularly difficult in the case of non-standard dialects, of which fewlinguists are native speakers. If I make claims about the grammaticalityof sentences in standard English, or French, or Japanese, there will bemany linguists who can check those judgements against their own intu-itions; but if I make a claim about Belfast English, this is not the case. Ihave therefore tried to be particularly careful in establishing what thedata are, and I have where possible checked grammaticality judgementsagainst naturally occurring data, by which I mean spoken utterances. Ihave not used any data from literary texts; although a number of lin-guists have used texts in looking at Hiberno-English (see for exampleDoherty 1993, Duffield 1993). Although such sources have the advan-tage of being easily verifiable, I regard them as not necessarily reflect-ing the actual usage of native speakers. As Milroy & Milroy (1991)point out, writers attempting to write in a dialect of which they are nottruly native speakers may not know exactly what the rules of the dialectare, and the language they produce may in fact be ungrammatical. Anexample from Belfast English quoted by Milroy & Milroy is the follow-ing, from a television script based on Gerald Seymour's novel Harry'sGame, where a Northern Irish speaker says:

(14) He's a hard man, but so is you Billy.

In Belfast English, as we will see in some detail in Chapter 2, it is possi-ble under certain circumstances for the third person singular form of theverb to occur with all subjects, a process known as singular concord. Itis clearly this process that the writer is trying to reflect here, but in factthe sentence produced is ungrammatical in Belfast English. Non-agree-ing third person singular verbs never occur in inverted structures, nor dothey occur with simple personal pronouns

(15) a. The girls is late.b. *They is late.c. *Is the girls late?

so that in the sentence used, it is ungrammatical to use is; the agreeingform are must occur.

(16) He's a hard man, but so are you Billy.

Thus I have avoided literary data sources.A second point, not unrelated to the unreliability of literary sources,


relates to identifying native speakers of the variety concerned, andensuring that one is obtaining judgements from speakers who actuallyuse the structure in question. Most speakers from Belfast will haveheard people using the structures discussed in this book; but not all ofthem will use every one of those structures themselves. Thus for exam-ple the usage of for to seems to be restricted to middle-aged and olderspeakers, and many younger speakers will not use it. Similarly, the lackof subject-verb agreement discussed above tends not to occur in thespeech of educated middle-class speakers. However, such speakersoften nevertheless think they have sufficient passive competence fromhearing other people use these structures to say when they are used.Often, of course, they are right, but they can also be quite wrong. Thuswhile speakers who do not themselves use non-agreeing verbs are usu-ally aware that agreement is obligatory with pronouns, many do notrealise that, for speakers in whose grammar this construction actuallyoccurs, it is also ungrammatical with inversion. It is thus very importantto be sure that judgements come from speakers who actually use thestructure in question.

A final problem relates to the co-occurrence of features in the gram-mar of individual speakers. If one is interested simply in documentingthe linguistic structures used in Belfast, one can be content with estab-lishing which structures are used by anyone in the area. But if one isinterested in defining the nature of linguistic competence, it becomesimportant to know whether structures can, or must, co-occur in thegrammar of a single speaker. This is particularly important in relation toparameter setting; one must be sure that structures claimed to be theresult of a single parameter setting in fact necessarily co-occur in thegrammars of speakers. For example, as noted above, subject-verbagreement sometimes fails to take place in Belfast English; in Chapter2, we argue that this is because SPEC/TP is available in Belfast Englishas a checking position for the subject; in Chapter 5, we consider inver-sion in embedded clauses, which as we point out might conceivably beexplained along similar lines, since one proposal made in relation toother languages with similar phenomena is that the subject may be inthis position. We in fact reject this analysis independently on linguisticgrounds, but we note also that even if it were possible to make theanalysis work, we would still have to take into account the fact thatmany speakers who use embedded inversion never use non-agreeingverbs; there might of course be a separate explanation for this, but nev-

Introduction 15

ertheless it is important to note whether features necessarily co-occur inspeakers' grammars; otherwise, one may make misleading analyses interms of parameter settings.

It is thus necessary to proceed with some care in studying a non-stan-dard dialect. With that caution in mind, let us go on to look at some ofthe ways in which Belfast English differs from standard English.

2Subject-Verb Agreement

There is a noticeable difference in subject-verb agreement patternsbetween standard English and Belfast English.

In standard English, the -s ending occurs only with third person sin-gular subjects; in Belfast English, a plural subject NP may occur with averb showing the -s ending, a phenomenon pointed out in a number ofsociolinguistic studies, and known as "singular concord" (Policansky1976, Milroy 1981, Finlay 1988).

(1) a. These cars go/goes very fast,b. The eggs are/is cracked.

It is not simply the case that the plural endings have a single form, 0,in standard English but two variants, 0 and -s in Belfast English, -s isnot in free variation with 0, for the occurrence of -s with plural subjectsis restricted in a number of ways. Thus as Milroy (1981) notes, per-sonal pronouns cannot normally have singular concord.

(2) a. *They goes very fast.b. *They is cracked.

Singular concord is also generally impossible with inversion.

(3) *Is the eggs cracked?

It will be argued here that "singular concord" verbs are in fact com-pletely unmarked for agreement; in sentences with singular concord,AGRS is weak in both V- and N-features, so that the verb does not raiseabove Tense before spell-out, and the subject (which we take followingKitagawa [1986], Koopman & Spottiche [1988], Kuroda [1988J, and

16

Subject- Verb Agreement 17

many others to originate VP-internally) need not raise to SPEC/AGRSP,but rather moves only as far as SPEC/Tense.

The chapter is organised as follows. In the first section, we outlinethe facts of singular concord and show that it is indeed a syntactic phe-nomenon; we argue that singular concord verbs are in fact completelyunmarked for agreement. Later, under the section titled "Pronouns andSingular Concord," we discuss the impossibility of singular concordwith certain pronouns. The final section, "Inversion and Singular Con-cord," examines the interaction of singular concord with I-to-C move-ment.

What Is Singular Concord?

We begin by outlining the facts of singular concord; next, we establishthat it is a syntactic, as distinct from semantic or pragmatic, phenome-non; we go on to show that singular concord verbs, which appear toshow third person singular agreement, in fact are unmarked for agree-ment. We conclude by showing that singular concord is incompatiblewith nominative Case and argue that this is because the subject is not inSPEC/AGRSP, but in the SPEC/Tense P position.

The Facts of Singular Concord

We begin here by outlining the facts of singular concord, since this con-struction has not previously been described in the syntactic literature.

Singular concord is always optional; that is, it is always possible tohave the plural form of the verb with a plural subject. As pointed out byPolicansky (1976), it would therefore be more correct to use the term"variable concord"; However, it should be noted that the variabilityonly exists for plural subjects; thus, while it is possible to use a singularverb when the subject is plural, as in (1) above, it is not possible to use aplural verb with a singular subject.

(4) *This car go very fast.(5) *The egg are cracked.

Singular concord is available for most speakers in all tenses of theverb which marks agreement; thus in addition to the present, it appearswith the verb be in the past tense (Be is of course the only verb to showagreement in the past tense in English).


(6) The students was late.

And it also occurs in the "historic present." This is a form of the verbwhich is used in storytelling contexts, and it differs from the simple pre-sent in using -s on the end of the first person singular as well as the thirdperson.

(7) The girls goes and tells them.

However, while all users of singular concord can use it in the presenttense, for some it is unavailable in the past tense of be and/or the his-toric present.

As we noted above, singular concord is impossible if the subject is asimple personal pronoun. However, there are certain circumstanceswhen pronominal subjects are possible. Thus for example pronounswhich are part of a co-ordination can have a singular verb, provided thatthey are not nominative.

(8) Us and them is always arguing.(9) Him and me goes there every week.

(10) Her and her mother works there.

(11) *We and they is always arguing.(12) *He and I goes there every week.(13) *She and her mother works there.

Demonstratives allow singular concord. Note that them, rather thanthose, is the distal demonstrative in Belfast English.

(14) These is cracked.(15) Them is no good.

Moreover, Belfast English has an additional set of plural personalpronouns not found in standard English, usuns, yousuns, and themuns;these allow singular concord.

(16) Usuns was late.(17) Themuns has no idea.

Thus it is not the case that all pronouns require agreement; only asubset of them does, the series of simple personal pronouns; we, they,and youse, which is the second person plural pronoun in Belfast Eng-lish, all require agreement.

As can be seen from the previous examples, singular concord is in

Subject-Verb Agreement 19

general possible both with raising verbs and with verbs which remain inVP. However, it is impossible with raising verbs if an adverb intervenesbetween the subject and verb; whereas (18a) is grammatical, as in stan-dard English, (18b) is not.

(18) a. The children really are late.b. *The children really is late.

Thus, it seems to be the case that the adverb position between the sub-ject and the topmost projection of INFL which exists in English isunavailable in singular concord.

There is not a general adjacency requirement between subject andverb in singular concord, however; an intervening adverb is fine withverbs which remain in the VP.

(19) The children really likes pizza.(20) These books probably costs a lot.

We noted above that agreement is obligatory where subject-auxiliaryinversion has taken place. Thus the following are ungrammatical

(21) *Is the students here?(22) *Has the children arrived yet?

Summarising, then, in Belfast English a verb with a third person sin-gular ending can occur with a plural subject NP, provided the subject isnot a simple personal pronoun, the verb is not inverted, and, if the verbis one which raises, nothing intervenes between the subject and theverb.

Singular Concord as a Syntactic Phenomenon

It is important to show at the outset that singular concord is indeed asyntactic phenomenon. For it is well known that subject-verb agreementcan be influenced by non-syntactic factors; thus, in standard BritishEnglish, a syntactically singular NP can have plural agreement if itrefers to a group.

(23) The government is/are planning to resign.(24) The committee has/have agreed on this.

It might be thought that singular concord is the converse of this; that is,


that a syntactically plural NP identifying a single "group" might have asingular verb. However, this is not the case. Singular concord occurswith all types of NP except pronouns, and does not favour any particu-lar type of NP. Moreover, and more clearly, singular concord structuresdiffer from the collective plural examples in that they do not behavelike sentences with normal agreement patterns. Thus, as noted above,inversion is impossible. This is not the case with the collective exam-ples, which permit inversion.

(25) Are the government planning to resign?(26) Have the committee agreed on this?

(27) *Is the members planning to resign?(28) *Has the office-bearers agreed on this?

In addition, the collective examples permit an adverb to intervenebetween the subject and verb with raising verbs, whereas as notedabove, this is impossible with singular concord.

(29) The government really are planning to resign.(30) The committee probably have agreed on this.(31) *The members really is planning to resign.(32) *The office-bearers probably has agreed on this.

Thus, there are distinct differences between singular concord casesand those where group nouns are concerned. In the latter case, there donot seem to be structural differences between these and sentences show-ing normal agreement, whereas in the singular concord cases, there aredefinite structural differences.

"Singular Concord" as Lack of Agreement Marking

One of the superficially surprising aspects of singular concord is that itinvolves the use of a form with an overt inflection, where a base form ofthe verb would suffice; rather than appearing in its base form, as in (33),the verb is in fact gaining an ending, as in (34).

(33) The children shout all the time.(34) The children shouts all the time.

We will begin by showing that so-called singular concord does notinvolve merely substituting the appropriate singular verb for a plural


one; rather, it involves complete lack of agreement marking. (Non-agreement would therefore be a more accurate term, but we will con-tinue to refer to it by its traditional name of singular concord.)

We noted above that co-ordinated pronouns may have singular verbs;now if singular concord simply involved substituting the appropriatesingular verb for the plural, we would expect a first person plural sub-ject to have a first person singular verb. We can test for this with be, theonly verb in English to have a first person singular which differs fromthe first person plural. What we find is that the first person singularnever occurs with a plural subject; apart from the first person pluralform, the only form we find is the third person singular.

(35) *John and me am going.(36) John and me is going.

(37) *Me and you am supposed to go.(38) Me and you is supposed to go.

That these are indeed first person plural subjects is seen from their cor-responding reflexive forms.

(39) John and me kicks ourselves.(40) Me and you is supposed to help ourselves.

Similarly, -uns pronouns and pronouns which occur as part of a largerNP always have the third person singular verb form.

(41) *Usuns am happy.(42) Usuns is happy.

(43) *Us students am very hardworking.(44) Us students is very hardworking.

This indicates that singular concord is not simply agreement in whichplurality is disregarded; rather, where there is not full agreement theverb is always in the form normally found with the third person singu-lar, which appears to be a kind of default agreement.

The lack of agreement raises the question of whether the subject is infact in SPEC/AGRSP in this structure. Mohammad (1989), discussing asimilar but not identical agreement phenomenon in Arabic, suggeststhat lack of agreement occurs when the subject does not raise to INFL,remaining rather in VP; thus, it is unable to copy its features to AGR,and there is no agreement. His analysis suggests that the subject posi-tion is filled by a null expletive; this will not work for Belfast English,


for two reasons. First, there is otherwise no evidence of null expletivesin Belfast English; just as in standard English only overt expletives arepossible.

(45) a. *NP[e] is a book on the table.b. There is a book on the table.

(46) a. *NP[e] is surprising that John won.b. It is surprising that John won.

Second, there is no word order difference between the sentences withagreement and those without. In Arabic, which is a VSO language,agreement is obligatory in SVO sentences whereas non-agreementoccurs in VSO sentences, as (47a and b) (from Mohammad 1989) indi-cate.

(47) a. l-?awlaad-u jaa?uu.the-boys-NOM came 3pm

b. jaa?a l-?awlaad-u.came 3sm the-boys-NOM

In these examples, it can be seen that the word order differencereflects non-raising of the overt subject out of VP where agreementdoes not occur. In Belfast English, if the subject were to remain in VP,there would be VS order with verbs which raise; but this is not the case,inversion being ungrammatical outside questions (and some impera-tives: see Chapter 3) and in any case excluded with singular concord.

(48) *Is the eggs cracked.(49) *Has the students arrived.

Chomsky (1992), commenting on these facts in Arabic, suggests thefollowing analysis within the Minimalist program: The NP feature ofAGRS can be strong or weak in Arabic, strength or weakness correlatingwith agreement or non-agreement. Thus, a verb showing agreement hasa strong NP-feature and triggers obligatory subject-raising in the syn-tax, whereas one without agreement has a weak NP feature, meaningthat the subject may not raise before spell-out. This analysis has thesame problems as Mohammad's in relation to Belfast English; here, theword order is identical in both agreement and non-agreement sentences,showing that the subject has raised to a position above the verb in bothcases; we cannot therefore straightforwardly propose an analysis underwhich non-agreeing verbs do not trigger subject raising.


Thus, the details of neither Mohammad's nor Chomsky's analysiscan be wholly adopted for Belfast English. But there is some evidencethat it is similar to the Arabic case in that the subject is not inSPEC/AGRSP. An important piece of evidence in this respect relates toCase; singular concord is incompatible with nominative Case-marking.Now, it is widely accepted that nominative Case is assigned or checkedunder Spec/head agreement between the subject NP in SPEC/AGRSPand AGRS (see for example Chomsky [1989,1992], Mahajan [1990]). Ifwe can show that nominative Case does not occur in singular concord,then this may be evidence that the subject is not in (and cannot get byLF into) a position in which nominative Case is checked; of course, thesubject will have to receive Case-checking in some other way, or thederivation will crash because it will contain an NP whose Case has notbeen checked; we return later to look at how this occurs. For themoment, let us consider the data relating to nominative Case-marking.

Since singular concord is impossible with simple personal pronouns,we cannot use these to test for nominative Case-marking. However, wecan again use pronouns which are part of a larger NP.

Co-ordinate pronouns can occur with singular concord, as notedabove. In general, co-ordinated pronouns in Belfast English may occureither in their strong form (which is morphologically identical to theaccusative, and does not vary for Case), or bear the Case assigned thewhole NP of which they are part. (For a discussion of Case-marking inEnglish co-ordinates, within a different framework from the one weadopt here, see Parker, Riley, & Meyer 1988). Thus in Belfast English,and indeed most varieties of colloquial English, both (50a) and (50b)are possible.

(50) a. He and I are going.b. Him and me are going.

Some dialects of English appear to allow strong forms identical to thenominative.

(51) They went with he and I.(52) John helped you and I.

but such forms are impossible in Belfast English. Co-ordinated pro-nouns always occur with either the Case assigned to the whole NP ofwhich they are part, or in the strong form, which is identical to theaccusative.


In Belfast English, non-agreement is possible only if the pronounsare not nominative.

(53) a. *He and I is going.b. Him and me is going.

(54) a. *You and they is going.b. You and them is going.

Although there is considerable variability in agreement with co-ordi-nate NPs in English in general (see Cowart 1991), and one patternfound is agreement with one of the conjuncts, it is clearly not the case in(54b) that the verb is agreeing with one of the coordinated NPs; for bothyou and them should trigger are rather than is.

In structures such as the following also, both the nominative and thestrong form may occur in colloquial English.

(55) a. We students are going.b. Us students are going.

Again, in Belfast English, singular concord is impossible with the nom-inative form.

(56) a. *We students is going.b. Us students is going.

It might be objected here that what we are detecting in examples like(56a), and also in co-ordinate examples like (53a) and (54a), is notungrammaticality as such but rather a sociolinguistic mismatch—withsingular concord being a non-standard feature, and thus soundingstrange when placed together with the formal, prestige form involvingco-ordinate pronouns in the nominative case. It is, however, possible torule this out by testing the effect of similar mismatches; thus for exam-ple the use of non-standard past tenses is highly stigmatised, much moreso than singular concord. But the use of co-ordinated nominative pro-nouns with such verb forms is judged to be grammatical by nativespeakers.

(57) He and I seen them.(58) We students done the work.

On the other hand, the combination of nominative pronouns with sin-gular concord is judged to be completely ungrammatical.

Assuming that in the structures in question pronouns may freelyeither appear in their strong form or receive the Case assigned to the

Subject-Verb 5

larger NP of which they are part, it seems that singular concord isincompatible with the nominative Case.

Thus, our analysis of singular concord must exclude the possibility ofnominative Case being checked in this construction. As we notedabove, nominative Case is often considered to be a property ofSpec/head agreement in AGRSP (Chomsky 1989, 1992; Mahajan 1990);thus, it is not surprising to find that where agreement is absent, so isnominative Case-marking, and this provides evidence that the subject isnot in these cases in SPEC/AGRSP, where it would have to have nomi-native Case.

This is not to say that nominative Case-marking is universally incom-patible with the subject occurring outside SPEC/AGRSP. In examples(47a and b) from Arabic (repeated below), the NP bears nominativeCase regardless of whether it is in SPEC/AGR,, as in (a), or not, as in(b), at spell-out. Nominative Case must of course be checked inSPEC/AGRSP at some stage in the derivation, but this need not bebefore spell-out; the subject can raise to SPEC/AGRS at LF, and checkCase at this level.

(47) a. l-?awlaad-u jaa?uu.the-boys-NOM came 3pm

b. jaa?a l-?awlaad-u.came 3sm the-boys-NOM

In Belfast English, however, we have seen that nominative Case-marking is impossible in singular concord. Something must thereforeexclude the checking of Case in SPEC/AGRS at LF; we will arguebelow that this is the availability of Case-checking in SPEC/Tense withsingular concord.

A piece of evidence which may help ascertain the position of the sub-ject can be found in adverb placement, which as mentioned above dif-fers between sentences with agreement and those without. As Pollock(1989) notes, in addition to the preverbal adverb position found in bothEnglish and French, there appears to be an additional position betweenthe subject and the highest head of IP available in English, so that anadverb may appear between the subject and a verb which raises, as in(59a) and (60a). Now it is unclear exactly what this position is, or whyadverbs should be restricted to occurring in this or a small number ofother positions. However, the important point in relation to our presentconcerns is that the adverb position between the subject and a raisedverb is not available in singular concord.


(59) a. The eggs really are cracked.b. *The eggs really is cracked.

(60) a. The girls probably have left.b. *The girls probably has left.

This again indicates that the subject is not in the same position as innon-singular concord cases.

Note that the unavailability of this adverb position in singular con-cord is in fact an argument in favour of the existence of such a position;Baker (1991) argues that there is a single adverb position and that insentences where apparently an adverb intervenes between a subject andraised verb, this is because in fact the verb has not raised. Thus forBaker the structure of (59) and (60) are identical to that of (61), wherethe verb has not raised; but note that in Belfast English, the adverb posi-tion between the subject and verbs which remain in VP is available insingular concord structures, indicating that a different structure isinvolved.

(61) a. The girls probably like coffee.b. The girls probably likes coffee.

Thus, we have noted that in singular concord, the subject cannot haveovert nominative Case and the verb is not marked for agreement.Assuming that the subject originates in VP, it seems that the subject hasnot risen as high as SPEC/AGRSP; the question then arises of where thesubject is at spell-out. Apart from the difference just noted, raisingverbs (in the sense of Pollock [1989]) manifest exactly the same patternof placement relative to negatives and adverbs with singular concord asthey do in sentences with agreement, indicating that the verb has raisedoutofVP.

(62) The eggs is not cracked.(63) The eggs is probably cracked.

Chomsky (1992) argues that the verbs be and have raise for checkingin the syntax, because they are too weak semantically to be visible formovement at LF. Since verbs are marked for tense in the singular con-cord construction, be must be at least as high as the Tense position inthe overt syntax; otherwise, since movement is unavailable at LF, theV-feature of tense would remain unchecked at LF, and the derivationwould crash. Given the subject-verb order, the subject must occupy anode higher than Tense. The obvious candidate here is SPEC/Tense P.


A strong argument in favour of this is the dependence of the avail-ability of singular concord on the choice of tense for some speakers. Aswe noted above, although most speakers have singular concord in alltenses, for some it is restricted to present tense, or restricted to presentand past and excluded in the historic present. Thus while most users ofsingular concord find (64), (65) and (66) all grammatical, for a substan-tial proportion, only (64) and (65) are grammatical, and for a smallergroup only examples in the present tense like (64) are possible.

(64) The teachers is busy.(65) The teachers was busy.(66) The teachers goes and tells the Principal about it.

(historic present)

Thus, the availability of singular concord is for some speakers depen-dent on the content of Tense, suggesting that it is Tense which isresponsible for Case-checking, and that for these speakers only certaintenses can check Case.

Note that this means that the ability to assign or check Case must be aproperty, not just of functional elements (e.g., Tense) but of particularinstantiations of those elements (e.g., the [+pres] Tense morpheme).Although this increases the number of grammars potentially available,it is in line with views which see the differences between languages asrestricted to the properties of individual morphological elements in thelexicon, rather than some abstract global properties of the morphologyin general; and it is going to be necessary in any case to handle the factthat for example certain complementisers (e.g., for in English: seeChapter 5) assign/check Case, whereas others do not.

An argument for the availability of Case-marking/checking inSPEC/Tense in Belfast English comes from the behaviour of negativepolarity items in that dialect. In Belfast English, for some speakers, neg-ative polarity items can occur in subject position in matrix clauses.

(67) Anybody wouldn't be able to do that.(68) I was surprised that anybody didn't go.

Such sentences are ungrammatical in standard English, a fact generallyattributed to a universal requirement that NPIs be strictly c-commandedby a negative operator at S-structure (Linebarger 1987, Laka 1990);since the subject position is not c-commanded by NEG in matrixclauses in English, negative polarity items cannot occur there. Thequestion arises as to how Belfast English manages to escape this


requirement. Duffield (1993) argues that the licensing condition on NPIitems can be reformulated to apply to LF, and is as follows:

(69) Case Condition:For a Negative Polarity Item to be properly licensed, at least oneCase-marked member of the NPI chain must be c-commanded by anegative operator.

Now clearly in general in NP chains, only the highest member of thechain is Case-marked. However, Duffield points out that if, in BelfastEnglish, there are two potential Case-marking positions for the subjectNP, SPEC/Tense and SPEC/AGRs, then there can be a Case-marked traceof the subject in SPEC/TP. Duffield argues that in a sentence like: (70)

(70) Any country couldn't stand it.

the negative element c-commands a subject trace in SPEC/TP, as in(71),

(71) [AGRPAny country i [AGRS couldn't]

T0 tj] [VP t; [v' stand it ]]]]

and that this subject trace is Case-marked. There is at first sight a prob-lem with allowing Case-marked positions in NP chains if one is tomaintain the least-effort principle: it may not be clear why an NP wouldraise if its Case has already been checked. It may be that the conditionshould be re-formulated to refer to potential Case-marking positionsrather than actual traces. Alternatively, it may be that the requirementthat the head of an NP-chain be Case-marked is not strictly correct. AnNP may be able to check Case in one position (e.g., SPEC/Tense) andthen move to another position to check agreement, so that the highestposition of the NP-chain is not the one which is Case-marked in fact.

However, there is another way of interpreting this, without referenceto subject traces. Suppose that, as Duffield argues, the negative elementleft-adjoins to TP at LF. Now in Belfast English, if no further raisingtakes place at LF, then at LF the negative element will be in the follow-ing configuration:

(72) [TPNeg[TP Any country [Tcould [VP stand it]]]]

If the subject has already checked Case, and the (non-agreeing) verbdoes not require to check agreement, then there is nothing to force LF-raising; the subject and verb can remain in Tense P, and presumably


AGRS will delete since it will not be required for semantic interpreta-tion, leaving the LF representation as in (72).

