Larry’s Reviews > An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory > Status Update

The difference btw Raising to object and Control is whether the surface DP complement is selected by the verb (Control: eg “convince”), or surfaces post-verbally as the embedded subject of the TP-complement (Raising: eg “believe”)

Object control vs ECM verbs: OCs select an (inf-)TP-, ECMs, an (inf-)CP-complement

Selection test: is “time” selected by “seems” or “elapse” in “Time seems to elapse AdvP”? Change the embedded VP: “*Time seems to swim AdvP”: bad. Is it because of “seems”? Compare: “Sharks seem to swim AdvP”: fine. Conclusion: “Time” seems to be selected by “elapse”, not “seems”.

On the 1hand, VPE strands Neg°, so NegP can’t adjoin to VP (ie [VP [Neg] [VP]]), it must take VP as its complement (ie [NegP [Neg’ [Neg] [VP]]]), but on the other, Neg doesn’t change the category of what it applies to (“alienable” is Adj, so is “inalienable”), arguing for adjunction. Tough

I didn’t know there was controversy on whether adjuncts are sisters to X’ or XP: interesting!!