One way to distinguish between these two analyses would be to con-sider what happens when there is a plural NPI subject. If as we haveargued the subject in singular concord is in SPEC/Tense P, then itshould be impossible to have subject-verb agreement with an NPI sub-ject. That is, a sentence like (73a) should be impossible, whereas thecorresponding sentence without agreement should be possible.

(73) a. *Any animals aren't coming.b. Any animals isn't coming.

This seems to be the case; NPIs are only possible with non-agreeingverbs, indicating that it is not the potential availability of Case-markingin a certain position, but rather the actual presence of a Case-markedelement in the structure, that is the important issue.

If an approach along these lines is right, then it would be, as Duffieldpoints out, an important step towards reformulating the conditions onNPI licensing as LF, rather than S-structure, conditions, for it will beobserved that at S-structure, the negative element is below the negativepolarity item; for example in the following sentences, any is above n 'tand not, which are presumably in Tense (with did) and in NEG, respec-tively.

(74) a. Any student didn't apply for the job.b. Any student did not apply for the job.

Under the Minimalist program, S-structure does not exist as a sepa-rate level and all conditions are interface conditions, applying at LF orPF. The availability of negative polarity items in subject position inBelfast English seems to indicate that this is the case; at S-structure theNPI in subject position is not c-commanded by the negative element, aswould be required by the S-structure condition on negative polarityitems. However, if the condition is an LF condition, and negatives raiseto adjoin to TP, then we have a natural way to account for the possibil-ity of NPIs in subject position in standard English, and their impossibil-ity in standard English. NPIs are possible in Belfast English because thesubject can be in SPEC/TP at LF.

That there is a link between singular concord and NPI-licensing insubject position seems clear from the the fact that the two phenomenaseem to go together in speakers' grammars; those speakers who allow


singular concord also permit NPIs in subject position, and converselynon-users of singular concord find NPIs in that position stronglyungrammatical. This is a clear case where careful examination ofdialects or sub-dialects can help to show whether proposed connectionsare real or not, and where it is important to check what co-occurrenceconstraints there are on dialect features.

Further evidence in favour of the availability of SPEC/TP as a sub-ject-checking position comes from the availability of object shift inBelfast English. As we will see in the next chapter, in Belfast Englishimperatives, main verbs can raise to C, and this triggers object shift ofweak pronouns.

(75) Give you me immediately that book.(76) Tell you me always the truth.

Now, Bobaljik & Jonas (1992) argue that the availability of overtobject-shift is dependent upon the availability of SPEC/TP as an inter-mediate subject-checking position; for raising of the subject fromSPEC/VP to SPEC/AGRs over SPEC/AGR0 and SPEC/TP would vio-late shortest movement, whereas movement of the subject fromSPEC/VP to SPEC/TP over SPEC/AGR0 would not. Bobaljik and Jonaslink the availability of SPEC/TP as an intermediate checking position tothe marking of both tense and agreement morphology in the sameinflectional paradigm; clearly, this particular distinction will not holdfor Belfast English. Nevertheless, it is significant that Belfast Englishdoes show object shift which, in the Minimalist paradigm, should onlybe available overtly where the subject can move to SPEC/TP.

If the subject in Belfast English need not raise to SPEC/AGRS, thenwe would expect this to have other effects in the grammar; and indeed itseems that it does. For, as we shall see in the next chapter, in someimperatives the subject need not raise out of VP; this is clearly visiblewith object-raising, where the object raises in front of the subject.

(77) Throw me quickly you your end there.(78) Give her always you your full attention.

This lack of raising is particularly evident with unaccusatives; here,where there is both an auxiliary and a main verb, and therefore the mainverb does not move out of VP, the subject can occur after the mainverb, that is, it can remain in situ.

(79) Be going you out of the door when they arrive.


Similar considerations apply to passives; passive imperatives aresomewhat marginal for pragmatic reasons, but where they occur thesubject can appear in situ after the lexical verbs.

(80) Be elected you president before the end of the year.

We will consider imperatives in detail in the next chapter, arguingthat in this construction the NP-feature of Tense may be weak, and thiscoupled with the weakness of SPEC/AGRS means that the subject maystay in VP.

Chomsky's Minimalist program (Chomsky 1992) views Tense aschecking Case (when it raises to AGRS), and AGR as checking agree-ment. This is broadly what we are proposing here, with the differencebeing that Tense need not raise to AGR to check Case; rather, Case-checking can take place in SPEC/Tense P. The Belfast English exam-ples then differ from the case in languages such as Arabic, where AGRS

is not strong, in that there the subject has nominative Case-marking andraises to SPEC/AGRS at LF. In Belfast English, Case is already checkedbefore spell-out and therefore the subject does not raise further at LF.

Another difference from the approach outlined in Chomsky (1992)relates to the relationship between AGRS and AGR0. Chomsky suggeststhat the features of both AGR nodes must have identical values, so thatthe NP features of AGR are either both weak or both strong. In English,given this assumption, both must be weak, since otherwise the objectwould have to raise before spell-out, giving the (ungrammatical) ordersubject-object-verb. However, if our analysis of singular concord is cor-rect, then the difference between Belfast English and standard Englishis that, while in both the NP-feature of SPEC/Tense is strong, forcingthe subject to raise out of the VP, in Belfast English the NP feature ofAGRS is optionally weak, while in standard English it is strong. How-ever, the fact that in both varieties the object fails to raise out of VP(with certain exceptions: see Chapter 3) indicates that the strength offeatures of AGRS and AGR0 is not necessarily identical.

Note that singular concord occurs both with verbs which raise in thesyntax and those which do not raise until LF; in the latter case, the sub-ject raises to SPEC/Tense for checking in the syntax, but the verb doesnot move until LF.

Thus, it seems that the -s ending which appears with singular concordis pure Tense-marking. From this point of view, the -s ending is theunmarked form in relation to agreement; in one sense, agreement can be


seen as removing the -s ending from forms other than the third personsingular. This goes some way to explaining the puzzle, pointed out byKayne (1989), of why in English the third person singular form, whichin other languages is often unmarked, is the one which has an overtaffix; in fact, the third person singular is the unmarked form, showingonly a tense inflection, with other forms being for agreement.

Notice also that our analysis, which has the subject in singular con-SP, argues against the view that thesubject raises out of VP because agreement is obligatory in English(Kitagawa 1986); in singular concord the subject raises out of VP oblig-atorily even though it is not raising to SPEC/AGRSP and it is not trig-gering agreement. It thus seems that what forces the subject to raisemust be the need to check Case; since in Belfast English Tense option-ally checks Case, it need not raise further than SPEC/Tense.

Singular concord is available with do-support. Recent work suggeststhat do-support is a language-particular rule which inserts do to bearTense and Agreement when LF verb raising is impossible and raising inthe syntax is also excluded (Chomsky 1989, 1992; Pollock 1989), as forexample with negative sentences containing verbs other than be, have,and auxiliaries. Singular concord is possible with do-support, suggest-ing that do may be inserted in Tense, and is not restricted to insertion inthe highest head of IP.

(81) The children doesn't do their piano practice too regular.(82) Them oranges doesn't look too fresh.

Summarising the arguments in this section, then, we have proposedthat singular concord verbs are in fact completely unmarked for agree-ment. They thus raise only as far as Tense. Their subjects raise toSPEC/Tense P, a position in which default Case may be checked.

Pronouns and Singular Concord

We touched briefly in the previous section on the occurrence of singularconcord with pronoun subjects. Here, we look at this in more detail,addressing in particular the question of why some personal pronouns,those which are marked for nominative Case, do not occur with singularconcord.


(83) *They is going.(84) *We takes the bus.(85) *I reads the newspaper every Sunday.

An obvious solution to this question would be along the followinglines. Personal pronouns which bear overt Case must be marked eithernominative or objective/oblique. They must therefore check Case inpositions where nominative or accusative/oblique may be checked,rather than positions where default Case may be checked; TenseP can-not check nominative Case, and thus any nominative Case-marked itemwill be excluded from this position.

However, there is a possible alternative to this which we shouldexplore; weak pronouns per se might not be able to have singular con-cord because, for example, they were forced to move to SPEC/AGRpositions. Note that it is only pronouns which show Case in English,and therefore the constraint excluding nominative Case-marked itemscould be either a constraint on nominative Case-checking in the con-struction, or a constraint on the appearance of pronouns in it: bothwould have the same effect, since only pronouns show nominativeCase.

Before we can decide whether it is nominative Case-marked itemsper se, or (weak) pronouns that are excluded from singular concord, weneed to look in more detail at exactly which pronouns cannot have sin-gular concord; we also need to consider whether there are general con-straints on pronoun positions which could account for the exclusion ofnominative Case-marked pronouns from occurring with singular con-cord.

We noted above that NPs containing pronouns in their strong formmay occur with singular concord; thus pronouns which are part of a co-ordination may have singular concord.

(86) Us and them's going.(87) Him and me works in the city centre.

So may pronouns which are part of a larger NP

(88) Us students doesn't have much money.(89) You(se) kids is supposed to go home.

Demonstrative pronouns may also have non-agreement.

(90) These makes no sense.(91) Them's good for eating.


Note that here them is the distal demonstrative rather than the personalpronoun; them does not act as a nominative pronoun.

(92) Them's no good, are they/*them?(93) *John and Mary are good friends, aren't them?

Another subset of pronouns occurs with singular concord in BelfastEnglish. These are pronouns ending in -uns, usuns, yousuns, andthemuns, which are possible alternatives to the standard English set we,you and they.

(94) a. Usuns is going.b. Usuns are going.

(95) a. Yousuns is late.b. Yousuns are late.

(96) a. Themuns is no good,b. Themuns are no good.

These can be shown to be pronouns, rather than NPs containing apronoun like us guys, youse guys, them guys, because unlike the latterthey can occur in tag questions, and for the second occurrence of a ref-erent. 1

(97) a. Themuns aren't going are themuns?b. *Them guys aren't going are them guys?

(98) a. When themuns arrive I'll tell themuns.b. *When them guys arrive I'll tell them guys.

That these personal pronouns occur with singular concord shows thatan analysis based on requiring elements which vary for person, forexample, to raise to SPEC/AGRS will not work. Noting that personalpronouns require agreement in Welsh, whereas other NPs do not, Sadler(1985) argues that this is because maximal feature-matching is required,and thus elements specified for person trigger agreement obligatorily.But as we see, it is not the case that all pronouns which are marked forperson trigger agreement; the -uns set does not.

Thus, it is only the set of pronouns /, you, she, he, it, we, youse, andthey which are forced to have agreement; all other pronouns may havesingular concord.

Before we examine what it is that forces these pronouns to raise toSPEC/AGRSP, let us look at another construction where exactly thesame partitioning of pronouns occurs, the verb-particle construction. As


is well known, simple personal pronouns must occur between verb andparticle, whereas other NPs can occur either in this position or after theparticle.

(99) a. I phoned him up.b. *I phoned up him.

(100) a. I phoned the owner up.b. I phoned up the owner.

Note that the class of pronouns which may appear after the particle isidentical to the class which may have singular concord; thus co-ordi-nates and other pronouns which are part of a larger NP, demonstratives,and -uns pronouns in Belfast English do not have to occur between verband particle.

(101) My friend phoned up him and her.(102) They helped out us students.(103) The staff tore up those.(104) They phoned up yousuns.

The verb-particle paradigm is indeed very similar to the agreementone, in that we have a structure where there are two possible NP posi-tions, but only the higher one is available for a subset of pronouns,which is the same in both constructions. Thus, it is possible that wehave a related phenomenon.

What we would need, then, is an explanation for why a subset of pro-nouns must raise to AGRS in Belfast English, and appear between theverb and particle in verb-particle constructions in English in general,whereas other pronouns and non-pronominal NPs may occur in anotherposition. The characteristic positioning of pronouns in the verb-particleconstruction has been the subject of several studies, and various expla-nations have been offered, a number of which we review below. Noneof these precisely fits the apparently similar phenomenon of singularconcord in Belfast English.

Accounts of pronoun placement divide into two main types—thosewhich argue that the NP originates between verb and particle, and thatthe alternative order is derived by movement of the NP to the post-parti-cle position, a type of movement which they claim to be impossible forpronouns; and those which argue that V Prt NP is the underlying order,with the V NP Prt order derived by a movement rule, which is claimedto be obligatory for pronouns.

Kayne (1984) is an example of the first type of approach. Kayne


argues that the NP is base-generated between the verb and the particle,with the NP and particle forming a small clause construction; where theNP appears after the particle at S-structure, this is the result of right-ward movement, an operation normally reserved for "heavy" elementsand thus unavailable to weak pronouns. There are problems with theanalysis; as Johnson (1991) points out, the NP which occurs after theparticle here does not have to be as "heavy" as in other cases of heavyNP shift.

(105) *John found unconvincing the explanation.(106) John found out the explanation.

Moreover, as Gueron (1987) points out, elements which have under-gone Heavy NP Shift are in general islands for extraction, but post-par-ticle NPs are not.

(107) *What did you find unbelievable descriptions of?(108) What did you look up descriptions of?

Whether or not these problems can be overcome, it is clear that sim-ply from the point of view of word order we cannot see singular con-cord as involving Heavy NP Shift; singular concord subjects do notoccur sentence-finally, but in the normal pre-verbal position.

Examples of the second type of analysis include Gueron's studies(1987, 1990), which propose that the NP is in complement-position ofthe PP at D-structure, that is, after the particle; the V-NP-Prt order isderived by movement of the NP. This movement is claimed to be oblig-atory for pronouns because these must be contiguous with a lexicalCase-assigner.

In relation to Belfast English, a problem arises in relation to contigu-ity with a lexical Case-assigner; as we shall see in more detail in Chap-ter 3, the subject in imperatives in Belfast English may appear after theverb.

(109) Go you away.(110) Believe you me.

The subject may intervene between the verb and object NP (includingpronouns) in the verb-particle construction

(111) Put you it away.(112) Phone you them up.


This indicates that the verb does not have to be adjacent to the pronounat S-structure. We argue in the next chapter that these structures involvethe movement of the verb out of VP.

Moreover, we cannot require the subject to be adjacent to an overtCase-assigner, or checker, at spell-out in either standard English orBelfast English; for where the verb remains in the VP in the syntax, thesubject is clearly not adjacent to an overt Case-checker.

Koopman (1990) also has V-Prt-NP as the D-structure order, butargues that the reason why pronouns must move in front of the particleis that pronouns attract to SPEC positions—in this case to SPEC/PP;note that if our analysis of singular concord is correct, then this cannotbe precisely the correct analysis, for in Belfast English the subject is ina specifier position, SPEC/Tense, in the singular concord construction,but this is not a possible position for the overtly case-marked set of pro-nouns, which are forced to move to SPEC/AGRSP. We might amendKoopman's analysis to require that pronouns attract to SPEC/Agree-ment positions, but this would involve proposing that the position gov-erned by a preposition in a Prepositional Phrase is a SPEC/Agreementposition, since these prepositions can occur there

(113) with him(114) for them

Although some languages, for example Irish, do have prepositionswhich show agreement, there do not seem to be clear arguments forpostulating an agreement phrase here in languages like English. More-over, in those Belfast English imperative examples where the order isverb-object-subject, we would have to postulate an extra AGR positionin addition to AGRS and AGR0 if both pronouns must be in specifierpositions.

(115) Read it quickly you to me.(116) Show her always you your homework.

As we shall show in the next chapter the verb has raised to C in theseconstructions, and the object has moved to SPEC/AGRsubject cannot therefore be in SPEC/AGRSP; it appears to be inSPEC/VP, but that is not a SPEC/AGR position.

Thus, a number of proposals have been made about the distinctiveplacing of pronouns in verb-particle constructions, but none of theseprecisely fits the Belfast English data. What we would need is an expla-


nation for why a subset of pronouns must raise to AGRS, and appearbetween the verb and particle in verb-particle constructions. Let usbegin by attempting to characterise the set of pronouns which mustraise to SPEC/AGRSP. The major difference between the elementswhich must appear in the higher position and those which may alsoappear in the lower position is that the former are for the most partovertly Case-marked (or m-Case-marked, to borrow the term used byHolmberg (1986) to distinguish morphological from abstract Case).Thus demonstratives, the strong forms of pronouns which may occur incoordinate structures, and -uns pronouns show no variation for Case;whereas the personal pronouns which must appear in the higher posi-tions are for the most part overtly Case-marked.

You, youse, and it are exceptions to the set, in that they do not haveovert Case-marking but nevertheless have to appear in the same posi-tions as those which do; this suggests that, parallel to their paradigm set,they require Case-marking which is in some sense overt but phonologi-cally null. There is some evidence, however, that at least one memberof this set is changing to be a non-overtly Case-marked pronoun, andthat is Belfast English youse. For some speakers, this both permits sin-gular concord and can occur after the particle in verb-particle construc-tions.

(117) Youse is really stupid.(118) I'll phone up youse.

As far as I can ascertain, these two possibilities are present or absenttogether; that is, those for whom youse can occur with singular concordcan also place it after the particle, whereas those who reject sentenceslike (117) also necessarily reject the singular concord cases like (118).This is one area where the study of dialects is particularly useful; wecan determine which features are necessarily present or absent together.

It does not appear to be precisely overt Case-marking which deter-mines the positioning of pronouns; as Vikner (1991) and Holmberg(1992) point out, object shift, where the object moves out of VP, appliesin the Scandinavian languages in general to overtly Case-marked ele-ments, but there are exceptions to this. All NPs in Faroese bear overtCase, but only pronouns move. And strong pronouns do not object shiftin any of the Scandinavian languages, even though they may bear overtCase. Holmberg (1992) suggests an analysis in which Case may bestrong or weak, the strong/weak distinction coinciding often but notalways with overt/covert Case-marking.


The fact that weak pronouns are those which disallow singular con-cord, and also must occur between verb and particle in the verb-particleconstruction, and can object shift, suggests that it may be worth explor-ing the possibility that what prevents the occurrence of nominative Casewith a singular concord verb is in fact a requirement that a pronoun sub-ject raise to SPEC/AGRSP rather than a prohibition on nominative Caseas such. Let us consider, however, how we might distinguish betweenthe two possibilities.

The key to establishing whether it is nominative Case per se, or pro-nouns, which are excluded with non-agreeing verbs seems to lie ininstances where pronouns are co-ordinated. We noted earlier that wherepronouns are co-ordinated, or where a pronoun occurs in a co-ordinatestructure with a full NP, the pronoun may either have default Case(identical to the accusative) or bear the Case assigned to the whole NP.

(119) He and I are going.(120) Him and me are going.(121) John and he go away up the road.(122) John and him go away up the road.

We also noted that only where there was no nominative pronoun in theconstruction could it occur with singular concord.

(123) *He and I is going.(124) Him and me is going.(125) *John and he goes away up the road.(126) John and him goes away up the road.

Now, as we saw above there is evidence that "weak" pronouns attractto certain positions. But these co-ordinated pronoun groups do not ingeneral act like weak pronouns. For example, weak pronouns cannotnormally occur in a right- or left-dislocated structure.

(127) *We're going up the road, we.(128) We're going up the road, us.

(129) *We, we don't like coffee.(130) Us, we don't like coffee.

However, conjoined nominative pronouns do occur in these struc-tures:

(131) We're going up the road, John and I.(132) We're going up the road, John and me.


(133) John and I, we don't like coffee.(134) John and me, we don't like coffee.

Whatever excludes weak pronouns from these positions, it does notexclude co-ordinated pronouns with nominative marking. Thus, co-ordinated pronouns with nominative marking do not appear to patternwith weak pronouns generally; therefore any constraint that excludesweak pronouns from occurring in certain positions, including SPEC/TPin the singular concord construction, will not automatically excludenominative-marked co-ordinated pronouns. This seems to suggest thatwhat is excluded in singular concord is not weak pronouns but nomina-tive Case-marked elements.

We can show that there is no general requirement that co-ordinationscontaining a nominative pronoun raise to SPEC/AGRS P before spell-out by looking at pronouns in imperatives. As noted above, and dis-cussed in some detail in the next chapter, imperative subjects canremain in VP in the overt syntax in Belfast English; this means that theyare not in SPEC/AGRSP at S-structure. Now imperative subjects mayinclude a nominative co-ordinated pronoun:

(135) Be going you and he out of the door when they get here.(136) Have been selected you and she for the team before the end of

term.

This shows that there is no absolute requirement that nominative Case-marked pronouns are in SPEC/AGRSP at spell-out. What is excluded istheir appearance in SPEC/TP. This suggests that what is involved is nota requirement that pronouns appear in a particular position (e.g., aSPEC/AGR position) at S-structure, but rather a condition barring themfrom appearing in SPEC/TenseP. Now, if appearance in SPEC/TensePinvolves checking of (non-nominative or default) Case, and excludesfurther raising for Case-checking purposes, this will exclude the appear-ance of nominative-marked items (including co-ordinates) from the sin-gular concord structure, while allowing for such elements to occur out-side SPEC/AGRSP at spell-out, and then raise to SPEC/AGRS at LF, incertain circumstances. (For detailed discussion of imperatives, see thefollowing chapter).

Our analysis predicts that nominative pronouns should be excludedfrom appearing in any construction where they are not in, and cannotget by LF into, SPEC/AGRS, but rather must check Case elsewhere.

This type of circumstance appears to arise in a dialect of English


studied by Kimball and Aissen (1971) and Kayne (1989). In this dialectthe verb may agree with a wh-element rather than with the subject.

(137) The people who Clark think are in the garden

According to Kayne's analysis, these examples involve the move-ment of an abstract AGR to C; the subject NP cannot therefore be Case-marked under agreement with AGR, but must get Case in some otherway. Kayne notes that this construction is impossible where the subjectis a nominative pronoun.

(138) *the people who she think are in the garden(139) *the person whose cars he think are beautiful

Here we have a case where full NPs may lack agreement with the,yerb, but nominative Case-marked pronouns have obligatory agree-ment; in our terms, nominative pronouns must check Case in SPEC/AGRSP, but full NPs, which are not overtly Case-marked, may checkCase in some other way.

Similar considerations apply to sentences in Belfast English and (col-loquial) standard English where the subject appears to agree withadjunct wh-words rather than the subject. As noted by Radzinski(1985), sentences like the following may have singular verbs.

(140) Where's my glasses?(141) How's the children?

Lack of agreement is available in non-inverted structures only indialects which generally admit singular concord.

(142) BE/*SE I wonder where my glasses is.

It seems that in structures like (140) and (141) the verb is agreeingwith the wh-element; if this is again a case of agreement between thewh-element and AGRS (which has moved to C), then the subject cannotcheck Case in SPEC/AGRSP. Again, as we would predict, nominativeCase-marked pronouns are impossible here.

(143) a. *Where's they?b. Where are they?

(144) a. *How's we doing?b. How are we doing?

As with other alternations of this type, it is only nominative pronounswhich are required to be in the canonical Case-checking position.


(145) Where's themuns?(146) How's these?(147) How's her and them getting on together?

Thus, the requirement that overtly nominative-marked elementscheck Case in SPEC/AGRSP appears to manifest itself in constructionsother than singular concord, and in varieties other than Belfast English.

Returning to singular concord in Belfast English, let us summariseour findings in relation to pronouns. We argued that it was not pronomi-nal status per se, but rather overt nominative Case-marking, whichexcluded weak pronouns from occurring with non-agreeing verbs.Nominative Case-marked elements must check Case in SPEC/AGRSP,either in the syntax or at LF; they cannot, unlike items which havedefault Case, check Case in SPEC/TP, and thus cannot occur with sin-gular concord verbs.

Inversion and Singular Concord

Apart from the structures involving adjunct wh-words discussed in theprevious section, singular concord is generally impossible in structuresshowing inversion.

(148) *Is the children tired?(149) *What is the students doing?(150) *Has the girls left?(151) *What has their friends decided?

The impossibility of inversion in questions does not automaticallyfollow from anything we have said so far. Movement of the verb to C isforced in English questions, presumably by the presence of a [+wh] Cwhich has to be checked by the movement of the verb to it (see Rizzi1991). The presence of this [+wh] marker should force the movementof the verb from Tense to C via AGRS, even though the verb does nototherwise need to move to AGRS for the purposes of agreement check-ing. However, in fact, such movement is impossible; only agreeingverbs can move to C.

Note that in order to get to C, a verb will have to pass through AGRS,since under the Head Movement Constraint (possibly subsumed underthe "shortest movement" requirement of Chomsky [1992J), a head canonly move to the next head up. Therefore, a verb could not movedirectly from Tense to C. Now this means that there will be a verb-trace


in AGRS, and this presumably will, at least at LF, trigger movement ofthe subject to SPEC/AGRS. The passage of the verb through AGRS mustbe available only for verbs which are marked for agreement. This sug-gests that the presence of an element in a higher head (C) which mustbe checked in the syntax is insufficient to trigger raising; triggeringmust be done for movement at each stage. The verb may not move fromTense to AGRS unless the V-feature of AGRS is strong, even if there is ahigher head which requires to be checked; Head movement is thereforestrictly local in that it must be forced at each stage.

That this is the correct approach seems to be shown by the do-supportrequirement in questions. In general, main verbs do not raise in English,remaining rather in VP, presumably because the V-feature of Tense isweak. The requirement to have a verb in C where C is [+wh] is not initself sufficient to trigger verb movement through I to C in the syntax.Rather, do-support must be used, which, as we have noted, involves theinsertion of the verb do under Tense.

(152) a. *Went they home?b. Did they go home?

(153) a. * Ate the children the sweets?b. Did the children eat the sweets?

Do-insertion cannot of course occur under AGRS or C to rescue sin-gular concord sentences, since as we have shown above do is insertedunder Tense, and Tense is already filled by the singular concord verb(or is a required checking position for the singular concord verb at LF).

(154) *Do the girls likes coffee?(155) *Do the students is happy?

Thus, inversion cannot occur with singular concord verbs becausethey are not in AGRS, and do-insertion is also impossible because Tenseis filled by the verb; inversion is therefore excluded, and sentencesrequiring inversion must use agreeing verbs which can move to AGRS

on their way to C.

Conclusion

We have argued that singular concord in Belfast English is actually lackof agreement marking. Being unmarked for agreement, singular con-cord verbs do not move to AGRS, but rather remain in Tense. The sub-


ject raises only as high as SPEC/Tense, where its Case can be checked.However, nominative Case cannot be checked by Tense, and thereforenominative Case-marked items cannot occur in this construction, butmust rather move to SPEC/AGRS.

The availability of SPEC/Tense as a subject position has two notableeffects in the grammar; it permits the occurrence of negative polarityitems in subject position, and the raising of objects where the verbmoves out of VP.

The impossibility of singular concord verbs moving to C shows thathead movement must be forced at each stage; a head cannot make anunforced move to an intermediate projection just because that move is astep which is necessary in order to check a higher projection.

3Overt-Subject Imperatives

In both Belfast English and standard English, imperatives may occurwith or without overt subjects. Subjectless imperatives appear to beidentical in both varieties, so that (1), for example, is grammatical inboth.

(1) SE/BEGoaway.

However, there is an important difference in relation to the position ofovert subjects in imperatives. In standard English, the subject must pre-cede the verb, as in (2a) and (3a), just as it must in indicative sentences.However, in Belfast English an alternative order is possible, with theverb and subject inverted, as in (2b) and (3b); this inversion is ungram-matical in standard English.

(2) a. SE/BE You go away.b. BE/*SE Go you away.

(3) a. SE/BE You read that.b. BE/*SE Read you that.

If the subject originates in the SPEC/VP position as suggested inmost versions of the VP-internal subject hypothesis, then it appears thatthe verb has raised out of VP in the Belfast English inverted impera-tives. This is surprising because in general, main verbs cannot raise inEnglish. As noted by Pollock (1989), English differs from a languagelike French in that verbs (other than be, have, and auxiliaries), do notraise out of VP, so that they appear after negation and adverbs whichoccur to the left of VP, and do not raise to C in questions.

45


(4) a. Jean n'aime pas Marie.b. *Jean not likes Marie.c. Jean does not like Marie.

(5) a. Jean embrasse souvent Marie.b. *Jean kisses often Marie.

(6) a. Jean often kisses Mary.b. *Jean souvent embrasse Marie.

(7) a. Aime-t'il Marie?b. *Loves he Mariec. Does he love Marie?

Chomsky (1992), following the spirit of Pollock's analysis, but rein-terpreting it within the Minimalist framework, argues that in English theV-feature of Tense is weak, and therefore does not need to be checkedbefore spell-out; so that, since rules apply as late as possible, Englishverbs do not raise in the syntax. Now, in relation to verb placement inquestions and negatives, Belfast English behaves exactly like standardEnglish. Main verbs cannot raise above negation and adverbs, and theydo not invert with the subject in questions.

(8) *SE/*BE He went not away.(9) *SE/*BE You read not that.

(10) *SE/*BE He went always away.(11) *SE/*BE He read often that.

(12) *SE/*BE Went he away?(13) *SE/*BE Read you that?

Both varieties require do-support in negatives and questions.

(14) SE/BE He did not go away.(15) SE/BE You did not read that.

(16) SE/BE Did he go away?(17) SE/BE Did you read that?

Thus, it is not the case that inversion in imperatives derives from amore general availability of verb raising in Belfast English. The onlyother difference in relation to inversion between the two varieties is thatBelfast English allows inversion in embedded questions, a topic whichwill be examined in detail in Chapter 5; but given that imperatives are awholly root phenomenon, it does not seem likely that there is any very

Overt-Subject Imperatives 47

direct link between the two. Moreover, in embedded questions, just asin direct ones, main verbs cannot raise, but they appear to be able to doso in imperatives.

The question arises then as to why verbs can raise in imperatives inBelfast English, but not standard English; why such raising is restrictedto imperatives; and where the verb and subject are in the inverted struc-ture. Moreover, Belfast imperatives show other interesting characteris-tics; in particular, as noted briefly in the previous chapter where theobject is a weak pronoun, it may appear between the verb and the sub-ject, or after the subject.

(18) Read it you to me.(19) Read you it to me.

And where an auxiliary is present, the subject may sometimes occurafter the lexical verb rather than after the auxiliary.

(20) Be going you out to school when I get back.

Both of these facts make an analysis where the verb raises to C andthe subject to SPEC/AGR,, exactly as in questions but with a widerrange of verbs, less than straightforward: if this were the case, wewould not expect to find an object between the verb and the subject, andwe would always expect to find the subject after the auxiliary ratherthan the lexical verb.

Before we consider what is happening in these imperatives, however,we need to look at the facts in more detail, for Belfast English impera-tives have not previously been discussed in the literature, and even stan-dard English imperatives have not been extensively considered. Wethus proceed to outline the characteristics of overt-subject imperativesin standard English and Belfast English, before going on to analysethese in more detail.

The Overt-Subject Imperative in Standard English

In standard English, imperatives exhibit either an empty subject or alexical subject in preverbal position; both of these possibilities alsoexist in Belfast English, in addition to the inverted pattern.

(21) a. Go away.b. You go away.


(22) a. Stay here.b. You stay here.

(23) a. Read that.b. You read that.

Where an overt subject is used, it is most often you, but a small numberof other subjects are permitted, for example everyone, somebody, all ofyou (Beukema & Coopmans 1989).

(24) Everyone put on their coats.(25) Somebody tell me the answer.(26) All of you keep quiet.

Vocatives often occur with imperatives, as in (27) and (28), charac-terised by an intonation break between the vocative and the rest of theimperative.

(27) a. John, put on your coat.b. Put on your coat, John.

(28) a. You, tell me the answer.b. Tell me the answer, you.

It might be thought that apparent imperative subjects are really voca-tives. However, Beukema and Coopmans (1989) demonstrate that thereexist true imperative subjects which are not simply vocatives. Thusindefinites such as somebody can occur as an imperative subject, butcannot occur as a vocative.

(29) Somebody open the window.(30) *Somebody, open the window.

Moreover, there is a contrast between vocatives and true imperativesubjects in relation to the interpretation of possessive pronouns:

(31) Everybody take out their books.(32) Everybody, take out their books.

In the vocative example, the pronoun their cannot be co-referential witheverybody. Rather, the sentence must be understood as having an emptyyou subject, which cannot of course be co-referential with their. Bycontrast in the example where everybody is in subject position, their canhave a bound reading, where each person is to take out their own books.Apparently, a null subject in imperatives must be interpreted as second


person singular, and in vocatives, this null element occurs in the truesubject position; being second person, it cannot be co-referential with athird-person element. Similar considerations apply to reflexives. Wherethere is a vocative third-person NP, a third-person reflexive is ungram-matical; on the other hand, where a third-person NP is in subject posi-tion, a third-person reflexive is possible.

(33) *Everybody, wash themselves.(34) Everybody wash themselves.

Thus, it is clear that imperatives with true subjects are possible. Andas noted above, in standard English these always occur before the verb.

Negative imperatives have a number of interesting characteristics.They always require do-support

(35) Don't do that.(36) Don't go away.

Here, an overt subject, if present, occurs after don't

(37) Don't you do that.(38) Don't you go away.

As we noted above, don't is required even with verbs which normallyin English do not require do-support, for example, be and have

(39) a. *Be not silly.b. Don't be silly.

(40) a. *Have not a cigarette.b. Don't have a cigarette.

Compare the non-imperative forms, where be and have can raise overthe negative; indeed for be, such raising is obligatory and do-support isnot available.

(41) a. They are not silly.b. *They don't be silly.

(42) a. They haven't a cigarette.b. They don't have a cigarette.

Thus generally in English, Jo-support is not found with be in the nega-tive, and is optional with have; but in imperatives, even these verbsform the negative imperative with don't.


Note that where the imperative has an overt subject, the negativemust be the contracted form don't, and not the uncontracted do not

(43) a. Don't you speak to me like that.b. *Do you not speak to me like that.c. *Do not you speak to me like that.

Imperatives with the uncontracted form do not are impossible wherethere is an overt subject.In this, negative imperatives with overt subjectsdiffer from questions, where both do and do not are available.

(44) a. Don't you like coffee?b. Do you not like coffee?

(Of course, not cannot undergo subject-auxiliary inversion unless itcontracts to the auxiliary, so that a sentence like (45) is impossible.)

(45) Do not you like coffee?

Emphatic imperatives can be formed with do, if there is a null sub-ject; however, overt subjects cannot occur with emphatic do.

(46) a. Do read that.b. *Do you read that.c. *You do read that.

(c) is of course only ungrammatical as an imperative: it is grammaticalas an indicative.

Belfast English Imperatives

There are in fact two "subdialects" of Belfast English in relation toimperatives. In one, inversion is restricted to a subset of intransitiveverbs; in the other, it is available with all verbs. We begin with someobservations which apply to both varieties, before going on to look indetail at each variety individually.

As noted above, Belfast English posesses not only the standard Eng-lish imperative strategies but also an alternative strategy, involving apostverbal subject: as with standard English, the overt subject is mostfrequently second person: you, or its plurals youse and yousuns, butagain it can be one of a limited range of other items:

(47) a. Go you away.b. Go everybody away.


(48) a. Run youse to the telephone.b. Run somebody to the teleph e.

The effect of including the subject is roughly the same as that of includ-ing a preverbal subject in standard English imperatives; it has a slightlyemphatic or contrastive effect. And as in standard English, where thesubject is you, it has to be in its full stressed form rather than a reducedform.

(49) a. Go [ju:] away,b. *Go [JQ] away.

(50) a. [ju:] go away.b. *[je] go away.

In this it differs from you in both declarative subject position and inobject position.

(51) [ju:/je] can go away.(52) I'll help [ju:/je].

Similar considerations apply to the plural youse; in declaratives thismay generally be [ju:z] or [j;ez], but in imperative subject position itmust be [ju:z].

(53) a. Run [ju:z] on.b. *Run [jez] on.

(54) a. [ju:z/jez] are having me on.b. I was coming to tell [ju:z/jez].

As noted above, inversion of full verbs and subjects occurs only inimperatives. As in standard English, full verbs cannot invert with sub-jects in questions, but must have do-support; the availability of inver-sion in imperatives does not derive, then, from a general availability ofinversion with main verbs in Belfast English, but is, rather, restricted tothe imperative construction.

Nor can such verbs raise to I (=AGRS); as in standard English this isungrammatical with verbs other than be and have, as shown by the factthat full verbs cannot raise above negation or adverbs.

(55) *I found not that book.(56) *They read quickly the chapter.

All we have discussed so far relates to both subdialects of impera-


tives; however, we now need to consider each of the subdialects sepa-rately. We will label them dialects A and B.

Dialect A

Speakers of dialect A have a more restricted use of inversion than thosewho speak dialect B; whereas dialect B speakers permit inversion withany verb, in dialect A, inversion is only possible with a restricted rangeof verbs. The verbs which permit inversion in this dialect are all intran-sitive.

(57) Go you there.

is grammatical but

(58) *Read you that book.

with a transitive verb is not. Not all intransitive verbs permit inversion,however, but only a subset of these. All of the verbs which permitinversion in dialect A are verbs of motion; other verbs never permitinversion in this dialect.

(59) *Eat you up.(60) * Always laugh you at his jokes.

Not all motion verbs/verb phrases permit inversion, but only a subset ofthese. It is at first sight difficult to characterise exactly which verbs per-mit inversion, particularly as the same verb may or may not permitinversion depending on the content of the remainder of the verb phrase.For example, consider the verb run. In dialect A, this verb does not nor-mally allow imperative inversion when it is the sole constituent of theverb phrase.

(61) *Run you.

But it does allow inversion where it is followed by a particle such asaway, or an indication of destination.

(62) Run you away.(63) Run you home.(64) Run you into the garden.

It might seem that the generalisation is that, for some reason, at leastone constituent must appear after the subject. But in fact the presence of


a constituent after the verb is not in itself sufficient to enable inversion.Thus inversion is ungrammatical in the following examples.

(65) *Run you in the garden.(66) *Run you every day if you want to keep fit.

It seems that the type of constituent which follows the verb is signifi-cant.

These facts are not exclusive to run; a similar pattern emerges withmost other motion verbs. However, there are a few verbs which allowinversion regardless of the content of the verb phrase, for example,arrive and leave

(67) Leave you now.(68) *Run you now.

(69) Arrive you before 6 o'clock.(70) *Run you before 6 o'clock.

The verbs or verb phrases which allow inversion have a semantic char-acteristic in common. They all involve actions that have an end-point,that is, they are telic (for a discussion of telicity, see van Hout et al.,(1993).

This telicity need not be inherent in the verb, but it must be a charac-teristic of the verb phrase of which it is part. This is why the presence ofan indication of destination, or of a particle which indicates that theaction has an end-point, is significant; these elements make the verbphrase telic. Consider the following examples with the verb walk.Those which are [+TELIC] allow inversion, whereas those which are[-TELIC] do not.

(71) Walk you out of the door.(72) Walk you into the garden.(73) Walk you away.(74) Walk you home.(75) *Walkyou.(76) *Walk you in the garden.(77) *Walk you every day if you want to keep fit.

Telicity is the characteristic which determines unaccusativity in somelanguages, for example Dutch (van Hout et al. 1993), and this suggeststhat the class of verbs which takes imperative inversion in dialect A isthe unaccusative class.


A further argument for this is the fact that precisely those verbphrases which allow imperative inversion also allow inversion of thefollowing type, generally considered to be a characteristic of unac-cusatives (on unaccusatives, see Burzio (1986), Levin & RappaportHovav 1992, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1992), and the discussion onthe analysis of dialect A imperatives below).

(78) Out of the door ran a mouse.(79) *In the house ran a mouse.(80) Run you out of the door.(81) *Run you in the house.

(82) Into the garden walked two men.(83) *In the garden walked two men.(84) Walk you into the garden.(85) *Walk you in the garden.

Many of the telic verbs are particle verbs in English—e.g., go away, sitdown, run off—so that very many inverted structures involve suchverbs.

(86) Go everybody away.(87) Sit youse down.(88) Run you off to school.

In inverted imperatives in dialect A, the subject always occurs imme-diately following the verb. Adverbs cannot intervene between the verband the subject

(89) a. *Go always you to school.b. Always go you to school.

(90) a. *Run quickly you away.b. Run you away quickly.

In dialect A, where the imperative contains an auxiliary, the subjectyou occurs, not after the auxiliary, but after the main verb. Affirmativeimperatives with auxiliaries are fairly marginal, in both standard Eng-lish and Belfast English, but for speakers of dialect A, sentences like(91a) and (92a) are very much better than (91b) and (92b), which are,for them, wholly ungrammatical.

(91) a. Be going you out of the door when he arrives.b. *Be you going out of the door when he arrives.


(92) a. Be leaving you by six o'clock.b. *Be you leaving by six o'clock.

Passive imperatives with inversion are also possible in this dialect;for pragmatic reasons, passive imperatives are rather odd, but wherethey can occur they again show the pattern of the subject occurring afterthe lexical verb.

(93) a. Be elected you president before the end of the year.b. *Be you elected president before the end of the year.

Negative imperatives in this dialect are formed, as in all the dialects,with a sentence-initial don't, and they may be inverted, with the verbpreceding the subject.

(94) Don't go you away.(95) Don't walk you home by yourself.

In dialect A, then, imperative inversion occurs with a subset of verbswhich share particular characteristics; they are verbs of motion, andtelicity must be a property of the verb or verb phrase. Apart from sen-tences containing such verb phrases, inversion only occurs in passiveimperatives.

Dialect B

In dialect B, inversion is possible with all verbs; it is not restricted tothe subset of verbs of motion which permit inversion in dialect A.

(96) Read you that book.(97) Do you your best.

In this dialect, as in both dialect A and standard English, negativesare formed with a sentence-initial don't. We noted that in dialect A, thesubject in negative imperatives can occur after the verb; this is also pos-sible in dialect B, but not with all verbs; only those verbs which permitinversion in dialect A allow the subject to occur after the verb in nega-tives in dialect B; with other verbs, the subject must occur betweendon't and the verb in negatives.

(98) a. Don't run you away.b. Don't you run away

(99) a. Don't go everybody home.b. Don't everybody go home


(100) a. *Don't hit you your sister.b. Don't you hit your sister.

(101) a. *Don't give anyone the secret away.b. Don't anyone give the secret away.

Where there is an auxiliary present, the subject generally occurs afterthe auxiliary and before the lexical verb.

(102) a. Be you practising your piano-playing when I get back.b. *Be practising you your piano-playing when I get back.

However, with the subset of verbs which allow inversion in dialectA, the subject may occur either after the auxiliary or after the mainverb.

(103) a. Be you walking into the room just as she is leaving.b. Be walking you into the room just as he is leaving.

This is one case where it is particularly important to get grammaticalityjudgements from speakers who themselves use the dialect concerned.Dialect A speakers, or Belfast speakers who do not themselves useimperative inversion but have some intuitions about it through hearingothers using it, often appear to have formed incorrect hypotheses aboutthe grammars of dialect B speakers.

Thus speakers who do not themselves permit inversion, sometimesindicate that they think that sentences such as the following are used bydialect B speakers.

(104) a. Be helping you your mother when I get back.b. Don't forget you your homework.

whereas, in fact, for dialect B speakers themselves, such sentences areimpossible, and I have not recorded any examples of sentences wherethe subject follows a transitive verb which appears after a negative or anauxiliary. It is not perhaps surprising that examples of the latter arelacking, since the use of auxiliaries such as be in imperatives in Englishis fairly marginal, but negative imperatives are rather frequent, and onewould certainly have expected to find examples of inversion with tran-sitive verbs in negative imperatives if this was in fact grammatical. Thespeakers of other dialects appear to have come up with some judgementon what dialect B speakers do, along the lines of "the subject alwayscomes after the lexical verb," without actually being able to reflect


accurately the grammaticality judgements of actual speakers of thisdialect. If one wants to study the limits of possible internal grammars,then such judgements could be highly misleading.

We move on now to look at the position of the verb and subject inrelation to adverbs. Where there is a sentential adverb, it generallyoccurs after the subject, as in (105), but is also possible after the verbbut before the subject, as in (106).

(105) Remember you always your homework.

(106) Remember always you your homework.

With VP adverbials, the preferred position is VP-final (as generallyin Belfast English), but these can occur before the verb; if so, the pre-ferred position is after the subject, but they can occur between the verband subject.

(107) Write you carefully that letter.(108) Write carefully you that letter.

The positioning of weak object pronouns in imperatives is noteworthy.In general in both Belfast English and standard English, these appear inthe normal object position after the verb where non-pronominal NPsalso occur.

(109) a. I read the book.b. I read it.

(110) a. Mary saw her friends.b. Mary saw them.

However, in Belfast English imperatives, weak object pronouns dif-fer from full NPs in that they may occur before the subject, whereas fullNPs may only appear after the subject.

Thus, a weak object pronoun may precede or follow the subject, as inthe following.

(111) a. Give it you to the teacher.b. Give you it to the teacher.

(112) a. Hand me you that parcel.b. Hand you me that parcel.

The pre-subject position is not available for non-pronominal NPs.


(113) a. *Give the book you to the teacher.b. Give you the book to the teacher.

(114) a. *Hand the postman you that parcel.b. Hand you the postman that parcel.

We noted that a weak object pronoun may either precede or followthe subject. In relation to sentential adverbs, however, the position of aweak object pronoun is fixed; it must precede such adverbs.

(115) a. Make you them always a cup of tea.b. *Make you always them a cup of tea.c. Make them always you a cup of tea.

However, where the object is a full NP, it must occur after theadverb.

(116) a. *Make you your mummy always a cup of tea.b. Make you always your mummy a cup of tea.

Stressed pronouns, co-ordinated pronouns, and the "-uns" pronouns dis-cussed in the previous chapter behave like full NPs; they occur after thesubject and after adverbs.

(117) a. Tell you HIM the truth.b. *TelI HIM you the truth.

(118) a. Tell you him and her the truth.b. *Tell him and her you the truth.

(119) a. Tell you themuns the truth.b. *Tell themuns you the truth.

Thus, whatever is responsible for the particular placing of weak objectpronouns singles out the same class of items as do other processes(object shift in the Scandinavian languages; pronoun placement in verb-particle constructions in English) where, as here, certain pronounsbehave like full NPs.

There exists in Belfast English a verb which can only be used inimperatives, and that is away; it is possible only in dialect B.

(120) Away you and tell them.(121) Away you home.

This verb has approximately the meaning of go. It cannot occur as averb unless it is imperative.


(122) *They away to school every day.(123) *If you away home every day at four o'clock, you'll never get your

work finished.

Unlike other verbs, with which inversion is optional, where this verboccurs with an overt subject it must precede the subject; inversion isobligatory.

(124) a. Away you on.b. *You away on.

(125) a. *Away youse ouside.b. Youse away outside.

(126) a. Away you children to your beds.b. *You children away to your beds.

In addition, unlike other verbs which cannot inflect (such as come, gopreceding a verb: Jaeggli & Hyams 1993), away does not occur in othercontexts which do not have overt inflection.

(127) *She asked them to away on.(128) *I told the children to away to their beds.(129) *I away home after work.

Compare:

(130) She asked them to come see her.(131) I told the children to go ask him.(132) I go see my tutor every week.

Thus it is not simply the case that the verb away occurs in uninflectedcontexts; rather, it is entirely restricted to occurring in imperatives.

Away cannot occur with a negative.

(133) *Don't away you to bed.(134) *Don't away everybody to school.

Summarising, in dialect B inversion is available in positive impera-tives with all verbs; in negative imperatives it is restricted to those verbswhich allow inversion in dialect A, that is, a subclass of motion verbs.Weak object pronouns differ from other NPs in that they must precedeadverbs, and may precede the subject, in inverted imperatives. Finally,although inversion is generally optional, it is obligatory with one verb,away, which is only used in imperatives.


The Structure of Belfast English Inverted Imperatives

The Structure of Dialect A Imperatives

We begin by considering the grammar of speakers of dialect A. In thisdialect, as noted above, inversion is restricted to a subclass of motionverbs/verb phrases which can be characterised semantically as [+telic].Let us begin by considering the position of the verb in these structures,in particular, whether inversion has arisen through the raising of theverb out of VP to a position in front of the subject.

An accepted diagnostic for raising out of VP is the position of theverb in relation to negation and adverbs (see Pollock 1989, Vikner1991). Assuming that both negatives and adverbs are situated to the leftof VP, then occurrence of a verb to the left of these is an indication thatit must have moved out of VP. In overt-subject imperatives, negation isnot, as we will see below, a very good indicator of verb location, since,it will be argued, the negator don't is not in NEG but in C. However,adverbs can still provide an indication of whether the verb has movedoutofVP.

In dialect A, the verb in these imperatives always follows sententialadverbs.

(135) a. Always come you here when I call you.b. *Come always you here when I call you.c. *Come you always here when I call you.

VP adverbs preferentially occur VP-finally in Belfast English; how-ever, these adverbs can occur VP-initially, and this order is possible inimperatives.

(136) Quickly run you home.

What is entirely ungrammatical for speakers of this dialect is for anadverb to intervene between the verb and subject.

(137) *Run quickly you home.

Assuming that at least VP adverbs are left-adjoined to VP, then itappears that for speakers of this dialect, the verb cannot move out ofVP. The verb-subject order must arise for another reason.

As we saw above, in this dialect, only telic motion verbs can havesubject-verb inversion; this class of verbs is often considered to beunaccusative; in languages which use be to mark the perfect with unac-


cusatives and have with other verbs—for example, French, German,Dutch—this class of verbs takes be. (The class of verbs which takes beis wider than this in some cases; for example in German, verbs whichinvolve movement over space but are not necessarily telic take be).Now it is widely assumed that unaccusative verbs have subjects whichare actually underlying objects, so that the underlying structure of

(138) He goes to school.

would be

(139) Goes he to school.

with the underlying object raising into subject position before spell-out.We also noted that the class of verbs which allowed inversion in BelfastEnglish was exactly that class which allowed postverbal subjects withPP-topicalisation, another indication of unaccusativity.

Now under the Minimalist program, precisely the way in which lan-guages may differ from one another is in whether movement occursbefore or after spell-out. It would not therefore be unexpected to findthat there are languages where the NP in unaccusatives is not raised intosubject position before spell-out, and that is precisely what is proposedhere. In Belfast English imperatives, it is suggested, the subject remainsin situ in VP; in other words, it is not forced to raise before spell-out toSPEC/AGRSP.

If our approach is correct, it has implications for the underlying syn-tactic structure of unaccusatives. Although early approaches to unac-cusatives (e.g., Burzio 1986) assumed that in unaccusatives the subjectoriginated in D-structure object position in the syntax and moved to thesubject position, some recent approaches (for example, Jackendoff1990) have suggested that, while the subject is the theme semantically,it is in subject position throughout the syntax, being placed there bylinking rules which determine the relationship between lexical concep-tual structure and the syntax, placing the highest argument in subjectposition. In Jackendoff's approach, there is no stage in the syntax atwhich the subject is in postverbal position. On the contrary, it seemsfrom the Belfast English data that the argument in unaccusatives can bein the object position in the syntax.

If the subject does not have to raise out of VP in dialect A impera-tives, then we would expect to be able to see evidence of inversion inother structures where the surface subject is an object in underlying


structure, in addition to unaccusatives. The obvious example of such astructure is the passive, where a sentence like:

(140) The dog was found.

is generally assumed to derive from a structure like:

(141) was found the dog

the surface subject being the thematic object. If our analysis is correct,then we would expect to be able to have postverbal subjects in passiveimperatives. And, as noted above, inversion is possible in passiveimperatives in Belfast English.

We also noted above that in dialect A the subject always occurs, aswe would predict, directly after the lexical verb. It is not possible indialect A for it to occur after an auxiliary, although this is possible indialect B.

Thus, it seems to be the case that apparent inversion in dialect Aimperatives in fact arises from lack of raising of the subject out of itsbase position.

Now it may seem strange that in one particular construction, the sub-ject does not raise; for, in general, subject-raising is obligatory inBelfast English, just as in standard English.

(142) *Went heout of the room.(143) * Sat they down.

What determines raising of the subject in the overt syntax is thestrength or weakness of the NP-features of the node to which raisingtakes place. We noted in the previous chapter that the NP feature ofAGRS can be weak in Belfast English; raising as far as SPEC/AGRS isnot always required. But it was argued that the NP-feature of Tense wasstrong, forcing the subject to move out of the VP into SPEC/Tense. Itseems plausible that in imperatives, the NP-feature of Tense can also beweak, and thus the subject NP remains in VP. There is indeed some evi-dence that Tense is not instantiated in imperatives. They have no tensemarking, and, unlike infinitives, which have to, nothing overt filling theTense node. Moreover, in imperatives with lexical subjects, it is impos-sible to have do as an auxiliary, and we argued in the previous chapterthat do is inserted under Tense.

(144) *Do you come in.(145) *Do you not hit them.


The optionality of raising in imperatives would follow naturally ifTense is not instantiated in imperatives and if, as we argued in the pre-vious chapter, the subject is not required to move to SPEC/AGRSP;there would thus be nothing to force the subject to raise out of VP.

In dialect A, then, subjects do not have to raise in the overt syntax;because some subjects originate after the verb, the lack of raising resultsin apparent inversion of the subject and the verb, although in fact nei-ther has moved.

Notice that there nothing to assign Case to the subject in these imper-atives. In unaccusatives, the verb does not assign accusative Case, andthe underlying object is thus, in the general case, forced to move to sub-ject position. Similarly, in passives Case is not assigned to the underly-ing object, so that it is forced to move into the surface subject position.Thus, in a framework incorporating a Case-filter operating on the outputof S-structure, such imperatives should be excluded, since the Case-fil-ter blocks NPs which are not either themselves Case-marked or part of aCase-marked chain. The fact such NPs are possible here is an argumentin favour of Case-checking by LF (as in the Minimalist program ofChomsky, 1992) rather than a Case filter operating at S-structure level.At LF, these subjects will move to SPEC/AGRSP and have their Casechecked there.

The difference between standard English and dialect A of BelfastEnglish, then, is that in the latter the subject need not raise out of VP inimperatives. We have suggested that this follows naturally from the factthat the NP-feature of AGRS is optionally weak in Belfast English, asproposed in the previous chapter, and that Tense is not instantiated inimperatives.

The Structure of Dialect B Imperatives

As noted above, imperative inversion in dialect B is possible with allverbs; it is not restricted to unaccusatives. Therefore, it cannot simplybe the case that the subject and verb remain in situ. Either we must havehere postverbal subjects of the type commonly found in pro-drop lan-guages, or the verb must raise out of VP, with the subject either remain-ing in situ or raising to a projection below that to which the verb raises.We begin by considering the first of these possibilities.

In many pro-drop languages, the subject may occur postverbally,adjoined to VP, as in the following examples from Italian.


(146) pro ha telefonato Gianni.(147) pro mangia le mele Gianni.

A possible analysis of postverbal subjects in dialect B imperativeswould see them as similar to postverbal subjects in the pro-drop lan-guages. Although both Belfast English and standard English are non-pro-drop in general, requiring overt subjects, imperatives can have nullsubjects in both varieties.

(148) Go away.(149) Read that book.

It would thus not be surprising to find that one of the varieties permit-ted postverbal subjects. Pro-drop languages also appear to differ amongthemselves in this way, with many pro-drop languages, for exampleItalian (Rizzi 1982,1986), allowing postverbal subjects, whereas otherssuch as Brazilian Portuguese do not (Chao 1980). A rather neat analysiscould be provided by arguing that some characteristic of imperatives(perhaps a strong AGR, necessarily marked as second person singular)allowed them to be pro-drop, and that while Belfast English fell intothat group of pro-drop languages which permits postverbal subjects,Standard English fell into the Portuguese-type group, which does notpermit these.

Unfortunately, however, the subject positions available in BelfastEnglish imperatives differ from those characteristic of postverbal NPsin pro-drop languages. Thus in Belfast English imperatives, the VP-final position characteristic of these preverbal NPs in pro-drop lan-guages is not generally available; an inverted subject can occur VP-finally if there are no other constituents in VP, but it cannot follow anobject or other constituent in the VP; although a vocative can occurafter the VP, as in standard English, a true subject cannot. Thus you canonly occur after the object of the verb where there is an intonation breakbetween the verb and you, indicating that it is a vocative rather than asubject.

(150) a. Eat the apple, you.b. *Eat the apple you.c. Eat you the apple.

It may be objected that the presence of an obligatory intonation break isdifficult to perceive; however, there is a clearer difference betweenpostverbal NPs in the pro-drop languages and those in Belfast Englishimperatives.


In pro-drop languages, the subject may appear in a variety of posi-tions within the VP—a fact often attributed to restructuring at PF (seefor example Burzio 1986, Bouchard 1983); in particular, the subject canoccur between the direct object and a prepositional phrase. However,this position is not available in Belfast English.

(151) Scrivera una lunga lettera Gianni a Paolo.Will write a long letter Gianni to Paolo.

(152) a. Write you a long letter to Paolob. *Write a long letter you to Paolo.

This fact applies irrespective of whether the subject is the pronoun youor a full NP.

(153) a. Write everybody a long letter toPaolo.

b. *Write a long letter everybody toPaolo.

The only case where the subject can occur after the object is where theobject is a weak pronoun, when the order verb-object-subject occurs.

(154) a. Eat them you now.b. Eat you them now.

Note that this ordering cannot simply be a consequence of some low-level reordering of elements within VP, putting weak pronouns first.The order is not necessarily weak pronouns followed by other NPs; thusboth orders in (154) are possible, with the stressed pronoun you in (b)preceding the weak object pronoun. Moveover, a non-pronominal sub-ject can also precede a weak pronoun.

(155) Take everybody them home.

Furthermore, if there were in general the possibility of low-levelreordering within VP in English, one would expect to find exampleslike (156).

(156) *I gave it the children (= 'I gave the children it').

But such reordering is not generally possible, and certainly does notoccur in Belfast English.

Thus, the postverbal subject in Belfast imperatives does not seemsimilar to the postverbal subjects found in the pro-drop languages, and


the superficially attractive explanation for postverbal subjects in Belfastimperatives, in terms of pro-drop, does not seem to be the correct one.

Assuming an analysis with a VP-internal subject in SPEC/VP, then,there is only one possible other source of VS order: the verb has movedout of VP, and the subject has either remained in situ or raised to a nodelower than that to which the verb has moved (for example, the verb is inC and the subject in SPEC/AGRS (as in English questions) or the verb isin AGRS and the subject in SPEC/TP (as proposed by Bobaljik andJonas 1992 for Irish). The question then arises as to where the verb hasmoved to.

Earlier we argued in considering dialect A, that Tense was not instan-tiated in imperatives. Thus, it cannot be the case that the subject is mov-ing to SPEC/Tense and the verb to AGRS. Let us then consider the pos-sibility that the verb is moving to C.

At certain stages in the history of English, imperatives have patternedwith questions in having inversion of the I-to-C type; thus Pintzuk(1991) points out that imperatives pattern with questions in Old Eng-lish, in that pronouns, which generally appear before the finite verb,appear following the verb in negatives and questions; she uses this toargue that, in imperatives and questions, the verb is in C.

(157) beo du on ofeste.be you in haste.'Be quick.'

(Beowulf 386)

(158) hwi sciole we obres marines nimanwhy should we another man's take'Why should we take those of another man?'

(AELS24.188)and in the King James Bible, there is inversion in imperatives, forexample:

(159) Be ye not proud.

There are some apparent problems with this analysis, however. First,note that in general in English, most verbs cannot raise out of VP;where a verb is required in a higher position, do-support is needed.Raising is restricted to auxiliaries and the verbs be and have.

Note that verb-raising in imperatives differs from other types of rais-ing in that it does not distinguish be, have, and auxiliaries from otherverbs.


(160) Be you good.(161) Have you a good time.(162) Go you home.(163) Eat you your dinner.

This in itself does not of course mean that movement to C has nottaken place in (160)-(163); it could be that some characteristic ofimperatives means that all verbs must raise here, and not only be andhave. However, we would have to explain why do-support is not neces-sary in imperatives.

A second problem arises in relation to the position of negation inimperatives. Movement to C necessarily means that the verb has movedover negation and adverbs; as we noted above, the position of the verbto the left of negatives and adverbs is generally taken to be diagnostic ofthe movement of the verb at least as far as I. The inverted verb in imper-atives does indeed seem to be able to move over adverbs.

(164) Read you quickly that book.(165) Do you immediately your homework.

Notice incidentally that in (164) and (165), the verb and object are notadjacent, showing that the general adjacency requirement between verband object in English is not absolute and reinforcing the view that thereis no requirement for the verb and object to be adjacent at S-structurefor Case reasons.

It appears, then, that the verb has risen above adverbs, that is, out ofVP. However, in inverted imperatives, the verb may not precede nega-tion.

(166) *Read you not that.(167) *Be you not stupid.

This might seem to indicate that the verb raises to a node between nega-tion and adverbs, as in French infinitives for example, where it has beenargued that the verb raises to AGR0, since it follows negatives and pre-cedes adverbs.

(168) ne pas ecouter souvent la radionot to listen to often the radio

However, the situation is not quite so straightforward; negation inovert-subject imperatives differs from that in other sentence types. Ingeneral, negation with lexical verbs is marked by don't or do not. But inovert-subject imperatives, only don't is possible; do not may not occur.


(169) a. Don't you eat that.b. *Do you not eat that.c. *Do not you eat that.

Compare the question forms

(170) Don't you eat that?(171) Do you not eat that?

This suggests that we may not be dealing here with a combination ofthe negative not with do-support, but rather, as suggested by Beukemaand Coopmans (1989) and Zhang (1991) with an invariant negativemarker, don't. There is evidence from standard English that don't is inC in that variety. For as we argued in the last chapter, the subject instandard English seems to be uniformly in SPEC/AGRS. Don't musttherefore be in a higher node, that is, in C.

(172) a. Don't you do that.b. * You don't do that.

There is evidence that the inverted verb in Belfast English occupiesthe same position as don't from the fact that inversion is incompatiblewith don't', negative imperatives cannot have inversion, except wherethey are unaccusative or passive and the apparent inversion does notinvolve verb movement but rather lack of subject raising, as in dialect A.

(173) a. *Don't touch you that.b. Don't you touch that.

(174) a. Don't go you away.b. Don't you go away.

It is well known that, in general, verb movement to C is excludedwhere there is a lexical element in C; thus for example in the GermanicVerb-second languages, such as German, the verb cannot move to Cwhere the complementiser position is filled (for futher discussion ofthis, see Chapter 4).

There is also evidence that the inverted verb in dialect B is in C, fromthe interaction of imperative inversion with the NEG criterion, (Rizzi1991), that is, the requirement that where certain negative elements arein SPEC/CP, a verbal element must move to C.

Consider the interaction of elements which require an overt elementin C, to satisfy the NEG criterion, with overt subject imperatives. Instandard English overt-subject imperatives cannot co-occur with these.


(175) *Under no circumstances you go away.(176) *On no account you close the door.

Note that in non-imperatives, such expressions trigger obligatoryinversion, with do-support as required.

(177) Under no circumstances do they go away.(178) On no account should they close the door.

Do-support is however unavailable in imperatives.

(179) *Under no circumstances do you go away.(180) *On no account do you close the door.

These are of course grammatical if they are not imperatives; to be surethat they are ungrammatical as imperatives, we need to look at caseswhere the verb in imperatives and indicatives differs.

(181 )SE *Under no circumstances do everybody sit down.(182)SE *On no account do anybody move.

Moreover, have, be, and auxiliaries cannot raise, even when an ele-ment is required in C because of the presence of an inversion-triggeringelement in SPEC/CP. This suggests that in standard English there issome element in C already which blocks the raising of verbs into C, butwhich, because it is not overt, is insufficient to satisfy the requirementthat an element appear in C.

(183)SE *Under no circumstances be you impertinent.(184)SE *On no account have you another day off.

The element in C in standard English imperatives is very possibly anempty modal: both Kayne (1991), for Italian, and den Dikken (1992),for Dutch, argue for the presence of empty modals in imperatives.

Kayne makes the case that in Italian, the placing of clitic pronouns innegative infinitival imperatives can be explained if there is an emptymodal present. Although in general in Italian clitics follow the infini-tive, in these imperatives they can precede it.

(185) a. Gianni ha deciso di farlo.Gianni has decided to do it

b. Gianni ha deciso di lo fare.it to do


(186) a. Nonfarlo.not to do it'Don't do it.'

b. Non lo fare.it to do

'Don't do it.'

Kayne argues where clitics precede the infinitive, they are in factattached to an empty modal, rather than being left-adjoined to the infini-tive; the presence of this empty modal in imperative infinitives (but notother infinitives) explains the different order possibilities in imperatives.

Den Dikken argues that in Dutch the possibility of placing an objectNP on the right periphery of imperatives containing a resultative phrasederives from the movement of an empty operator associated with theobject to the specifier position of a modal phrase. The right peripheralposition is available only in imperatives, and not in indicatives.

(187) Jan legde (die bal) neer (*die ball).Jan put (that ball) down

(188) Leg (die bal) neer (die ball).Put (that ball) down

The presence of a null modal in standard English imperatives wouldalso explain why be and have cannot raise in standard English impera-tives; they do not do so because an empty modal is present, and thatbeing so, they remain in VP, as they do generally when an auxiliary ispresent. It would also explain the impossibility of modals occurring inimperatives. Many modals are undoubtedly excluded from imperativesfor semantic reasons, but even those which are not cannot occur inimperatives. Thus, the modal can is excluded from imperatives, eventhough be able, which has a very similar meaning, is not.

(189) * You can swim before the end of the holidays.

(190) You be able to swim before the end of the holidays.

Thus it seems that in standard English imperatives, C is filled by a nullmodal; this is insufficient in itself to satisfy the NEG criterion, but itprevents movement of verbs to C, so that there is no way for the NEGcriterion to be satisfied; for that reason, negative elements cannot occurin SPEC/CP.

Compare the situation in Belfast English. Here, in dialect B, invertedimperatives are grammatical after negative elements in SPEC/CP, so


that (183) and (184) are grammatical in this variety, as are exampleswhere the lexical verb has inverted.

(191) Under no cirumstances speak you to them.(192) On no account open you that door.

suggesting that the verb in Belfast English has moved into C, thus satis-fying the NEG criterion. The difference between Belfast English andstandard English then would be that in Belfast English, the element in Cis not an empty modal but an affix to which the verb can move.

There is further evidence of verb-raising in dialect B in the placementof weak object pronouns. It is well known that in the Scandinavian lan-guages, raising of the lexical verb triggers leftward movement of weakobject pronouns (see for example Holmberg 1986, 1992; Vikner 1991),and it will be argued that this is also what is happening in Belfast Eng-lish imperatives. The following example (from Vikner 1991) shows theoperation of object shift in Danish.

(193) a. I gar laeste Peter den uden tvivl ikke.Yesterday read Peter it without doubt not

b. *I gar laeste Peter uden tvivl den ikkec. *I gar laeste Peter uden tvivl ikke den

In order to show that object shift is happening in Belfast Englishimperatives, we need to exclude the possibility that the object pronoun issimply cliticising to the verb and raising with it. Two main factors showthat in fact this cannot be the case. First, although weak object pronounsmust precede adverbs in inverted structures, they may appear eitherbefore or after the subject; the fact that they do not necessarily tag on tothe verb seems to indicate that they are not clitics. Note that the subjectitself need not be pronominal, so that attachment to the subject cannot beanalysed as attachment to an array of clitics attached to the verb.

(194) a. Read it everybody quickly,b. Read everybody it quickly.

Second, there is evidence that weak pronouns are not clitics whichattach to verbs in the behaviour of such pronouns with the verb havewhen it raises in English.

In British English (and Hiberno-English) have as a main verb mayraise to AGRS (and thence to C):

(195) a. I haven't any books.b. I have always a lot of work.c. Has John the answers?


Now if weak object pronouns could cliticise to V, one would expectthem to be able to raise to C with have. But this is absolutely ungram-matical

(196) a. *Has them John?b. Has John them?

Likewise, it seems impossible for pronouns to occur above not, thoughhere the findings are complicated by the fact that it seems more or lessobligatory for have + not to appear as haven't

(197) a. ??I have not the books,b. I haven't the books.

(198) a. ??I have not them.b. I haven't them.c. *I have them not.

Example (198c) seems rather worse than (198a), although neither isparticularly good, seeming to show that weak pronouns cannot cliticiseto the verb in negatives either, though as we have noted the evidence isnot as clear as with questions.1

We noted above that weak object pronouns can occur either betweenthe verb and the subject or after the subject in inverted imperatives,whereas other objects can only appear after the subject.

(199) a. Read it you to me.b. Read you it to me.

(200) a. *Read the book you to me.b. Read you the book to me.

(201) a. Throw Graham you your end there.b. Throw us you your end there.

Moreover, note the position of weak pronoun objects in relation toadverbs; although they may precede or follow the subject, weak objectpronouns in inverted imperatives always appear before adverbs.

(202) a. Read it always you to me.b. Read you it always to me.c. *Read always it you to me.d. *Read you always it to me.

It seems that the object pronouns must raise to a position aboveadverbs, presumably SPEC/AGRoP, but the subject may either remain


in situ in SPEC/VP or raise to a projection above the one to which theobject raises. We return to the look at the subject position in more detaillater.

The movement of the object affects the class of weak pronouns, as inmainland Scandinavian languages. Thus, it does not apply to co-ordi-nated pronouns, stressed pronouns, or the uns class of pronouns dis-cussed in the previous chapter.

(203) a. Put them you in the living room,b. Put you them in the living room.

(204) a. *Put them and me you in the living room.b. Put you them and me in the living room.

(205) a. *Put THEM you in the living room.b. Put you THEM in the living room.

(206) a. *Put THEMUNS you in the living room.b. Put you THEMUNS in the living room.

Moreover, it is dependent on raising of the main verb, again as in theScandinavian languages. The object cannot raise unless the main verbdoes.

(207) a. Tell you her carefully the story.b. Tell her carefully you the story.

(208) a. *Her carefully you tell the story.b. *You her carefully tell the story.

(209) a. *Be you her carefully telling the story when I get back.b. *Be her carefully you telling the story when I get back.

In the Scandinavian languages, object shift moves the object in frontof negation and adverbs. In Belfast English, it is difficult to tell whetherit moves the object in front of negation or not, because negation ismarked in imperatives, not by a negative marker in NEG P, but by anegative in the C position, don't.

Object shift is obligatory for weak pronouns, again as in the Scandi-navian languages. Weak pronouns must precede sentential adverbs.

(210) a. Give you them always your full attention.b. *Give you always them your full attention.

It is interesting that object shift, which occurs in the Scandinavianlanguages when the main verb raises out of VP, also comes into opera-


tion in English, a language which in general does not have main verb-raising to C, where a dialect has a construction which involves themovement of the verb to C. Speakers who allow inversion with allverbs in imperatives, which we have analysed as verb movement to C,all seem to have object shift; I have been unable to find any speakerswho allow widespread inversion but do not have object shift. In a sense,it seems as if English has "latent" object shift, which in most varietiesdoes not show up because of lack of main verb-raising, but surfaceswhen a dialect contains a construction involving main verb-raising.

We now turn to look at the position of the subject in dialect B imper-atives. The question arises as to why the subject may either precede orfollow an object which has undergone object shift.

(211) a. Throw you us your end there.b. Throw us you your end there.

(212) a. Find you it if you can.b. Find it you if you can.

It seems that the difference in order is caused by raising or non-raisingof the subject out of the SPEC/VP position. Where it follows the object,the subject must also follow any sentential adverbs.

(213) a. Tell you them always the truth.b. Tell them always you the truth.c. *Tell them you always the truth.

That non-raising of the subject is an option in dialect B is shown bythe fact that the subject may appear after the lexical verb in unac-cusatives and passives which have auxiliaries. In these structures, theauxiliary will raise to C, leaving the lexical verb in VP. If the subjectoccurs after that lexical verb, then it must be in situ.

(214) Be running you up to the rostrum just as the VIPs come in.(215) Have gone you out before I get back.(216) Be picked youse for the team or I'll get mad.

Similar considerations apply to negatives. Where raising of the verbto C is precluded by the presence of don't in C, and the verb is unac-cusative, the subject can occur after the lexical verb.

(217) Don't go you away.(218) Don't sit youse down till you're told.


Thus subject-raising seems to be optional, indicating that the NP fea-ture of AGRS is optionally strong. In order to cope with the imperativefacts here, we will need to admit into the theory the possibility that anode may have not only either weak or strong features but also featureswhich may be either weak or strong.

The variant position of the subject and object when object shiftoccurs, then, arises not because of any difference in object position butbecause subject raising is optional. Where the subject precedes theobject, it is in SPEC/AGRSP, as in (219); where it follows the object, ithas remained in situ in SPEC/VP (or in certain cases in a position afterthe verb in VP) and thus follows the object which is in SPEC/AGR0, asin (220).


Thus, dialect B shares with dialect A the optionality of subject-raising.We argued that this derived from the optional weakness of the NP-fea-ture of AGRS, together with the fact that there is no Tense content inimperatives, so that the usual mechanism which forces the subject outof VP in Belfast English when AGRS is weak, that is, the strong NP-fea-ture of Tense, is not present. Where dialects A and B differ is in theavailability of verb-raising. In dialect A, the verb remains in the VP; indialect B, it may raise to C, which contains an imperative marker whoseV-feature is strong.

We argued in the previous chapter that, in order for raising to C totake place, the V-feature of intermediate categories had to be strong, sothat raising was forced at each stage. It seems not unlikely that the V-feature of AGRS in imperatives could be strong, given that AGRS is capa-


ble of identifying an empty category in imperatives; for null subjectimperatives do occur, with an obligatory second person interpretation.2

(221) Go away.(222) Read that.

We have also argued that in imperatives in Belfast English, the verbraises to C. One question that arises, if this analysis is correct, is whymain verbs can raise here, but not in questions, where only be and haveraise, other verbs requiring do-support. We need to explain why mainverbs can raise here, but not in questions and negatives. One wouldexpect that if main verbs cannot raise to C in questions, they shouldequally be unable to raise in imperatives; it would be expected that asJo-support is required in questions with verbs other than have and be, itwould also be required in imperatives. But we have noted that do-sup-port is impossible in imperatives. One reason for the lack of do-supportis that do is inserted under Tense, and we have argued that Tense is notinstantiated in imperatives; this explains only the lack of Jo-support,however, and not the general availability of verb movement to C. Weneed to consider why a difference exists between imperatives and otherconstructions in relation to verb-raising. The answer would seem to liein the fact that the verb feature of C and AGRS is strong, forcing raisingin the syntax. On the contrary, the V- features of these nodes are weakin questions, triggering raising in the overt syntax only of those verbswhich cannot raise at LF.

Finally, let us consider the imperative verb away, which as noted ear-lier only occurs in imperatives and obligatorily moves to C. It seemsthat we must regard this as a verb lexically specified as having a strongimperative feature, which must therefore move to C for checking in thesyntax.

Summarising our findings about dialect B, then, we have argued thatit is similar to dialect A in that subject-raising is optional, but it differsfrom dialect A in that the verb moves to C. When this verb movementoccurs, weak object pronouns obligatorily undergo object shift intoSPEC/AGR0.

Conclusion

It has been shown here that there is more than one possible grammar inrelation to imperatives, depending on whether or not the verb raises,


and whether or not the subject raises, before spell-out. These possibili-ties are available within the Minimalist approach to parameter setting,and are used in Belfast English but not in standard English.

Although the possibility of leaving the subject in situ can be seen torelate to the general optionality of movement to SPEC/AGRSP inBelfast English, the availability of verb-raising is restricted to impera-tives, and thus is essentially construction specific; it involves a state-ment about the strength of the V-feature of a particular morpheme in C,the imperative morpheme, rather than about C in general. As noted inChapter 2, the grammar must be able to include statements about thestrength or weakness of particular items in a node, as well as generalstatements about that node. Although this increases the power of thegrammar, it seems to be empirically necessary; moreover, given thevery strongly restricted range of options available within the Minimalistprogram, it does not seem that it will make parameter setting unneces-sarily difficult.

Consider the child, endowed with an innately specified UniversalGrammar, acquiring Belfast English. Assume that the child has set theparameters affecting the position of the subject and verb in general, thatis, that the NP feature of Tense is strong (forcing subject-raising), but theV-feature of Tense is weak, so that the verb generally remains withinVP. The child then encounters inverted imperatives, which do not fit intothe current grammar. There appear to be only a small number of possibleanalyses available. Either the subject does not raise, meaning that theNP-feature of some element is weak in imperatives; or the verb doesraise, meaning that the V-feature of some element is strong in impera-tives. There is a very restricted choice of possible grammars, so that,even if strength or weakness has to be specified for individual functionalelements rather than whole categories, the available possibilities are suf-ficiently restricted for learning to take place easily.

One very interesting aspect of Belfast English imperatives is thechanges which appear to be in progress. The trend is approximately asfollows. For older speakers, widespread inversion is usually possible,while among younger speakers dialect A prevails, and among many ofthe youngest speakers—children under about 12— there is no inver-sion, the grammar in relation to imperatives being like standard Eng-lish. Now what is particularly noteworthy is that children learningBelfast English, and whose parents presumably provide a significantproportion of their input, often have grammars which do not admit


inversion, and they judge it ungrammatical. It is well known that par-ents address a significant number of imperatives to their children, sothat, even though inversion is optional, the input to the language facultyon which learning was based must have included many inverted imper-atives. Nevertheless, the children have established grammars which donot permit inversion. Similarly, there are children of dialect B-speakingparents, who have developed a dialect A grammar. What is clear fromthis is that language learning does not involve selecting a grammarwhich fits all the data. Rather, it must involve selecting, from theoptions provided by UG, the grammar which best fits the majority ofthe data.

It is also noteworthy that there appear to be only three possible gram-mars: one involving the non-raising of the verb, as in dialect A, oneinvolving verb-raising to C as in dialect B, and one involving subject-raising but no verb-raising, as in standard English. There do not appearto be other possibilities. If speakers were hypothesising rules, ratherthan selecting from a small number of UG possibilities, one wouldexpect a wider range of possibilities; for example, learners who hadinput from both dialect A and dialect B speakers might hypothesise thatinversion was possible with any verb which did not have an object, onthe basis of the observation that the majority of inversion was happen-ing with such verbs; such an observation is likely to be made becauseinversion occurs with verbs without surface objects in both dialect Aand dialect B, but only with verbs which have objects in dialect A; sucha hypothesis would cover a large proportion of the data. Similarly, eventhough in most dialect B imperatives the subject follows the lexicalverb, there is not a possible grammar in which the subject always fol-lows the lexical verb, even when don't or an auxiliary is present. Again,such a grammar would fit most of the data, but would not accord withUG: there is no way of deriving the order auxiliary-lexical verb-subject-object, as in (223).

(223) *Be eating you your dinner when I get back.

Thus, it seems that the task of the language learner is not to hypothe-sise or select, or even set the parameters corresponding to a grammarwhich can generate all the data in the input, rather it is to determinewhich grammar, from among the limited range made available by UG,can accommodate the majority of the data in the input. There may alsobe a preference for the simplest possible grammar; thus, a grammar


where the V-feature of C is uniformly weak may be preferred over onewhere C is generally strong but a specific element which can appear inC is strong, and may be the one selected by the learner unless there isvery strong counter-evidence; hence, the possibility of a child develop-ing a grammar without inversion in the face of input containing notinfrequent examples of inverted structures.

4For To Infinitives

Belfast English is one of a number of dialects of English in which itseems that the complementiser for may appear directly before to ininfinitives, as shown in (1) and (2) below

(1) I want for to meet them.(2) It is difficult for to see that.

Other such varieties include Ottawa Valley English (Carroll 1983) andOzark English (mentioned briefly in Chomsky & Lasnik 1977, Chomsky1981, Roster & May 1982).

In standard English, for never appears immediately before to; forappears before a lexical subject, but is absent where the subject is PRO.The standard, pre-Minimalist, view of this (see for example Chomsky1981) has been that the subject position of infinitives is ungoverned andthus not Case-marked; it could therefore be PRO, considered to occuronly in ungoverned positions; if there is a lexical subject, this must beCase-marked in another way, for example by for which governs andCase-marks the subject position. Where for occurs, a PRO subjectshould be impossible since the subject position is governed.

(3) a. For John to win would be amazing,b. *John to win would be amazing.

(4) a. To win would be amazing.b. *For to win would be amazing.

The status of PRO within the Minimalist framework is less clear, butit seems likely that the restrictions on the occurrence of PRO can bederived along the following lines: PRO is not Case-marked, and there-

81


fore cannot move to a checking position to check and delete a Case-affix,but must remain in situ, in SPEC/VP. It therefore cannot occur in anyderivation where there is a Case-affix for it to raise to; if there is such anaffix, it will remain undeleted and the derivation will crash. Thus, as inthe standard analysis of PRO, it should be in complementary distributionwith full NPs, which need to move to Case positions for checking.

The grammaticality of examples like (4b) in the for to dialects thusappears contrary to the prediction of these analyses; it contains aposition where Case can be checked/assigned, as shown by the gram-maticality of overt subject infinitives containing for, and it containsa PRO, which cannot check Case or, in an earlier perspective, begoverned.

In this chaper we consider why Belfast English permits for to infini-tives but standard English does not. It will be argued that in BelfastEnglish for is optionally a clitic, attaching to to, while in standard Eng-lish/or cannot cliticise.

The chapter begins with an outline of the major characteristics of thedistribution of for to in Belfast English. Next, the analysis of these factswill be discussed. It will be shown that the for which occurs in for toconstructions is the complementiser for, it will then be argued thatBelfast English allows for to cliticise to to, this single characteristicaccounting for a variety of facts about the dialect. The cliticisation pro-posed is a form of lowering, a process which has been argued to beunusual if not impossible in the syntax (see for example Chomsky1992). It will be argued, however, that complementiser-lowering occursin other languages and is a special type of lowering which escapes thegeneral constraints on lowering imposed by Universal Grammar.

The third section of this chapter considers the relationship betweenBelfast English and the other for to dialects, concluding that there is nota unified for to phenomenon, the occurrence of for to arising from dif-ferent characteristics in other dialects. The chapter then concludes witha summary of the findings.

The Use of for to in Belfast English

There are two distinct for to dialects spoken in Northern Ireland. One,which I will term the "weak" for to dialect, is relatively widespreadthroughout the north of Ireland; it uses for to only in purpose clauses, asin (5) and (6).

For To Infinitives 83

(5) I went to the shop for to get bread.(6) They are going home for to see their parents.

This is in fact the more common variety, and the majority of for tospeakers restrict their use to this type of clause. Finlay (1988), in astudy of the speech of Belfast schoolchildren, found examples of for toonly in purpose clauses, suggesting that the variety of Belfast Englishfeaturing a wider use of for to may be restricted to older speakers andhence is disappearing.

It is, however, to the less common, and more interesting, "strong" forto variety, which uses for to as an alternative to to in the majority ofinfinitive types, that we turn our attention here; this variety appears tobe restricted to Belfast and a few other areas, including south Armaghand west Tyrone.1

In the strong for to variety of Belfast English, what is striking is thatfor to can occur in infinitives in a range of different positions, contraryto the data reported for other for to dialects, where usage seems to belimited to those infinitives which are the complement of want-typeverbs and adjectives, which in standard English take for complements,for example want and difficult. In addition to these environments,Belfast English uses/or to infinitives in a variety of other cases.

Infinitives with Null Subjects

Belfast English uses for to instead of the standard English to quitefreely with "subjectless" infinitives. As Chomsky (1981) points out, theoccurrence of for with PRO subjects in the for to dialects presentssomething of a problem for classic Government and Binding theory,since this PRO would appear to be governed; we return to discuss thisin the following section, under the heading Analysis of the for to Con-struction in Belfast English.

In addition to occurring with wanf-type verbs as in (1), for to occursfor example in isolated infinitives used as exclamations:

(7) For to let that mongrel into my yard!(8) For to tell her like that!

Belfast English also uses for to with infinitives in "subject" position.2

(9) For to stay here would be just as expensive.(10) For to pay the mortgage is difficult.


Moreover, for to can be used even with verbs which do not take for instandard English, and which are usually assumed not to be subcate-gorised for the for complementiser.

(11) I tried for to get them.

The use of for to after try has also been reported in Ozark (see Chom-sky & Lasnik (1977), Carroll (1983)); however, in Ozark try apparentlypermits a lexical subject, whereas this is not the case in Belfast English;a sentence like (12), which is grammatical in Ozark is completelyungrammatical in Belfast English.

(12) OE/*BE I tried for him to go home.

For to also occurs with "object control" verbs.

(13) I persuaded John for to go home.(14) She convinced them for to give up.

However, there is one instance where we never find for to and that isafter whether, which in Belfast English acts as a wh-complementiser.

(15) *I don't know whether for to go.

As we shall see later, this is one indication that for of for to is the sameitem as the complementiser for.

Infinitives with Lexical Subjects

In the case of most infinitives with a lexical subject, for must occurbefore the subject, just as in standard English, and for to does not occur.This is presumably because, as in standard English, for is required inorder to assign Case to the lexical subject, which otherwise would notreceive Case and would thus violate the Case Filter, which requires thatall lexical NPs have Case.

The requirement that for occur before the lexical subject applies toinfinitives in most positions— for example to those in "subject" position:

(16) a. For him to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.b. *Him for to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.c. *For him for to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.

to infinitives which are in "extraposition"


(17) a. It was stupid for them to do that.b. *It was stupid them for to do that.c. *It was stupid for them for to do that.

to complements of adjectives:

(18) a. Mary was keen for them to be there.b. *Mary was keen them for to be there.c. *Mary was keen for them for to be there.

and also to the complements of want-type verbs where somethingappears between the matrix verb and the embedded subject

(19) a. I want very much for him to get accepted.b. *I want very much him for to get accepted.c. *I want very much for him for to get accepted.

Two occurrences of for are impossible, as (16c), (17c), (18c), and(19c) show. For to cannot co-occur with for.

However, Belfast English, unlike the other for to varieties so far as Iam aware, places for to after the lexical subject where the infinitive isthe complement of a want-type verb (provided that the lexical subjectoccurs directly after want).

(20) I wanted Jimmy for to come with me.(21) I don't like the children for to be out late.

In fact, this is the only place where for can occur in this structure. Sen-tences like (22), which are grammatical in some other dialects, areungrammatical in this variety.

(22) *I wanted for Jimmy to come with me.

For to speakers can, like standard speakers, omit the for entirely

(23) I wanted Jimmy to come with me.

The only case where for can precede the lexical subject in such con-structions is where something intervenes between the matrix verb andthe complement, as in (19a) above.

It might be thought that in structures like (20) and (21), the NP whichappears to be the subject of the infinitive could in fact be part of themain clause, so that the structure of examples like (20) would be:

(24) I wanted Jimmy [for PRO to come with me].


However, the same construction occurs with the expletive there, whichis restricted to subject position, showing clearly that for to can indeedoccur after the infinitival subject

(25) I want there for to be some peace and quiet sometime.(26) I'd hate there for to be ill-feeling.

For to with "S' deleting " verbs

For to occurs in cases where under standard analyses one would notexpect a complementiser to be present at all, for example after raisingverbs, as in (21 a). Raising is nevertheless obligatory with such verbs inBelfast English, just as in standard English; despite the presence of foras a potential Case-marker/checker, the lexical subject may not remainin situ, as (27b) shows

(27) a. John seems for to be better,b. *It seems for John to be better.

It also occurs with Exceptional Case-Marking (ECM) verbs, as in (28a).Here, for and to must occur together after the subject; for may not occurbefore the subject, as (28b) shows

(28) a. I believe them for to have done it.b. *I believe for them to have done it.

Negatives in for to Infinitives

There is an apparently curious fact about negative for to infinitives, andthat is that the negative not always follows for to; it cannot occurbetween/or and to. Nor can it precede for.

(29) a. I would prefer them for to not go.b. *I would prefer them for not to go.c. *I would prefer them not for to go.

(30) a. For to not go would be foolish.b. *Not for to go would be foolish.c. *For not to go would be foolish.

However, where for precedes the lexical subject, a negative mayoccur before or after to, as in standard English, with the position beforeto being preferred.


(31) a. I would prefer very much for them not to go.b. I would prefer very much for them to not go.

(32) a. For John not to go would be foolish,b. For John to not go would be foolish.

My data contains a number of examples where the speaker uses a forto infinitive with a negative, and subsequently modifies this to a formwithout for, at the same time altering the relative position of to and thenegative: all are of the following form, with the sequence for to not,altered to not to:

(33) I wouldn't like my children for to not marry .. . not to marry.

It is to be expected that there is some unified explanation for the factsof for to use in Belfast English, a difference between the two varietieswhich triggers the various features we have noted above; and that isindeed what we propose in the next section.

Analysis of the for to Construction in Belfast English

The Status of for

Before we go on to analyse the Belfast English data, we need to excludeone possibility: that is, that, as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests,for to is simply a lexical variant of to in some varieties; if that were thecase, the difference between standard English and Belfast Englishwould be simply that they had infinitival markers with different phono-logical shapes, to and for to, and the difference would be of little syn-tactic interest.

It is not difficult to show that this is not the case, however; we haveseen a number of cases where to is possible but for to is not. Thus for todoes npt occur where there is a for complementiser present, as (19c)repeated below shows.

(19c) *I want very much for him for to get accepted.

Its failure to occur with for suggests that the for of for to is in fact thecomplementiser itself. This is reinforced by the fact that it cannot co-occur with whether, as shown in (15), repeated below.

(15) *I don't know whether for to go.


Note that for to can in general occur with wh-words; thus sentenceslike (34) and (35) are grammatical.

(34) I don't know where for to go.(35) He wasn't sure what for to do.

This is exactly what we would predict if both whether and for are com-plementisers; for can co-occur with wh-words which appear in the(SPEC/CP) position, but not with another item which occurs in thecomplementiser position itself. Thus, the lack of for to after whetherarises because the complementiser position is already filled by whether.

The suggestion that whether is a complementiser is, however, notuncontroversial. In particular, it is in contradiction to the analysis pro-posed by Kayne (1990) following suggestions by Larson (1985). Kayneargues that whether occurs in SPEC/CP, and that this explains the con-trast between whether (which allows the wh-infinitive construction) andif, which does not, as shown in (36a & b) below.

(36) a. He doesn't know whether to go to the movies.b. *He doesn't know if to go to the movies.

According to Kayne's analysis, the presence of a lexical complementiseris incompatible with PRO; if, being in C°, cannot therefore be followedby PRO, but whether, being like other wh-words in SPEC/CP, can do so.

In Belfast English, however, although the judgements on (36a & b)are as in standard English, there is evidence that whether is in fact in C.One type of evidence comes from the pattern of occurrence of that afterwh-words. In Belfast English, for many speakers, that can occur after awh-element,3 as in (37) and (38).

(37) I don't know when that he's going.(38) It depends who that I see.

However, whether never co-ocurs with that

(39) *I don't know whether that he's going.

Thus in Belfast English whether differs from other wh-words in thatit cannot co-occur with a complementiser, which seems to indicate thatwhether is not in SPEC/CP but in C° itself.

A further argument for whether being in C comes from the occur-rence of subject-auxiliary inversion in embedded clauses. AsMcCloskey (1992b) notes, Hiberno-English dialects allow inversion inembedded questions (for further discussion of this, see Chapter 5).


(40) I wonder did he get there on time.(41) They asked him was he by himself.(42) I wonder what street does he live in.(43) The man on the door asked her who had she come to see.

However, such inversion is impossible with whether

(45) a. *I wonder whether did he get there on time,b. I wonder whether he got there on time.

(45) a. *They asked him whether was he by himself,b. They asked him whether he was by himself.

Assuming that the inversion here is the same process as in matrix sen-tences, that is, the movement of I (=AGRs)to C, the reason for its beingblocked with whether falls out naturally if whether is in C; since C isalready filled, I cannot move to it. That this is the correct analysis isconfirmed by the fact that inversion is also impossible with that.

(46) a. *I wonder what street that does he live in.b. I wonder what street that he lives in.

(47) a. *The man on the door asked her who that had she come to see.b. The man on the door asked her who that she had come to see.

Thus whether in Belfast English does appear to be in C, and so to bein complementary distribution with other elements which occur in thatposition. The fact that it does not occur with for, then, indicates that foris also a complementiser.

Carroll (1983), in her study of Ottawa Valley English, argues that thefor of for to infinitives is not in fact the complementiser for but thepreposition for associated with certain verbs such as want and like. Thismay indeed be the case in that variety, a possibility to which we willreturn later. However, it is clearly not the case in Belfast English; there,for to infinitives occur in isolation, as in (7) and (8) repeated below

(7) For to let that mongrel into my yard!(8) For to tell her like that!

Moreover, in certain constructions, the for preposition and the for com-plementiser can surface

(48) What I'm longing for is for to have a break.4

If, however, for is a complementiser, certain questions immediatelyarise.


a. How is it that PRO is permitted after for, a position in which lexicalNPs also occur?

b. How can the lexical subject occur before the complementiser?c. Why should the positioning of negatives be influenced by the pres-

ence or absence of a complementiser?d. How can \hefor complementiser occur with verbs which are nor-

mally assumed to take only IP complements?

Although the evidence above suggests that the for of for to infinitives isindeed the for complementiser, the questions raised in a-d, above, suggestthat it differs from the normal for complementiser in a number of ways.

For with PRO Subjects

As already mentioned, one problem raised by Belfast English and theother for to dialects is that they appear, unlike standard English, to allowPRO in a position in which Case can be marked or checked. In the pre-Minimalist view, this is a problem because Case is assigned under gov-ernment, but PRO must be ungoverned, and so one would not expect tofind PRO in a position in which lexical NPs can occur. In the Minimalistapproach, as noted above, the status of PRO is less clear than in earlierversions of syntax, but it is nevertheless evident that this type of null ele-ment does not generally occur in a derivation in which there is a Case-checking position which would have to be checked by PRO; we sug-gested above that PRO is caseless and cannot move for checking, butrather remains in SPEC/VP, a derivation in which there was a positioncontaining a Case feature to which no other NP could move would beexcluded because it would contain an undeleted feature and would crash.Clearly, sentences containing afar complementiser must contain a Case-position in which a lexical subject can be checked; it is a problem, then,that such structures are also grammatical where the subject is PRO.

For can clearly check the Case of the subject of infinitives such as(16a) and (17a), repeated below.

(16) a. For him to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.(17) a. It was stupid for them to do that.

We are left, then, with the conclusion that Belfast English appears tocontain examples of a governed/Case-checked PRO; noting that this is aproblem in analysing the for to dialects, Chomsky (1981) suggests that,in those dialects, for is optionally a governor. However, although thiswill produce the correct results in terms of allowing subjectless infini-


lives with for to to occur, it fails to account for the other features ofBelfast English we have noted, namely, the restrictions on negativeplacement and the occurrence of lexical subjects before for, for wewould expect to be able to get a negative like (49) if for is optionally agovernor, or optionally made Case-checking available.

(49) *For PRO not to go would be stupid.

whereas, as we have seen, this is ungrammatical; moreover, there is noth-ing in the optional governing status of for that would lead us to expect tofind a lexical subject before it, as in (20) and (21) repeated below

(20) I wanted Jimmy for to come with me.(21) I don't like the children for to be out late.

Note that it is not only the standard account of PRO that runs into dif-ficulties here; thus, for example, Bouchard's (1983) proposal that it islack of Case rather than government which sanctions PRO also hasproblems, since for is a Case assigner. Likewise, Borer's (1989)account of infinitival subjects, under which these are not PRO but pro,also encounters problems, for it requires an empty C slot into whichINFL can raise, and of course the complementiser position appears tobe filled in the for to construction.

Thus, we seem to have a contradiction. For appears to be a comple-mentiser capable of governing/checking Case; but it also appears to beable to occur with PRO. We can resolve this by claiming that, althoughfor is a complementiser, it may move out of the complementiser posi-tion. More precisely, for can be a clitic in Belfast English, moving toTense and cliticising to to. This would not be the only example of com-plementisers cliticising; thus Shlonsky (1988) argues that the Hebrewcomplementiser se has clitic status, moving out of the complementiserposition and cliticising to INFL or the subject.

Let us explore the consequences of allowing for to cliticise to to. Thestructure of a sentence like (9) above would then be:

(50) PRO for to stay here would be just as expensive.

I assume, essentially following Chomsky (1989,1992), that itemswhich do not enter into semantic interpretation at LF do not leavetraces, and that for is such an item. Thus, once for has moved, PRO isungoverned as required. The claim that for has no semantics is notuncontroversial; a number of analyses of infinitives such as those byBresnan (1972), Stowell (1982) and Pesetsky (in preparation) have


argued that for has a meaning, in particular, that for clauses are unrealisedwith respect to the matrix verb. These accounts draw attention to the con-trast between infinitives with for (or which can potentially take for) andthose which cannot take for. The former are necessarily "unrealised" withrespect to the matrix verb, whereas the latter are not, as the contrastbetween (51) and (52) (with for) on the one hand and (53) and (54)(which cannot take for in standard English) on the other serves to show.

(51) I want very much for John to win.(52) I'd like very much for John to play the piano.(53) I remember John to be the smartest.(54) Bill considers himself to be intelligent.

However, all of these analyses are based on the observation that thereare certain types of infinitive with which for does not occur in standardEnglish—in particular raising and ECM verbs—and that the comple-ments of those verbs are not—unlike other infinitival complements—necessarily unrealised with respect to the matrix verb. But we havenoted that this distinction does not exist in Belfast English—all infini-tives may have for, including those which are complements of raisingand ECM verbs, as (27a) and (28a) repeated below indicate.

(27) a. John seems for to be better.(28) a. I believe them for to have done it.

Thus for does not seem to have a semantic contribution, since anyinfinitive can occur with for. Therefore the observations about thesemantic content of for cannot hold. This means that for need not beconsidered as having semantic content in this dialect, and therefore theobservations about the semantics of for in standard English noted abovedo not contradict our claim that for does not leave a trace.5

Shlonsky (1988) also argues that a cliticised complementiser does notleave a trace. For in Hebrew, constructions with the cliticised comple-mentiser se do not show thai-trace effects:

(55) Ze ha- is se- ani na'amina, se- (hu) lo ohev salat xacalim.this the man that I believe that (he) NEG like salad eggplants'This is the man that I believe that (he) doesn't like baba ganouj.'

There is thus independent evidence that complementisers can movewithout leaving traces; and therefore the cliticisation of for we proposecan account for the occurrence of PRO subjects with for in Belfast Eng-lish; after for has moved, the subject position is ungoverned and may be


PRO, on the standard account. Or, in a Minimalist approach, the clitici-sation of for must ensure that it is not in a position to check Case, toperhaps absorbing its Case properties; alternatively, the clitic version offor may simply not be a Case-assigner.

Note that within the pre-Minimalist framework, what we are claim-ing in relation to these structures indicates would mean that that PRO beungoverned; in particular, before the movement of for, PRO is clearlygoverned in a structure like:

(56) I want for PRO to go.

It is only when cliticisation takes place that PRO is ungoverned, as in (57).

(57) I want PRO for to go.

That PRO need not be ungoverned at D-structure is fairly uncontrover-sial; it presumably also applies in sentences like (58).

(58) John tried PRO to be liked t.

In the D-structure of which PRO is governed by liked.This, and the Belfast English cases, seem to provide clear evidence

that the requirement that PRO be ungoverned could not be one whichapplies throughout the derivation. It is not a condition on the insertionof PRO into a tree, but rather a PF or LF condition.

Negation and for to Infinitives

As noted above, where an infinitive is preceded by for to, the negativenot must occur after for to, as shown in (29) and (30), repeated below.

(29) a. I would prefer them for to not go.b. *I would prefer them not for to go,c. *I would prefer them for not to go.

(30) a. For to not go would be foolish.b. *Not for to go would be foolish.c. *For not to go would be foolish.

If for is in C there is no obvious explanation for this; there would appearto be no reason why the presence of a complementiser should affect theplacement of not. However, if our claim that for cliticises to to is correct,then the reasons become clearer. First, it is obvious that the sequence fornot to as in (29c) and (30c) will be unable to occur because for to willform a single unit. (The sequence for PRO not to go is of course ruled


out, as PRO cannot occur in this position). Second, we can explain, in arather more complex way, the impossibility of not appearing before for.To see how, we need to look at the position of negation.

Many treatments of negatives (for example Chomsky 1989, Laka1990) propose to account for the placement of negatives by postulatinga NEG P, headed by the negative element not in English, as the locationof negatives. NEG P is generally considered to be situated below TP butabove AGR0P, at least in English.


In infinitives, Pollock (1989) suggests, the to occupies the same slotas Tense does in finite clauses. Thus, the underlying order for negativeinfinitives is to + not + V. According to Pollock, the sequence not to Vis produced by the affixation of to to go, to being optionally an affix.One problem with this, within Pollock's framework, is explaining whyto can lower to V across NEG, but Tense cannot. Chomsky (1989) sug-gests that lowered affixes are subject to LF-raising only if they havesemantic content, since only then are they required to be present at all atLF; affixes without semantic content (such as to) are thus not present atLF, and so are not subject to the locality conditions (such as the HMC)which apply there. Thus, to, which is not an item needed for semanticinterpretation at LF, can lower over the negative, while Tense affixescannot.

If to can host for-cliticisation in Belfast English only when it isphonologically independent, but not when it itself cliticises, then theungrammaticality of examples like (29b) and (30b) (repeated below)follows.

(29) b. *I would prefer them not for to go.(30) b. *Not for to go would be foolish.

In (29b),/or has clearly cliticised to to, since it occurs after the infiniti-val subject them; thus to must be the independent, non-clitic to, and socannot lower over the negative to affix to the verb. Similarly in (30b),for has necessarily lowered under our analysis to leave PROungoverned, and therefore to cannot be the affix and cannot move overthe negative to affix to V.

An alternative view of this, along Minimalist lines, would see to gen-erated within VP and raising to Tense for checking. At spell-out, tocould be either still in the VP, below NEG (as in [a] or in T above NEG(as in [b]). Since to has no semantic content, it, unlike verbs, should beable to raise across NEG; since it will delete at LF, the improper chainthus created will be invisible.

(60) a. They intend not to gob. They intend to not go

Now if in Belfast English, for can only cliticise to T, then we can seewhy the sequence not for to is impossible; it would involve the cliticisa-tion of for, not to T, but to an element in VP.


Complements ofWant-Type Verbs

We noted above that one of the striking features of Belfast English wasthe appearance of a lexical subject before for in the complements ofwant-type verbs, as in (20) and (21), repeated below.

(20) I wanted Jimmy for to come with me.(21) I don' t like the children for to stay out late.

In early approaches to the construction found with want, such as that ofPostal (1974), it was seen as involving subject-to-object raising, withthe subject of the infinitive moving to become the object of the mainclause. This possibility was excluded in subsequent approaches as aviolation of the Projection Principle, but within the Minimalistapproach it is possible once again to think in terms of raising to object;the object will move to SPEC/AGR0 to check Case. However, thismovement clearly does not take place before spell-out; otherwise theinfinitival subject would raise to a position before the verb in the mainclause.

(61) *I Jimmy wanted (for) to come with me(62) *I don't the children like (for) to stay out late

Thus, the pre-for position of the subject cannot be the result of move-ment; there is no reason why the subject should move into the postver-bal object position, where nothing would be checked. The only move-ment which should take place is movement to SPEC/AGR0.

As noted in the previous chapter, there is one instance where objectsmove in the syntax to SPEC/AGR0P, and that is where the sentence isimperative and the lexical verb raises to C. Here, an object which is aweak pronoun moves to SPEC/AGR0. Let us look at what happenswhen an infinitival complement is embedded under such a structure.Verbs of the want class in general are not very felicitous in imperatives,but contexts can be constructed in which they are possible.

(63) Want you for to win (and you will win).(64) Expect you for to pass the exam (and you will pass).

Here, where there is a weak pronoun subject in the infinitive, it doesobject shift.

(65) Want him you for to win (and he will win).(66) Expect her you for to pass the exam (and she will pass).


Note that if for were in C here, we would expect such a construction tobe a violation of the COMP-trace effect, since it would contain an overtcomplementiser immediately followed by a trace in subject position.Unless the COMP-trace effect is for some reason restricted to wh-traces, the fact that it does not hold here suggests that the complemen-tiser is not in fact in C but has cliticised to to.

The problem remains of how to explain the subject/or to order. Onepossibility is that the subject has moved to a position in front of thecomplementiser, the SPEC/CP position. This possibility is envisagedfor some languages by Massam (1985). However, though accountingfor the occurrence of a lexical subject before for, it is not clear whatthe motivation for such movement would be; moreover, it does notprovide a unified explanation for the facts of infinitives in Belfast Eng-lish. On the other hand, our claim that for may cliticise to to in thatdialect can handle the facts of infinitives with lexical subjects also, asfollows.

Cliticisation across a subject is permitted. We noted above that fordoes not leave a trace after cliticisation, so that it cannot check Caseonce it has moved. Thus, cliticisation can only occur where there issomething other than for to check Case; this suggests that want-typeverbs are Exceptional Case-Markers/Checkers, which allow movementof the subjects of their complements into the matrix SPEC/AGR0P,movement, which normally occurs after spell-out, with the exceptionjust outlined in relation to imperatives. Thus where for cliticises, thereis still a Case-checking position available, the AGR0 position of thenext highest clause.

An argument in favour of a cliticisation approach to such structures,or more precisely in favour of for being in INFL rather than COMP atS-structure, pointed out by an anonymous National Language and Lin-guistic Theory reviewer, is from the placement of adverbs. There areadverbs such as definitely, which can be placed between the subject andthe first occurrence of INFL.

(67) I want the boys definitely to be there.

Such adverbs can only occur before for and never between for and to

(68) a. I want the boys definitely for to be there,b. *I want the boys for definitely to be there.

If for were in COMP, one would expect (68b) to be grammatical


Exceptional Case-Marking/Checking is impossible, where somethingintervenes between the matrix verb and the infinitival subject, and formust be used, just as in standard English, as shown in (19a), repeatedbelow

(19a) I want very much for him to get accepted.

Although a ready explanation was available for this in earlier frame-works, where adjacency was a requirement for Case-assignment, it doesnot fall out quite so naturally where Case is checked under SPEC/Headagreement. It must be that adjacency to want is required to permit dele-tion of CP, without which subject extraction may be blocked.

Sentences where a want-type verb is followed by for plus a lexicalsubject are ungrammatical in Belfast English, as (22), repeated below,shows

(22) *I wanted for Jimmy to come with me.

It might therefore seem that cliticisation is obligatory after want-typeverbs, whereas all we have said so far implies that cliticisation may butneed not apply. Examination of other varieties of English in the BritishIsles, however, indicates that in these also (including standard English)sentences like (22) are ungrammatical, even though the dialects in ques-tion are not for to dialects and therefore presumably do not allow forcliticisation. This suggests that another process is at work here, proba-bly a rule of/or-deletion in PF as proposed by Chomsky (1981). Thisrule is present in certain dialects, but absent in others (some Americandialects for example) in which (22) is grammatical. Note that the exis-tence of this rule provides additional support for our cliticisation pro-posal. For in Belfast English for can occur after wanr-type verbs if nolexical subject is present, as (69) indicates.

(69) I want for to go.

If for were in C here, it would be difficult to explain why for-deletionwas optional here although it is obligatory in (22); however, under ouranalysis where for has cliticised to to in (69) and is thus no longer adja-cent to want, the absence of/br-deletion receives an explanation.

The cliticisation of for also explains why wh-extraction is possiblefrom a for infinitive after want-type verbs in Belfast English but not inStandard English, as (70) shows.


(70) BE (*SE) Who do you want for to help you?

The S-structure of this in Standard English would be like (71)

(71) *WhOi do you want Cp[tj for IP[ti to help you]

The ungrammaticality of this in Standard English can be explained natu-rally if for in C acts to block antecedent government just as that does; thisis then an instance of the COMP-trace effect, parallel to the following.

(72) a. Who do you think will help you?b. *Who do you think that will help you?

The structure of the (b) example would be the following, with a COMP-trace sequence just as in (72).

(73) *WhOj do you think CP[ti that IP[ti will help you]

However, in Belfast English, once/or has cliticised, the structure wouldbe the following

(74) Who do you want CP[ti e IP[ti for to help you]]

Here, for is no longer in C, and antecedent government is therefore notblocked.

We have shown that want-type verbs check the Case of the infinitivalsubject through raising it to SPEC/AGR0 in the matrix clause; this canapply before spell-out in imperatives, so that movement to the matrixSPEC/AGR0 can be overtly observed. The cliticisation of for to to inBelfast English permits the deletion of CP, allowing the subject tomove. It also permits the extraction of wh-elements in subject positionfrom an infinitival clause containing for, since the cliticisation of formeans that it is not in C to give rise to a COMP/Trace effect.

Raising and ECM Verbs

If we assume that raising and ECM verbs are S'pr (CP) deleting, ratherthan being subcategorised for IP complements, then we can explain theoccurrence of for to with them. Since there is no C position at spell-out,examples like (27b) and (28b) repeated below will be impossible

(27b) *It seems for John to be better(28b) *I believe for them to have done it


Note that CP-deletion must occur at some point in the derivation after/br-cliticisation has applied, so that we find examples like (27a) and(28a) where for has cliticised to to

(21 a) John seems for to be better.(28a) I believe them for to have done it.

It would thus not seem to be the case that such verbs select IP; rather,all verbs taking sentential complements select CP, and the deletion ofthe CP node is an operation which takes place after certain verbs in thecourse of the derivation.

Try-type Verbs

We have argued that several of the properties of Belfast English infini-tives can be explained if for is a clitic. This accounts for a number offacts about the dialect. However, it also raises some problems relatingto the subcategorisation of verbs taking infinitives.

One of these relates to the status of the difference between wanf-typeverbs, which can take infinitives with lexical subjects, and try-typeverbs, which cannot. This distinction holds in Belfast E glish, just as instandard English

In analyses of standard English infinitives (see for example Chomsky1981), it has often been claimed that the difference between these twotypes is that the former take the for complementiser whereas the latterdo not, and thus do not have any means of Case-marking (or in morerecent frameworks, Case-checking) the lexical subject of an embeddedclause, which is therefore excluded. The occurrence of for with try-typeverbs in Belfast English is thus something of a problem. One wouldpredict that a dialect which allowed for with try would also allow lexi-cal subjects with try, but as we have seen, that is not the case in BelfastEnglish. This indicates that the difference between want- and fry-typeverbs cannot lie in the selection of for, and that the difference must beencoded in the lexicon by other means. One possibility is that that thereis a semantic difference between the two types. Pesetsky (in prepara-tion), who claims for somewhat different reasons that fry-type verbstake for, suggests that the difference lies in the fact that fry-type verbshave agentive subjects whereas wanf-type verbs do not. A problem withthis analysis, however, is that fry can, as we have noted, be followed by


an infinitive with a lexical subject in some dialects, such as Ozark Eng-lish; unless there is a difference between the semantic role of the subjectwith try in Ozark and other varieties, which seems unlikely, the differ-ence cannot be wholly attributed to the semantics of the verbs con-cerned.

Thus, in Belfast English at least, the difference between the want-class and the try-class cannot reduce to subcategorisation for for.

It seems to be the case, rather, that try is not CP-deleting, but it does,like want, trigger obligatory/or-deletion when for is adjacent to it. Thustry will be followed by a CP with an empty C slot at spell-out (for hav-ing either moved or been deleted). Because there is nothing to check theCase of an overt subject, the subject must be empty.

It is interesting that the for to dialect which allows lexical subjectsafter try, Ozark, is also one in which for-deletion does not occur afterwant.

(69) I tried for John to go.(70) I want for John to go.

Belfast English, however, has obligatoryfor-deletion after both thesetypes. Note that/or-deletion does not necessarily trigger CP deletion;for can delete while the CP remains.

Thus, to summarise, I am suggesting that verbs which take infinitivesare not distinguished, at least in Belfast English, by whether or not theymay take for. Rather they differ according to whether or not they areCP-deleting, with believe-type and raising verbs falling into the CP-deletion class, fry-type verbs into the non-CP-deleting, and want-typeverbs having optional CP-deletion. With want- and try-type verbs, /or-deletion is obligatory where for is adjacent to the verb at S-structure.

Why Is Complementiser Lowering Possible?

It is often claimed that lowering is impossible in syntax, with only rais-ing processes being allowed, because a moved element must c-com-mand its antecedent. Lowering processes, indeed, seem to be rare, andthey create a problem; although we know that the distance an elementmoves is restricted in the case of raising by antecedent governmentrequirements, it is not easy to see how lowering is so restricted, particu-larly if, s we have argued for for, it deletes at LF and there is therefore


no link to a trace. Yet, clearly, lowering is not unbounded: for can onlylower to the nearest to.

Now, significantly, a number of proposals for lowering have involvedcomplementisers. As already noted, Shlonsky (1988) argues for comple-mentiser cliticisation in Hebrew. McCloskey (1992a) argues for the low-ering of the complementiser to I in Irish; as in Belfast English, comple-mentisers in Irish show characteristics of being in C and of being in I.

Now complementisers have in common that they are often devoid ofsemantic content. Let us suppose that lowering is possible to satisfy arequirement to cliticise by PF, but will be impossible if a chain isthereby created which will be ruled out at LF; only if the moved ele-ment has no semantic contribution, and thus it and its trace are invisibleat LF, will lowering be possible.

As regards bounding, note that a "shortest movement" requirement(Chomsky 1992), deriving ultimately from some kind of "least effort"principle, is independent of direction of movement. It is not, asMcCloskey (1992a) notes, necessarily a condition on chains, but rathera condition on the movement process itself. Thus, lowering will be con-strained just as raising is, applying in the case of Heads on a head-to-head basis.

Other for-to Dialects

Other for to dialects appear to differ from Belfast English. The onlyother for to dialects on which data is available to me are Ottawa ValleyEnglish and Ozark English; moreover, it is only in the case of the for-mer that an in-depth study has been done. Data on Ozark are confined toa limited number of examples in Chomsky & Lasnik (1977), Chomsky(1981) and Koster and May (1982).

In Ottawa Valley English (Carroll 1983) for to occurs only in thecomplements of verbs which in standard English can take for infinitiveswith lexical subjects, and which are associated with the preposition for.Raising and believe-type verbs do not take for to, and lexical subjectsdo not appear to the left of for. It therefore does not seem that the use offor to arises from/or-cliticisation in that dialect.

Carroll argues that the for of these infinitives is not the complemen-tiser but a preposition. Another possible explanation, suggested by


Chomsky (1981) with respect to Ozark English but which could alsoapply to the Ottawa Valley data, is that for is optionally a governor insome varieties. Carroll notes that this can handle the Ottawa ValleyEnglish data but regards it as unlikely that a relatively conservativedialect should have acquired a property such as optionality of govern-ment. Carroll's argument that for has been recategorised as somethingother than a complementiser gains some weight from the fact that, inthe wea for to variety of Northern Irish English, which permits for toonly in rpose clauses, something similar seems to have happened; thefor here would seem not to be a complementiser but an item similar toin order as in in order to.

It seems likely that, as the use of for to dies out, at some point forbecomes recategorised as something other than a complementiser,which seems to have happened in rather different ways in OttawaValley English and the weak variety of the for to dialect in NorthernIreland.

This leaves us with Ozark English, where the data is as we havenoted somewhat unclear. Assuming that the paradigm is as reported inChomsky & Lasnik (1977), however, it seems that here for to, as inOzark, is restricted to cases where "for + lexical subject" is possiblein standard English (and also try, discussed above). The arguments forOttawa Valley English may thus apply there also.

In the light of the facts of Belfast English, other for to varieties needto be re-examined; for example, we would wish to know how the use offor to interacts with negative placement; however, from the data avail-able, it seems likely that there is not a unitary for to phenomenon butrather that this results from different factors in different dialects.

Conclusion

We have seen that Belfast English differs from standard English withregard to the lexical status of for, in both varieties for is a complemen-tiser, but only in Belfast English can it be a clitic.

In other for to varieties, the for to phenomenon seems to arise fromother lexical characterisations of for. In the "weak" for to dialect spokenin Northern Ireland, for is an element similar to in order of in order to;it is not a complementiser. In Ozark English, for is claimed to be a


preposition. These lexical differences in the status of for, interactingwith the principles of Universal Grammar, give rise to the different pat-terns of use of for to in different dialects.

As with inverted imperatives, so the pattern of use of for to seems tobe changing, with a shift from the "strong" dialect, where for is a cliti-cising complementiser, to the "weak" variety, where it is a marker ofpurpose clauses, to one which is similar to standard English.

5Inversion in Embedded

Questions

In English matrix questions, both yes-no and wh, there is subject-auxil-iary inversion, generally analysed as movement of I (=AGRS) to C.

(1) Is Bill going?(2) What have they done?

In standard English, this inversion is restricted to matrix questions; itdoes not occur in embedded questions, so that (3) and (4) are ungram-matical.

(3) SE *I wondered was Bill going.(4) SE *They asked them what had they done.

Rather, forms without inversion must be used. In the case of yes-noquestions, the embedded question is introduced by whether or if.

(5) I wondered whether/if Bill was going.(6) I asked them what they had done.

However, Belfast English, in common with other Hiberno-Englishdialects (see McCloskey 1992b), does allow subject-auxiliary inversionin embedded questions, in contrast to standard English. Thus in BelfastEnglish questions like (3) and (4) are entirely grammatical. In this chap-ter, we consider why such inversion is possible in Belfast English, butnot in standard English.

105


The Facts of Embedded Inversion in Belfast English

Before looking in detail at these structures in Belfast English, we needto establish that they are cases of true embedded inversion, and notmerely quotations of direct speech, where of course standard Englishalso allows inversion.

(7) I wondered, "Is Bill going?"(8) They asked them, "What have you done?"

That Belfast English has true embedded inversion can be seen fromthe fact that a direct rendition of the words spoken or thought is notrequired. Rather, embedded questions in Belfast English show"sequence of tenses," as in indirect questions, with a verb spoken in thepresent tense changed into the past when it appears embedded under apast tense verb.

(9) a. She asked, "Are they leaving?"b. She asked if they were leaving.c. She asked were they leaving.

Similarly, they allow changes to pronouns

(10) a. Every pregnant woman wonders "Will my baby be all right?"b. Every pregnant woman wonders will her baby be all right.

(11) a. They asked me, "Have you read War and Peace?"b. They asked me had / read War and Peace.

Thus, these are true indirect questions and not merely direct quotations.Inversion in embedded questions is considered by most speakers to

be slightly better with yes-no questions than with wh-questions, and fora not insubstantial number of speakers, inversion is only grammatical inembedded yes-no questions. For these speakers, sentences such as(12)-(15) are ungrammatical.

(12) She asked who had I seen.(13) They wondered what had John done.(14) They couldn't understand how had she had time to get her hair done.(15) He didn't say why had they come.

This suggests that the process of inversion is not triggered in exactly thesame way in the two types of questions; it is possible to have a grammarwhich permits inversion in yes-no embedded questions, but not in wh-ones.

Inversion in Embedded Questions 107

McCloskey (1992b) argues that inversion in embedded questionsoccurs only after a subset of verbs in Hiberno-English; in particular, hesuggests that it is unavailable in subject position, and unavailable afterany verbs which do not allow adverbial adjunction to their CP comple-ments; however, in Belfast English inversion appears to be able to occurafter any verb which takes an interrogative complement, and also inquestions appearing in subject position.

(16) Was he vegetarian was what was puzzling them(17) Can you get a good job depends on who can help you(18) Should he go or not was the question he kept asking himself(19) The police found out had the goods been stolen(20) We couldn't establish did he meet them.(21) I know is he going or not, but I'm not letting on.

In (16)-(18) inversion occurs in a clause in subject position. In(19)-(21), it occurs in complement clauses where adverbial adjunctionto CP is impossible. Thus in the following examples, the adverbial can-not be interpreted as belonging to the embedded clause; for example,(22) can only mean that the "finding out" happened last night, not thatthe goods were stolen last night.

(22) *The police found out last night had the goods been stolen.(23) *We couldn't establish last month did he meet them.(24) *I know tomorrow is he going or not, but I'm not letting on.

In Belfast English, embedded questions may either show inversion,or be introduced by whether or if as in standard English. However, it isimpossible for both inversion and whether or if to be present.

(25) a. They couldn't work out whether/if we had leftb. They couldn't work out had we left.c. They couldn't work out whether/if had we left.

(26) a. John asked Mary whether/if she was going to the lecture.b. John asked Mary was she going to the lecture.c. *John asked Mary whether/if was she going to the lecture.

Apart from inversion, embedded questions in Belfast English differfrom those in standard English in one other respect; they allow the co-occurrence of a wh-phrase with the complementizer that.

(27) I wonder which dish that they picked.(28) They didn't know which model that we had discussed.


However, whether and if never occur in questions containing wh-phrases

(29) *I wonder which dish whether they picked.(30) *They didn't know which model if they had discussed.

The occurrence of that with a wh-phrase is restricted to embeddedquestions; that never occurs after a wh-word in direct questions.

(31) *Which dish that they picked?(32) *Which model that they discussed?

Where a wh-word is followed by that, inversion is impossible.

(33) *I wondered which dish that did they pick.(34) *I wondered which model that they discussed.

Surprisingly, inversion is not restricted in Belfast English to theclause in which the wh-element occurs at spell-out. Rather, it can alsooccur in that-type clauses from which a wh-element has been extracted,in either matrix or embedded questions.

(35) Who did John hope would he see?(36) What did Mary claim did they steal?(37) I wonder what did John think would he get.

This is somewhat surprising since it occurs in clauses embedded underverbs that do not themselves take [+wh] complements

(38) *John hoped who he could help.(39) *Mary claimed whether she could understand the book.

As usual the standard English form does not allow inversion in theembedded clause.

(40) Who did John hope (that) he would see?(41) What did Mary claim (that) they stole?

Nor does standard English allow a wh-complementiser in suchclauses.

(42) *Who did John hope whether/if he would see?(43) *What did Mary claim whether/if they stole?

It might be thought that sentences like (35) and (36) are not trueembedded clauses, but rather sentences containing a parenthetical ele-ment, along the following lines.


(44) Who, did John hope, would he see?(45) What, did Mary claim, did they steal?

That this is not the case can be shown by the fact that inversion can goright down a sequence of clauses to the extraction site.

(46) WhOj did John say did Mary claim hadJohn feared would Bill attack ti?

which is of course quite impossible in standard English.Note that this type of inversion can cause ambiguity where a verb can

take either a wh- or a that-complement. Thus

(47) Who did John say did Mary meet?

can mean the same as either of the following:

(48) Who did John say whether Mary met?

or

(49) Who did John say that Mary met?

In Belfast English, inversion is, as usual, ungrammatical where anovert complementiser appears.

(50) a. *Who did John hope that could he help?b. Who did John hope that he could help?

Summarising, Belfast English allows inversion in embedded ques-tions, whereas standard English does not. Inversion is impossible withovert complementisers. For most speakers, inversion is possible in bothyes-no and wh-embedded questions, but for some it only occurs in theyes-no type.

Where wh-movement occurs out of an embedded clause into thematrix in a direct question, or into a higher clause in an embedded ques-tion, inversion can occur, for those speakers allowing inversion inembedded wh-questions, not only in the main clause but also in everyclause between the moved wh-element and its extraction site.

Why Is Inversion Possible in Belfast EnglishEmbedded Clauses?

Inversion in questions in English has generally been considered to bemovement of the verb from I (=AGRs) to the Complementiser position.A strong argument for this is the complementary distribution of inver-


sion and complementisers. Thus inversion does not occur where a com-plementiser is present.

(51) a. Did they read the book?b. I wonder if they read the book.c. *I wonder if did they read the book.

The word order in English questions is very similar to that found inmost main clauses in a number of Germanic languages, which are gen-erally described as "Verb second" (V2) because, in main clauses, theverb occurs in second position (see, for example, Vikner 1991); thispositioning of the verb is usually analysed as a requirement that theverb move to C and another element move to the SPEC/CP position. Ingeneral, this "verb second" order is restricted to main clauses; it cannotoccur in subordinate clauses (with some exceptions: for example Yid-dish which, Diesing (1990) argues, allows embedded V2).

Although all main clauses in German and other V2 languages haveverb-raising to C, this only applies to certain sentence types in English:questions, and certain sentences with sentence-initial negative-typeadverbs.

(52) Will they win the prize?(53) Where will they go?(54) Under no circumstances should they leave.(55) Never have I heard such a thing.

Rizzi (1991) proposes that English has criterial verb-second; the verbmoves to C only when forced to by certain conditions, including theWh-criterion:

(56) a. Each +wh SPEC must have a +wh X°.b. Each +wh X° must have a +wh SPEC.

(a corresponding NEG-criterion ensures verb-raising with negativeadverbial elements in SPEC/CP).

In English direct questions, the wh-element (if any) moves toSPEC/CP and the verb moves to C, to satisfy the wh-criterion.Although in English wh-elements front in embedded clauses, the verbdoes not invert with the subject.

(57) a. I wonder where the children are going.b. SE* I wonder where are the children going.

This might be thought to call the wh-criterion into question. However, ithas been suggested (see Rizzi & Roberts 1989) that there must be a


(phonetically null) complementiser present here, selected by the higherverb, which satisfies the requirement that a +wh element in SPEC musthave a +wh element in the corresponding X° and vice versa. The pres-ence of this element must satisfy the wh-criterion, and also, because Cis filled and the wh-criterion satisfied, prevent the movement of a verbinto C. Rizzi and Roberts (1989) suggest that movement to C is blockedin embedded questions because it would mean different types of ele-ments occurring in C at different stages of the derivation, a complemen-tiser at D-structure and the raised verb later, which causes a problem inrelation to the projection principle. However, this is not a strong argu-ment in a framework such as Chomsky's (1992), where the projectionprinciple is no longer part of the model, and in any case fails to accountfor why inversion should be possible in some dialects such as BelfastEnglish.

If inversion in questions is a V2 phenomenon, then one might expectthat inversion in embedded questions could be treated in the same wayas inversion (or lack of it) in embedded clauses in the V2 languages.

Now, there have been two main analyses of embedded V2 in the Ger-manic V2 languages; one, proposed in general for the Scandinavian lan-guages, sees embedded V2 as an instance of CP recursion, restricted tocertain verbs (see for example Vikner 1991); the other, usually pro-posed for languages which have generalised V2 in embedded clauses,such as Yiddish and Icelandic (see, for example, Diesing 1990), seesembedded V2 as occurring when the verb moves to I (=AGRS) and thesubject remains in a lower projection. Let us consider each of these inturn as possible explanations for the occurrence of inversion in embed-ded questions in Belfast English.

Is Embedded Inversion a Case ofCP Recursion?

We first consider the possibility that CP-recursion is involved here, thatis, that the construction contains two complementiser nodes. This is theanalysis adopted by McCloskey (1992b) for Hiberno-English embeddedinversion, and he presents a strong argument in its favour. He arguesthat adverbial adjunction can only occur to phrases which are notselected by a lexical category. Thus, there is adjunction to VP, IP andunselected (e.g., matrix) CP, but not to NP or to selected (embedded)CP. However, the CP complements of certain verbs appear to be anexception to this, in that they behave like unselected CPs in allowingmatrix-like adverbial adjunction. McCloskey shows that it is exactly


those CPs permitting adverbial adjunction that permit inversion in thevariety he is considering.

(58) Ask your father when he gets home does he want his dinner.(59) I was wondering next Christmas would he come home.(60) Do you remember when they were in Derry did they live in Rose-

mount?(61) I've never found out if I'd asked him would he really have come with

me.

On the contrary, in the variety of Hiberno-English which McCloskeyconsiders, predicates which do not allow adverbial adjunction to theirCP complements, also do not allow inversion in those complements.

(62)HE a. *The police couldn't establish while we were out who had brokeninto our apartment.

b. *The police couldn't establish who had they beaten up

(63)HE a. *While you're out how many people you meet depends on whereyou go.

b. *How many people do you meet depends on where you go.

McCloskey proposes that both the possibility of adverbial adjunction toCP and the possibility of embedded inversion result from the same phe-nomenon—that some verbs select complementisers which themselvescan take a CP complement; the complement found with such verbswould therefore look like (64).

This means that the lower CP is not directly selected by a lexical cate-gory, and thus behaves like an unselected CP in relation to adjunction


and also inversion; matrix (=unselected) CPs in standard English andHiberno-English freely allow adverbial adjunction and inversion.

(65) While you were out how many people did you meet?

McCloskey does not consider precisely what is the differencebetween standard English and Hiberno-English that means that embed-ded inversion is not available in the former but is available in the latter.Clearly, since both varieties permit adverbial adjunction to the same setof complements, one would expect both to permit inversion also; butstandard English does not.

Moreover, McCloskey's observations do not hold for Belfast Eng-lish; although in the variety of Hiberno-English he describes, inversioncan only occur with unselected CPs, it is not, as we noted above, sorestricted in Belfast English, where (62b) and (63b) above are grammat-ical even though adverbial adjunction with the same predicates isimpossible, so that (62a) and (63a) are ungrammatical: there is not thusa clear link in Belfast English between the availability of adverbialadjunction and that of embedded inversion; the former is restricted tocertain CPs, whereas the latter appears rather freely in embedded ques-tions regardless of the embedding predicate.

There are a number of other problems with a CP recursion analysis.First, it allows for two complementiser positions. This is necessary for theV2 languages, and indeed as we shall see for some aspects of English,because there it is indeed possible to have a complementiser followed byembedded V2. Thus in English, where embedded inversion is availablefor many speakers when triggered by the MEG criterion, an overt comple-mentiser precedes the inversion trigger and the inverted verb.

(66) a. He said that never would he do such a thing,b. He said never would he do such a thing.

Similarly, the V2 languages which allow embedded V2 in certaincontexts can have it following a complementiser, as in the followingDanish example from Vikner (1991:100).

(67) Hunsagdeat vi skulle 11 ikke t kobe denne bog.She said that we should not buy this book.

However, one of the characteristics of inversion in Belfast Englishquestions is that it never co-occurs with a complementiser; exampleswhere inversion follows a complementiser are strongly ungrammatical.


(68) a. *I wondered if had they read the book.b. I wondered if they had read the book.c. I wondered had they read the book.

(69) a. They asked who if did we see.b. They asked who did we see.c. They asked who we saw.

The presence of a C position, separate from the C position to whichthe verb moves, means that the incompatibility of inversion with com-plementisers in indirect questions cannot be explained as a consequenceof the general prohibition on the co-occurrence of complementiserswith V2. It might be possible to work out some solution to this, forexample claiming that the only complementiser which allows an "unse-lected" CP to follow it is the null complementiser in English. But notethat this only applies to questions, since in the other main case ofembedded inversion, that is, with the NEG criterion, a complementiser,that, is not only possible but preferred, as noted above. Moreover, therewill be problems in explaining the unavailability of inversion with acomplementiser in sentences such as (70a), where the complementiserwhich blocks inversion is not in fact a wh-complementiser but ratherthat, a complementiser which allows embedded V2 arising from theNEG criterion.

(70) a. *Who did John claim that did he see?b. Who did John claim did he see?c. Who did John claim that he saw?

Compare (71):

(71) John claimed that under no circumstance would he do such a thing

Thus, it seems that even verbs which permit CP recursion in bothBelfast English and standard English do not allow embedded inversionin questions where there is an overt complementiser present. Althoughembedded inversion triggered by the NEG criterion requires or at leastprefers the presence of an overt complementiser, sentences includingembedded interrogative inversion are strongly ungrammatical where acomplementiser is included. This, together with the fact that both stan-dard English and Belfast English permit embedded inversion of theNEG-criterion type, but only Belfast English permits inversion inembedded questions, suggests that we are dealing with two differentphenomena here, and that inversion in embedded questions does not


arise from the same source as does the CP-recursion type inversionfound in the NEG-criterion examples.

Finally, note that a CP recursion analysis would predict that thereshould be no difference in status between yes-no and wh-embedded ques-tions in relation to inversion; if embedded CPs behave exactly like unse-lected, matrix CPs, then inversion in both types should be equally possi-ble. However, as observed above, many speakers find inversion better inthe yes-no type, and for some it is completely unavailable in the wh-type.

It thus seems that there are a number of arguments against consideringembedded inversion in Belfast English as deriving from CP-recursion.

Is the Verb in AGRS and the Subject in SPEC/TP?

Could embedded inversion in Belfast English questions then be aninstance of a structure where the verb occurs in AGRS and the subject ina lower projection, for example SPEC/TP, similar to the analysis sug-gested by Diesing (1990) for Yiddish?

Superficially, such an explanation is attractive; it ties the availabilityof inversion in Belfast English (but not in standard English) to a differ-ence between the two which we have already established—the avail-ability of SPEC/TP as a possible subject position in Belfast English.Under this analysis, embedded inversion would be possible because,although the C position was filled by a complementiser, apparent inver-sion could occur through movement of the verb to AGRS, but the sub-ject only as far as SPEC/TP.

Again, however, this analysis has a number of problems in relation tothe Belfast English facts. First, like the CP-recursion analysis, it pre-dicts the availability of inversion with overt complementisers, for thereis a Complementiser position which occurs above the position to whichthe verb moves for V2, in this case AGRS. This is possible in Yiddish,as shown in the following example:

(72) Avrom gloybt az Max shikti avek vi dos bakhAvrom believes that Max sends away the book

On the contrary, as noted above, inversion is ungrammatical withovert complementisers in Belfast English, contrary to the predictions ofthe V-in-AGRs analysis.

Moreover, there are problems in relation to Case facts. We noted inChapter 2 that the subject and verb in Belfast English could occur in


Tense, rather than AGRS and in that case there was no agreementbetween the subject and the verb. It was shown that where the subjectoccurred in SPEC/Tense, it could not be a nominative pronoun; weargued that this was so because in the SPEC/Tense position only defaultCase could be checked.

(73) They is going.(74) *We has read the book.

Now, if Rizzi's (1991) Wh-criterion is along the right lines, then inwh-questions, where the verb is in AGRS, the wh-element must be inSPEC/AGRSP, thus precluding the possibility of subject-checkingin that position even at LF. There is thus no possibility, even at LF, ofchecking a nominative pronoun, and, as with other instances where thesubject occurs in SPEC/TP, nominative Case-marked elements shouldbe impossible. But this is not so; nominative pronouns occur quitefreely in inverted embedded wh-questions.

(75) I wondered where were they going.(76) I asked what had she done.

It is also worth noting that singular concord does not by any meansnecessarily co-occur with embedded inversion in the grammars ofspeakers. Almost all Hiberno-English speakers use embedded inver-sion, and it is certainly in very widespread use in Belfast among speak-ers of all classes, having the status of a local standard form; in fact mostspeakers are not aware that it does not occur in standard English. How-ever, it is only in certain areas (including Belfast) that singular concordis used, and even there it tends to be absent from the usage of educatedmiddle-class speakers. There are thus very many speakers who do nothave grammars which admit the occurrence of an NP in the SPEC/TPposition in singular concord, but nevertheless have embedded inversionin questions. Therefore, it does not seem likely that the availability ofembedded inversion is a consequence of the same parameter setting(availability of TP as a subject-checking position) as singular concord.

An Alternative Analysis

Yes-No Questions

What we propose here is that there is in fact only one complementiserposition, in embedded questions in English, to which the verb moves inBelfast English, but not standard English, before spell-out. In Belfast


English, there must be a phonologically null complementiser availablein embedded clauses which requires to be checked and triggers raisingin the overt syntax, whereas in standard English the only available com-plementisers in embedded clauses are if and possibly whether (which asnoted in the previous chapter may be a wh-operator). In standard Eng-lish, the fact that the C position is filled by an overt element which isnot an affix means that raising in the syntax is blocked in embeddedquestions. On the other hand, the availability of an affix-type null wh-complementiser triggers raising to C in Belfast English.

Law (1991) argues that complementisers are expletives which requireto be replaced at LF, so that the verb will always raise to C at LF; the dif-ference between Belfast English and standard English, in relation toinversion in embedded yes-no questions, then, reduces to the stage atwhich inversion takes place: in the syntax in Belfast English, and at LF,replacing the overt complementiser, in standard English. Note that inBelfast English the null wh-complementiser must have a strong V-fea-ture, for where a phonologically null complementiser is chosen, raising toC is obligatory. Either an overt complementiser or inversion must occurin embedded questions; it is not possible to have neither; that is, if a nullcomplementiser is chosen, raising to C before spell-out is obligatory.

(77) a. I asked whether/if they were leaving.b. I asked were they leaving.c. *I asked they were leaving.

(78) a. John wondered whether/if Bill had got the letter.b. John wondered had Bill got the letter.c. *John wondered Bill had got the letter.1

Since in both Belfast English and standard English we find obligatoryinversion in matrix questions, we must assume that the +wh-comple-mentiser which introduces matrix questions is, in both varieties, an ele-ment which is strong, forcing raising; it is only in relation to the com-plementiser found in embedded questions that the difference arises.Here, it is only in Belfast English that the same complementiser whichappears in matrix questions is available; in standard English, a differentcomplementiser must be used.

Wh-Questions

The fact that for some speakers, embedded inversion is only possible inyes-no questions but not in wh-questions, suggests that there is a differ-ent process involved here.


What the Belfast English facts suggest is that the trigger for verbmovement in embedded wh-questions is the presence of a [+wh] C, cre-ated by agreement with a wh-element in SPEC/CP. This agreementseems to fail in embedded questions in standard English, but to be oper-ative in Belfast English. Further evidence for agreement in the overtsyntax in Belfast English comes from examples like (79)

(79) Who did you claim did he see?

Here, there is a trace of the wh-word in the specifier position of theembedded SPEC/CP.

(80) WhOj did you claim t1i did he see t2

i

In Belfast English, the verb can raise, provided C is not overtly filled,but in standard English it may not. Now, the complementiser here mustinitially be a [—wh] one, since claim does not subcategorise for [+wh]complements.

(81) *They claimed if we won.(82) *We claimed what we did.

And where an overt complementiser shows up, it is always that ratherthan an interrogative complementiser.

(83) Who did you claim that/*if we saw?

But in Belfast English, the verb, which we have claimed to raise to +whcomplementisers, can raise here. How is this possible? It appears thatagreement takes place between the wh-element and the complemen-tiser; and that agreement takes place in the overt syntax in Belfast Eng-lish, but not until LF in standard English. There is thus a +wh-C in theovert syntax in Belfast English, forcing the verb to move to C beforespell-out, but in standard English the complementiser remains [—wh]until LF, and movement of the verb therefore does not happen untilafter spell-out.

Notice that we cannot account for the inversion by requiring that allCPs in a sentence which is a question contain inversion; the inversioncannot go lower than the clause from which the wh-element isextracted.

(84) a. *Who do you think did John convince did Mary go?b. Who do you think did John convince that Mary went?


Thus, it seems that inversion is triggered only where, under a successivecyclic movement analysis of wh-movement, we would expect to find awh-trace in SPEC/CP.

The Belfast English facts here are reminiscent of a phenomenenonoccurring in Irish which is discussed by McCloskey (1979, 1985,1990). In Irish, clauses from which a wh-element has been extractedcan have the special interrogative/relative complementiser aL, ratherthan the neutral complementiser goN, and this applies to all COMPpositions occurring between the surface position of the wh-elementand the extraction site. The following examples are from McCloskey(1979).

(85) 3. Ce aL deir siad aL chum t-amhran sinWho COMP say they COMP composed that song'Who do they say wrote that song?'

b. Deir siad gurL chum se an t-amhran sinCOMP he

'They say that he wrote that song'

(86) a. An bhfuil fhios agat caide aL baDo you know what COMPmhaith liom aL dheanfadh EithneI would like COMP would do Eithne'Do you know what I would like Eithne to do?'

b. Ba mhaith liom goN ndeanfadh Eithne eCOMP it

'I would like Eithne to do it'

Here, a complementiser position which would normally be filled by a[—wh] complementiser, as shown in the (b) examples, becomes a spe-cial [+wh] complementiser when it heads a clause from which wh-movement has taken place. This can be seen as agreement taking placein the syntax between the wh-trace in SPEC/CP and the complemen-tiser.

In Belfast English, what happens is not that a special complementiseroccurs, as in Irish, but that the [+wh] complementiser created afteragreement attracts movement of the verb to C, but the phenomenonwould appear to be underlyingly similar, involving agreement of thecomplementiser with the wh-trace appearing in SPEC/CP.

If our analysis of Belfast English is correct here, then it is very clear


evidence that successive cyclic movement of the wh-phrase has takenplace, because there must be wh-traces in each SPEC/CP to triggermovement of the verb to C. Note that these wh-traces must be presentbefore spell-out, because I-to-C movement happens before spell-out.Thus, it is clear not only that wh-movement must be successive cyclic,but that the wh-traces must be present in the syntax, excluding anymodel which might, for example, generate the wh-element in SPEC/CP,and form the chain necessary for its linking to the "extraction" site atLF. We also have, at least for Belfast English, a diagnostic for theappearance of wh-traces.

Not all wh-traces trigger inversion; only those whose antecedent is aquestion word do; thus inversion does not occur in clauses from whichextraction of a wh-relative pronoun occurs.

(87) a. *This is the man who John claimed did I seeb. This is the man who John claimed that I saw

Thus, the traces which trigger inversion must be identifiable as tracesof wh-question words; arguing perhaps for a "full copy" rather than a"trace" version of movement. At the very least, the traces must havetheir interrogative status indicated.

Notice that if what we are saying here is correct, the wh-criterionmust in fact be a facet of LF rather than S-structure. For we have arguedthat in standard English, the reason the verb does not raise to C inembedded wh-questions is that C is filled by a non-wh-complementiser,which does not get its +wh features until LF, where agreement occurs.This means that in standard English, the wh-criterion is not met inembedded questions until LF. If the wh-criterion can be formulated asan LF condition, then this is a further move towards having all condi-tions as interface conditions, applying at LF or PF, as envisaged in theMinimalist program (Chomsky 1992).

The possibility of the satisfaction of the wh-criterion being postponeduntil LF receives some confirmation from the occurrence of wh-wordswith overt non-wh-complementisers in a number of languages, includ-ing Belfast English. As we noted above, that, which is inherently a non-wh-complementiser, can co-occur with wh-words in embedded ques-tions in Belfast English.2

(88) *I wonder which theory that makes the best predictions(89) They asked which book that I had chosen


Belfast English is by no means alone in this. In a number of otherlanguages, where a wh-word and an overt complementiser can co-occurin embedded wh-questions, with an overt complementiser, the comple-mentiser which shows up is not, as would be expected from the wh-cri-terion, a wh-complementiser, but a non-wh-complementiser, as shownin the following examples from Vikner (1991:62)

(90) Ba. I woaB ned wann daft da Xavea kummtI know not when that the Xaver comes

(from Bayer (1984b:24, (3a))

(91) SG. I ha-n-im gseit, wie dass er daas sou mache.I have-him told how that he this should do

(from Penner & Bader 1990:6 (15b))(92) Fl. Ik weet nie wie dat Jan gezien heeft

I know not who that Jan seen has

(from Haegeman (1991:349, [16b])

(93) MDa. I vide aldri naar at fremmede fienderYou know(pl) never when that foreign enemies

offuerf'alde ossattack (pi) us

(Peder Palladius, b 1503, cited in Mikkelsen (1911:504))

Noting that this is a potential problem for the wh-criterion, Viknersuggests that the complementisers must be considered in this case to be[+wh], even though they are usually [-wh]. While this technically pre-vents such cases from being a counter-example to the wh-criterion,there appear to be no independent arguments for it, and it is surprisingthat in a variety of different languages this apparent violation of the wh-criterion shows up. This must call into question the wh-criterion as anS-structure condition as it stands.

It remains to explain why, in both standard English and Belfast Eng-lish, I-to-C movement is obligatory in matrix questions. In yes-no ques-tions, we have argued that a (strong) wh-complementiser occurs inmatrix questions in both varieties, forcing movement to C. However, wehave not accounted for why movement is necessary in wh-questiorns.Clearly, if agreement between SPEC/CP and the complementiser posi-tion does not occur until LF in standard English, then it will not be able


to force movement to C in direct questions. Nor can we require matrixquestions to have a strong [+wh] C independent of agreement, becausethis would force movement of the verb to C even where the wh-elementis in subject position, and such movement is ungrammatical.

(94) a. *Is who goingWho is going

(95) b. *Did who leave?Who left?

It must be the case, then, that there is a difference in structurebetween matrix and subordinate clauses which forces movement in theformer but not the latter in standard English. This difference is likely torest in the nature of the C position. The C position in matrix clauses isnever overtly filled in English questions, whereas complementisers insubordinate clauses often contain lexical material. It is thus likely thatthe C position can be generated empty in matrix clauses, whereas insubordinate clauses it must be filled. This may make a difference to themanner in which C in a wh-question acquires its wh-feature. In matrixclauses, the feature will be copied to an empty node. In embedded ques-tions, it will be copied to a null complementiser. The former processmay occur in the syntax, indeed very possibly must occur to create thenode in the first place; the latter may occur in the syntax (as in BelfastEnglish) or at LF (in either variety).

There is other evidence of agreement occurring, or being checked, inthe syntax in Belfast English, but at LF in standard English, in theagreement patterns found with the expletive there. In standard English,a verb with existential there agrees with the NP, which will replace theexpletive at LF.

(96) There are books on the table.(97) There were some students looking for you.

On the other hand in Belfast English, agreement is with the expletive;that is, it is with the syntactic rather than the LF subject.

(98) There is books on the table.(99) There was some students looking for you.

If agreement is determined/checked in the syntax in Belfast English,then there will be a singular verb agreeing with the expletive; if at LF, asingular verb will clash in features with a plural subject which replaces


the expletive, making sentences like (96) and (97) ungrammatical, as instandard English. There is thus some evidence that the syntax/LF dis-tinction in agreement is not restricted to agreement between SPEC/CPand C, but also applies to other nodes.

Conclusion

We have argued that inversion in Belfast English embedded ques-tions was not explained by the proposals made in relation to embeddedVerb-second in other languages. Rather, we argued, it derived from twosources. First, Belfast English has a null interrogative complementiserwith a strong V-feature which can occur in embedded contexts; in stan-dard English this complementiser is restricted to root contexts.

Second, where there is a wh-element in SPEC/CP, whether overt or atrace, it makes C [+wh] through spec-head agreement, and this processoccurs before spell-out in Belfast English, thus forcing the verb to moveto C in the syntax, but at LF in standard English, so that there is noovert movement to C.

6

Subject Contact Relatives

Belfast English allows what have been termed by Doherty (1993) "sub-ject contact relatives." These are what appear to be relative clauseswhere the relativised element is a subject, and where the relative pro-noun is not phonetically realised.

(1) I have a sister lives in Dublin.(2) There are people don't read books.(3) It's always me pays the gas bill.

In standard English, a zero relative pronoun is possible only wherethe relativised element is not the subject of its clause. Thus, while thethree sentences above are ungrammatical in standard English, the fol-lowing are wholly grammatical.

(4) I read a book the teacher recommended.(5) There are some students I haven't met yet.(6) This is the pen I wrote the letter with.

Where the subject is relativised in standard English, an overt relativepronoun or complementiser must be used.

(7) I have a sister who/that lives in Dublin.(8) There are people who/that don't read books.(9) It's always me who/that pays the gas bill.

It will be argued here that sentences with subject gaps are not true rela-tive clauses, but a different type of structure with the head noun being akind of topic; the availability of these structures in Belfast English will beattributed to the strongly topic-prominent nature of that dialect.

124

Subject Contact Relatives 125

Before presenting the arguments for this, however, we need to lookin some detail at the nature of these structures in Belfast English.

Defining Subject Contact Relatives

It is not simply the case that where a subject is relativised, Belfast Eng-lish always allows a null subject. In fact in the majority of cases, anovert relative pronoun or complementiser is required when the subjectis relativised, just as in standard English.

(10) *They were looking for the girl had won the prize.(11) *The students have an exam next week are working very hard.(12) *I lost the book gives an account of this.

Only head nouns in certain types of main clauses take null subject sub-ordinate clauses. According to Doherty (1993), this class includes sen-tences with existential there:

(13) There is/are some students never do any work.(14) There's a short-cut takes you to the shops.

It also includes it-clefts

(15) It was John told us about it.(16) It was one of my friends won the prize.

and sentences with the copula

(17) John is the person could help you with that.(18) He's the one stole the money.

Subject contact relatives also occur after clauses containing verbswhich introduce individuals into the discourse, such as meet, know, andInvent.

(19) I met a man can speak five languages.(20) I know a boy has never worked.(21) They've invented a drug can help jet lag.

It is rather surprising that the occurrence of this type of clause seems tobe dependent, not on the type of head noun, but rather on the type of clausein which that head noun occurs. In general relative clauses, including thosewithout overt relative pronouns, occur rather freely with nouns in all kindsof positions, and in clauses of any type. Thus we find that relative clauses


where the relativised element is not a subject occur in a wide variety ofcontexts, including many where subject contact relatives are impossible.

(22) a. The students they chose had the highest marks.b. *The students won the prize had the highest marks.

(23) a. I fed the dog the postman was afraid of.b. *I fed the dog bit the postman.

(24) a. They went with friends they had met at college,b. *They went with friends were studying French.

Thus the occurrence of subject contact relatives seems to be constrainedin ways which are unusual for relative clauses, even those with null rel-ative pronouns.

It is, in fact, very difficult to characterise syntactically the class ofcontexts in which subject contact relative clauses are possible. Thus, forexample, we find contrasts like the following, where a subject contactrelative is acceptable if the head noun occurs in a matrix question, butnot where it occurs in the corresponding statement.

(25) Did I tell you about my sister won first prize last week.(26) *I told you about my sister won first prize last week.

What these contexts appear to have in common is not the nature of thehead noun or the syntax of the clause in which it occurs. Rather, it is adiscourse factor they have in common: the matrix clause introduces anew individual into the discourse, and the following clause states some-thing about that individual.

In all those cases where subject contact relative clauses are possible,there is an alternative with an overt pronoun.

(27) There's one woman in our street she went to Spain last year.(28) I have one student he speaks four languages.

Note that these are not two sentences simply placed side by side; themeaning is not the same as with separate sentences.

(29) There's one woman in our street. She went to Spain last year.

must mean that there is one, and only one, woman who lives in thestreet, and that woman went to Spain last year. However, the readingwhere the clauses form a single sentence is the same as that of the stan-dard English; that is:

(30) There is one woman in our street who went to Spain last year.


which does not imply anything about the total number of women wholive in the street, but only says that the total of whom it is true that theyboth live in the street and went to Spain last year is one.

Such "resumptive pronouns" only ever occur in subject contact rela-tives; as in standard English, they do not occur generally in relativeclauses.

(31) *Fm looking for the book (that/which) you recommended it.(32) *John married the girl (thatAvho(m)) he met her on holiday.(33) *I was talking to the lecturer (that/who) she takes the linguistics

course.(34) *The students (who/that) they are taking French have an exam this

week.

Moreover, there are contexts where constructions which look similarto subject contact relatives occur in cases where relative clauses are notpossible in standard English.

(35) a. He was lucky didn't get caught.b. *He was lucky who didn't get caught.

(36) a. The children were as well took their chance when they got it.b. The children were as well who took their chance when they got it.

There is a rather archaic interpretation of (35a) in which it is grammati-cal, with a reading like:

(37) The one who didn't get caught was lucky.

However, this is not its meaning in Belfast English. It means somethinglike:

(38) He was lucky, in that he didn't get caught.

Here, we appear to have null subjects in finite clauses, somethingwhich is not normally possible in Belfast English, which is, like stan-dard English, a non-pro-drop language; finite verbs require overt sub-jects.

(39) a. They went home,b. *Went home.

(40) a. He was lucky he got out.b. *He was lucky got out.

It has been observed that even in non-pro-drop languages such asEnglish, it is generally possible to omit the subject in matrix clauses in


conversational use, a phenomenon sometimes termed "root null sub-jects." Thus, sentences like (39b) are used in informal speech. Whatnever happens in standard English, though, is that a subordinate clausesubject gets omitted. Thus, even in informal contexts, a sentence like(40b) is ungrammatical. On the contrary, in Belfast English it doesappear to be possible in some cases to have a null subject in a subordi-nate clause; thus, (40b) is grammatical in Belfast English.

Belfast English is a non-pro-drop language, just as standard Englishis; it is not possible in general to omit subjects. Expletives are nevernull, and weather verbs always have subjects.

(41) a. There are books on the table,b. *Are books on the table,

(42) a. It is likely that they will go.b. *Is likely that they will go.

In this it is unlike the pro-drop languages, such as Italian, whichfreely omit subjects and have null expletives and null subjects forweather verbs (see for example Rizzi 1982,1986; Jaeggli & Safir 1989).

Pro-drop languages also allow apparent violations of the thai-tracefilter; again, this is ungrammatical in Belfast English, as it is in standardEnglish.

(43) a. *Who do you think that left?b. Who do you think left?

Thus, apart from embedded null subjects, Belfast English does notappear to have any other characteristics of pro-drop languages; there-fore, the embedded null subject phenomenon does not arise becauseBelfast English is a pro-drop language.

Embedded null subjects do not occur in all types of finite subordinateclauses. For example, they do not occur in adverbial clauses

(44) *He ate his dinner after got home.(45) *When arrived it was raining.

They appear to be restricted to contexts where they are explaining themeaning of an adjectival element in the first clause.

(46) Mary was lucky got picked for the team.(47) John was unlucky got caught.(48) Mary was as well took the other job.


It might seem that these are that-clauses; indeed there are possible alter-natives with that in the cases of (46) and (47).

(48) Mary was lucky that she got picked for the team.(49) John was unlucky that he got caught.

But with "as well," a that clause cannot occur; only an infinitive is pos-sible

(50) *Mary was as well that she took the other job.(51) Mary was as well to take the other job.

Only where there is no overt complementiser present can the subjectbe omitted.

(52) *Mary was lucky that got picked for the team.(53) *John was unlucky that got caught.

However, it is only after adjectival-type constructions like this that nullsubjects are permitted in subordinate clauses. Most that-clauses do notpermit null subjects.

(54) *Mary forgot was supposed to go.(55) *Bill said wanted to win the prize.

It might seem that examples like (35a) and (36a) (repeated below) areexamples of raising structures where raising has taken place out of atensed clause, since there are somewhat equivalent sentences with anexpletive in subject position, as in (56) and (57).

(35) a. He was lucky didn't get caught.(36) a. The children were as well took their chance when they got it.

(56) It was lucky that he didn't get caught.(57) It was as well that the children took their chance when they got it.

However, null subject tensed clauses are not generally possible withraising verbs.

(58) *John is likely will win.(59) *The children seemed enjoyed the film.

Note that only the subject can be null; null objects are not permitted.

(60) *He was lucky Bill didn't catch.(61) * John was unlucky Mary spotted.(62) *Mary was as well Jill chose.


In fact, null subjects in finite subordinate clauses seem to berestricted to occurring after adjectival-type expressions, and they serveto clarify the meaning of the element after which they occur.

(63) Mary was lucky IN THAT she got picked for the team.(64) John was unlucky IN THAT he got caught.(65) The children were as well IN THAT they took their chance when they

got it.

Thus, Belfast English differs from standard English, not only inapparently allowing subject contact relative clauses to occur in certaincontexts but also in allowing null subjects in certain types of subordi-nate clauses. It will be argued below that these are in fact structures of asimilar type.

Analysis of Subject Contact Relatives

Doherty 's analysis

Null subject subordinate clauses have not received a great deal of attentionwithin the generative tradition, but Doherty (1993) has considered them insome detail. Doherty argues that these clauses are relative clauses, whichhe terms "subject contact relatives." He argues that their structure is identi-cal to that of object contact relatives, although their distribution is morerestricted. He proposes that both of these types of clauses are IPs ratherthan CPs, and therefore do not involve movement of an element toSPEC/CP, as do relative clauses with overt relative pronouns. Rather, theyhave null pronominals in the relativisation site, which are licensed by bind-ing from the head NP. Doherty argues that the restricted distribution ofsubject contact relatives derives from the general restriction on the occur-rence of resumptive pronouns in the highest subject position; to escape thisrestriction, the subject pronouns must be bound by a non-referential NP,hence the restriction of the construction to a subclass of head nouns, a classwhich Doherty claims is defined as being non-referential.

There are a number of problems with this analysis. First, it is notclear why, if the availability of subject contact relatives derives fromgeneral syntactic principles, they are not available in standard English.According to Doherty's analysis, standard English does have IP-rela-tives, in that it has object contact relatives. It is therefore unclear why it


should not have subject contact relatives in the same circumstances asHiberno-English dialects, for the zero subject relatives he considers donot seem to be widely acceptable to standard English speakers.

Second, as he notes himself, the generalisation that non-referential NPsmay take subject contact relatives does not seem wholly correct. AsDoherty notes, although negation licenses indefinites with non-referentialreadings, such non-referential NPs cannot head subject contact clauses

(66) *I haven't got a book explains it.

In fact, this is much better without the negative

(67) I've got a book explains it.

If subject contact clauses contain resumptive pronouns, then onewould expect these pronouns to licence island violations, as do resump-tive pronouns in general. But this is not the case; they are subject toisland conditions

(68) *There's a man I know the book (which)wrote.

Moreover, if these clauses are relative clauses, then it is extremelysurprising that they allow overt resumptive pronouns in subject posi-tion, as we saw that they do. One of the most robust findings aboutresumptive pronouns, cross-linguistically, is that they cannot occur inthe highest subject position, a constraint McCloskey (1990) refers to asthe Highest Subject Restriction. Therefore it seems unlikely that a lan-guage which uses resumptive pronouns only in a particular type of rela-tive clause would use them in a position in which they are generallyunavailable in other languages.

Subject Contact Relatives as Matrix Clauses

Although relative clauses do not allow resumptive pronouns in subjectposition, topic structures do allow such pronouns coreferential with thetopic

(69) a. John, he doesn't like coffee.b. See John, he doesn't like coffee.

Sociolinguistic studies of Belfast English (for example, Finlay 1988)have remarked on the strong tendency to use a topic/comment structure,in which the topic is overtly introduced, often by see or you know.


(70) See my brother, he never stops talking.(71) You know my friend Jane, she can't stand coffee.(72) Have you met our Linda, she's getting married this year.(73) See anybody with those skills, they can always get a job.

These structures resemble sentences with so-called subject contact rela-tives in a number of ways. First, they permit either a gap or a pronounin a subject position coreferential with the topic.

(74) a. You know John, he never shuts his bake.mouth

b. You know John, never shuts his bake.

(75) a. See my sister, she always wants anything going,b. See my sister, always wants anything going.

Where the topic is a non-subject, a gap is impossible and a pronounmust be used.

(76) a. You know John, 1 can't stand him.b. *You know John, I can't stand.

Second, they are similar semantically in that they they establish a newtopic in the discourse and then make a comment about it.

Third, there is no obligatory gap in the comment, something which isalso possible in contact-relative-like structures.

(77) a. See the house across the road they never go out.b. There's a house across the road they never go out.

(78) a. You know our big window the curtains wouldn't pull,b. We have one big window the curtains wouldn't pull

The syntactic and semantic similarities suggest that the structures inquestion may be topic-type structures rather than relatives. The questionis what difference is there in structure between these sentences whichpermits null subjects in topic structures, but does not allow null relativepronouns in relative clauses.

The difference appears to be that in a topic structure, the "comment"clause acts like a root sentence, with only a requirement of a vagueaboutness relation between topic and comment. In contrast, a relativeclause is a true embedded sentence. The "root" nature of commentclauses can be seen from the fact that phenomena normally restricted toroot clauses can occur in them. Thus, imperatives, a strictly root phe-nomenon, occur in comment clauses.


(79) You know your sister, tell her to come and see me.(80) See you, get that finished at once.

Similarly, inversion occurs as freely in such clauses as it does in matrixsentences.

(81) There's one office, never have I seen anywhere so messy.(82) You know your sister, what would she like to do?

Inversion in questions in these structures is grammatical even for thosespeakers who do not have inversion in embedded wh-questions (seeChapter 5). Thus, these topic-type structures have comment clauseswhich are essentially root in character.

Whereas see and you know introduce definite topics, there is and theother structures which introduce null subject subordinate clauses intro-duce indefinites into the discourse.

That this analysis is along the right lines is suggested by the fact thata similar structure occurs in Chinese, which is also, as Huang (1984)notes, a "topic-prominent" language, and this structure is clearly differ-entiated from relative clauses. In Chinese, relative clauses are pre-nomi-nal (see Henry 1988):

(83) Wo renshi [ta fudao ] de xuesheng.I know he coach subordinator student'I know the student he coached.'

(84) Mei you shuo Hanyu de ren.Not have speak Chinese subordinator person'There is nobody who speaks Chinese.'

However, there is another type of clause, termed by Li & Thomp-son (1981) the Realis Descriptive Clause, which occurs in presenta-tional contexts, exactly as does the Belfast English subject contactrelative type; and unlike relative clauses in that language, it is post-nominal.

(85) Wo you yige meimei [xuexi Yingguohua]I have a sister studies English'I have a sister is studying English.'

(86) Youde ren [bu xihuan Zhangsan]There are people not like Zhangsan'There are people don't like Zhangsan.'


These structures in Chinese cannot be relatives of the normal type, sincethe word order is quite different; they have the word order, rather, oftopic-comment structures.

Notice that null subjects in topic structures are not necessarily coref-erential with an element of the topic:

(87) See Mary, (I) can't stand her perfume(88) You know Bill, (you) couldn't find him on a Friday afternoon if you

tried.

Thus, the null subject here does not seem to be a variable, but rather apronominal which may, like other pronominals, happen to be coindexedwith an element outside its clause. Therefore, unlike relative clauses,which require a bound variable, topic structures do not seem to. Thenull subject here seems to be of the type of the "root null subject" foundin languages which are not pro-drop (Rizzi 1991). Note that, like thiselement, the null subject cannot occur in clauses lower than the highestclause of the comment.

(89) a. See John, never helps his mother.b. *See John, I know never helps his mother.

(90) a. You know your sister, sent me a postcard from her holiday.b. *You know your sister, I hope sent me a postcard from her holiday

Thus, we claim that the so-called subject contact relatives are in factroot-type clauses, able like roots to have null subjects. The null elementin subject position may (but need not necessarily) be coreferential withan element in the topic, just as any pronominal may be coreferentialwith another outside its clause.

Although in general the comment is about one noun phrase in thetopic, it also seems to be able to be a comment on other elements; forexample in cases such as the following, the comment appears to berelated to the adjective.

(91) John was lucky got away with it.

Conclusion

Thus, in Belfast English just as in standard English, where the subject isrelativised, an overt relative pronoun or complementiser is required.What appear to be relative clauses in violation of this condition in factare structures of another type.

It remains to propose how, formally, Belfast English and standard


English differ so that the former, but not the latter, allows topic-typestructures of the sort we have been discussing. These are not in fact'topics' of the same type as found in standard English and discussed inLasnik and Saito (1992). In both standard English and Belfast English,topicalisation to a position adjoined to SPEC/IP is possible.

(92) Newspapers, I really like.(93) This pen, he writes his essays with.

Here, there is a gap in the site coreferential with the topic. On the con-trary, gaps are impossible except in subject position in overtly intro-duced topics.

(94) *See newspapers I really like.(95) *You know this pen, he writes his essays with.

It seems that in overtly introduced topic structures, the topic sentenceis outside the matrix clause. This is similar to left-dislocation structures,except that instead of a single NP, a full CP is involved.

In standard English, TOP P does not seem to be able to be realised by aCP, but only by an NP.

(97) That book, I really like it.

In Belfast English however, it is possible for the TOPIC to contain awhole CP.

Exactly where this piece of information is stored in the grammar isdifficult to say; but it is clearly the case that the expansion of TOP P bydifferent phrasal categories must be a dimension along which languagesand dialects may differ.

7Conclusion

In the preceding chapters we have examined a number of the ways inwhich Belfast English differs syntactically from standard English. Wesaw that there are a number of underlying differences between thedialects, and even within Belfast English, and the differences did notappear to reduce to the effects of one or two parameter-setting differ-ences whose effects spread throughout the grammar.

However, all of the differences observed were of the same type asdifferences found between languages; they related for example to thestrength or weakness of functional elements, or the status of elements asclitics or independent items.

Thus, it seems that, if the Belfast English case is representative,dialects differ from one another, as one might expect, in the same waythat languages do: the difference between "language" and "dialect" isafter all more a political than a linguistic construct. It was not the casethat, to account for the fine-grained differences found between dialects,we had to resort to language-particular rules, or any kind of "micro-parameters" which differ from the kinds of parameter which account formore substantial differences between languages.

However, it is notable that, in order to account for the differences wefound, we needed to allow the following possible types of parametricdifference.

First, we had to allow that there could be "optionality." For example,we noted that in dialect B imperatives, raising of the verb to C wasoptional; the same applies to inversion in embedded questions, whichmay or may not occur. To account for these facts, we need either toallow optionality of movement or to allow functional elements to be

136

Conclusion 137

optionally strong or weak. The former approach seems not to be desir-able, since we would lose the very considerable and apparently correctpredictions made by the claim that movement only occurs if forced. Itseems therefore that the second approach is correct. Functional ele-ments may be characterised in the lexicon as strong, weak, or "either,"with the imperative morpheme which occurs in C in Belfast dialect B,and the wh-complementiser which occurs in embedded questions,falling into the "either" category.

The only option to this would be to claim that Belfast speakers are bi-dialectal, sometimes using one set of parameter settings and sometimesanother; but there is no evidence of this. The varying elements occuralongside one another throughout conversations where there is nonoticeable shift of style or topic, to a much greater extent than the nor-mal code-mixing and code-switching which occurs among bilingualspeakers.

Thus, first, we must admit optionality into the grammar, at least interms of the lexical specification of functional elements.

Second, we must also clearly allow that parameters may be set inrelation to individual functional elements in the lexicon, rather than forthe language as a whole. Thus, in both Belfast English and standardEnglish C is generally weak; there is not generalised verb-raising to Cas in other Germanic languages (Vikner 1991). However, Belfast Eng-lish differs from standard English in that some of the elements whichmay occur in C are specified as strong—the imperative morpheme andthe wh-complementiser which occurs in embedded questions, forexample.

We also noted that Belfast English differed from standard English inallowing a topic-presenting sentence to occur before the root clause.This meant that apparently root phenomena—such as root null sub-jects—could occur in what appeared to be embedded clauses, but werein fact root clauses preceded by a topic-presenting sentence. Clearly,this is a phrase-structural difference between the two varieties, andseems to show that there is at least one way in which the phrase struc-tures of different languages can be different.

We noted that, because of the variation apparent within Belfast Eng-lish, children must be able to acquire language on the basis of inputfrom adults whose grammars exemplify different parameter settings.We saw in Chapter 3 that under these circumstances children do notnecessarily select a grammar which covers all the data they hear; thus

13 8 BELFAST ENGLISH AND STANDARD ENGLISH

the language-learning task, in terms of learnability, seems to be, not tohypothesise or select the grammar which covers all the data, but toselect, from among the small range of possibilities offered by UG, theparameter setting which best fits most of the data; it thus seems that lan-guage-learning must be strongly internally driven, with internally gen-erated possibilities being tested against the data, rather than with thedata driving the acquisition of grammar. We suggested that there mightalso be a simplicity metric involved: a grammar would be preferredwhich had a single specification for the C position, or all elements inthat position, over one where one element which could occur in thecomplementiser position had to be lexically specified as different fromthe others; such a specification would only be developed where therewas a large amount of compelling evidence in its favour.

Finally, it is interesting to observe that there seems to be a qualitativedifference between the kind of highly constrained, parametrically speci-fied variation we have found in this study, and the wide range of phono-logical variation noted in sociolinguistic studies of Belfast Englishphonology (Milroy 1980, Milroy 1981). There, the range of possibilitieswas much wider, and speakers appeared to be able to develop phonolo-gies which incorporated rules whose probability of occurrence wasweighted (see Henry, 1993 for further discussion of phonology/syntaxdifferences in acquisition). It appears to be generally true that syntacticvariation between dialects is much more restricted that phonologicalvariation, suggesting that the learning mechanisms may be different,syntax being wholly parametrically determined, but phonology able tocontain, as Bromberger and Halle (1989) suggest, at least some rules.

Notes

Chapter 2

1. Care is needed in obtaining intuitions on these cases. In particular, it isimportant to obtain judgments from speakers who themselves use the -unsforms, rather than from speakers who have regularly heard the forms but do notuse them. The latter appear to analyse the -uns forms as pronoun-noun combi-nations like you guys and thus, while permitting singular concord, do not allowthe -uns forms in tag questions, or for the second occurrence of a referent.

Chapter 3

1. This means that raising does not take place to a position above NEG; inthis, Belfast English differs from the Scandinavian languages, where the objectmoves to a position above negation. It may be that the difference is caused by adifferent position for negation in the two language types—in NEG° in English,but left-adjoined to VP like adverbs in the Scandinavian languages.

2. Beukema and Coopmans (1989) argue that the null subject in imperativesis a variable associated with a discourse-identified null topic, rather than pro.However, there is evidence against this analysis in that a null subject is animperative cannot be third person when indentified by an appropriate discourseelement.

(i) Everybody take out their books. After that, write down their names

The second sentence cannot be interpreted to mean that everyone should writedown their own name; rather everyone must write down the names of anothergroup of people. The sentence must be interpreted as having the subject you,rather than everyone. If the null subject were a variable bound by a discourse-identified topic, then it ought to be able to be interpreted as everyone. On the

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140 Notes

contrary, the null subject must be interpreted as second person, suggesting thatimperatives have an obligatorily L+2sg] AGR which identifies the subject.

Chapter 4

1. It appears that this dialect was more widespread in the relatively recentpast; thus Joyce (1910), in his book English as we speak it in Ireland notes that" 'For' is constantly used before the infinitive," quoting as an example the fol-lowing lines from a folksong:

'And "Oh sailor dear" said she,"How came you here by me?"And then she began for to cry'

Although Joyce suggests that this is a characterisitic borrowed from Irish, itseems in fact that "for to" occured in earlier varieties of English; it is found inChaucer, and indeed also occurs in Shakespeare and as late as Dickens, thoughin the latter only in the reported speech of the "lower classes." Lightfoot(1981:111) notes that it was in common use in standard English until around1600, quoting the following examples.

(ii) a. For to go is necessaryb. It is good for to goc. ... that stood in aunter for to died. The king did it for to have sibbee. This is a fouler theft than for to breke a chirche/ He taketh of nought else kepe, but for to fill his bagesg. For to say the sothe, ye have done marvellously

2. I do not wish to suggest that these infinitives are true subjects; there isindeed evidence that they are not (see, for example Stowell 1981).

3. This possibility does not exist for all speakers. There is a group of speak-ers for whom that can only occur if it does not directly follow a wh-word, sothat (ii) is grammatical but (iii) is not

(iii) It depends which story that you believe(iv) *It depends which that you believe

For this group of speakers that is of course impossible after whether.4. It is, of course, possible to repeat the preposition for before an NP, as in

(v) What I'm longing for is for a break

but (48) does not have the repetitive quality of this example5. In order to maintain the argument that for is associated with complements

with a particular semantics, it could conceivably be argued that there are twodifferent fors in Belfast English, one of which has semantic content and behaves

Notes 141

exactly like the standard English for, and one which has no semantic contentand may appear elsewhere; there would, however, appear to be no arguments infavour of this from the Belfast English data, where for appears to behave in thesame way in all cases.

Chapter 5

1. Wonder has another use in Belfast English; it can mean "to be surprised,"and with this meaning takes a that complement.

(vi) I wonder (that) Bill had got that letter.

On this reading, the example given in the text is of course grammatical.2. It might be thought that, where a wh-element occurs with that, this is not

a case where there is a wh-element in SPEC/CP and a complementiser in C, butrather a kind of topic structure. Thus, a sentence like:

(vii) It depends which theory that you believe,

might be regarded as deriving from, or being akin to, a structure like:

(viii) It depends which theory it is that you believe.

However, it is clear that this is not the case from the way that the that-trace filteroperates in the structure. Sentences like (ix-x) where the that is followed by asubject trace are ungrammatical.

(ix) *It depends which theory that makes the best predictions,(x) *I wonder which author that wrote this book.

On the contrary, in the emphatic structure with it is/was, that occurs.

(xi) It depends which theory it is that makes the best predictions,(xii) I wonder which author it was that wrote the book.

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INDEX

Acquistion and dialect variation, 78-80,137-138

Adverbs, position of, 19, 25-26, 57, 60,67,71,97

AGRS, 21-23, 25, 29, 34, 42, 44, 62, 115;see also SPEC/AGRS

Agreement, 16^4Arabic, 21-22away, as a verb, 58-59

Beukema, 48Bobaljik, 30

C, see ComplementiserCarroll, 102-3Case, 23-25, 28, 32-42, 44, 84, 91, 93Chinese, 133-34Clefts, 125COMP-trace effect, 97CP recursion, 111-15Complementiser, 42-44, 66-76, 78,

88-89,97, 107, 109-15, 117-123

lowering, 101-2Co-ordination, 23-24, 71Coopmans, 48

Danish, 113Demonstratives, 18, 33-34Den Dikken, 69-70Diesing, 115Discrimination against dialect users, 7rfo-support, 32, 43, 49, 62, 66, 68Doherty, 13, 124, 130-34Duffield, 13, 28-29Dutch, 61,69-70

ECM verbs, 92, 97Education, language in, 7-9

Embedded verb second. See Verb second,embedded

Exceptional Case Marking. See ECM verbsExistential there, 122

Faroese, 38Finlay, 8, 16for-to infinitives, 81-104French, 45-46,61Full copy, 120

German, 61, 68Grammaticality judgements. See IntuitionsGueron, 36

Head Movement Constraint, 42Hebrew, 88Highest subject restriction, 131Historic present, 18Holmberg, 38, 71

Icelandic, 111Imperatives, 45-80, 96Infinitives, 62, 69, 81-104Intuitions, 12-13, 14, 24, 56Inversion,

in imperatives, 45-80in questions, 42-44, 88-89, 105-23,

133Irish, 7, 37, 119Italian, 69-70

Jonas, 30

Kayne, 32, 35,69Koopman, 37

Language change, 78-80Literary data sources, 13

147

148 Index

Massam, 97McCloskey, 88. 102, 105, 107, 111-13,

119,131Milroy, 1, 13, 16Mohammad, 21-22

NEG criterion, 68, 110, 113Negation and infinitives, 93-95Negative polarity items, 27-30Non-standard language varieties, problems

in studying. 12, 15

Object shift, 30, 38, 57-58, 71-76, 96Optionality, 136-37Ottawa Valley English, 102-3Ozark English, 101, 103

Parameter setting and dialect variation,78-80

Past tense irregular, 8, 24Pintzuk, 66Plantation, 7Policansky, 16, 17Pollock, 45-46, 82, 95Postal, 96PRO, 81-84, 88, 90-93Pro-drop, 64-65, 127-28, 134, 139:ch3

n2Pronouns, 18, 23-24, 32-42, 57-58, 69,

71-76resumptive, see Resumptive pronounsee also - uns psssronouns

Questions, 42-44

Relative clauses, 124-37Religion, language and, 7-8Resumptive pronouns, 126-27, 131Rizzi,42, 64, 110, 134Root null subjects, 128, 134

Sequence of tenses, 106Shlonsky, 88Singular concord, 16-44SPEC/AGR0P, 72, 77, 96SPEC/AGRHP, 23, 25-26, 28, 30-32, 34,

37-44,61-63,68,75SPEC/Tense. See SPEC/TPSPEC/TP, 26-32, 44, 62, 115-16Subject contact relatives, 125-35Subject-verb agreement, 16-44

Telicity, 53-55, 60Tense node, 26, 42-43, 62, 66; see also

SPEC/TPTopic prominence, 124, 131-35

Ulster Scots, 7Unaccusatives, 54, 60-63-uns pronouns, 18, 21, 34-35, 50, 73,

139:Chl n]

Verb-particle construction, 34-38Verb second, 68, 110

embedded, 105-23Verbs, of motion, 52, 60

telic. See TelicityVikner, 71, 111, 113, 121, 137Vocatives, 48, 64V2. See Verb second

Welsh, 34Wh-criterion, 110, 120Wh-movement, successive cyclic, 118-19Wh-questions, embedded, 117-23whether, 88, 107

Yiddish, 111, 115youse, 18,38,50

Documents

Belfast English and Standard English: Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax)