Prepositional complementizers in Welsh

TL;DR: The authors consider the possibility of providing an analysis of the Welsh facts within the government-binding framework of Chomsky (1981, 1982, 1984), in which subjectless infinitives are clauses.

Abstract: A number of languages have what can be called prepositional complementizers, items which look like prepositions and have some of the properties of prepositions but appear in positions in which complementizers appear. In this paper I shall be concerned with Welsh prepositional complementizers and, in particular, with their implications for the analysis of subjectless infinitives. I shall consider the possibility of providing an analysis of the Welsh facts within the government-binding (GB) framework of Chomsky (1981, 1982, 1984), in which subjectless infinitives are clauses. I will argue that GB assumptions preclude a satisfactory account of the data. I will also show that certain facts relating to agreement pose further problems for a GB approach. I will then show that the facts are quite straightforward if one assumes that subjectless infinitives are bare VPs, as argued for Welsh in Borsley (1984a), and that VPs and Ss are members of the same basic category, as proposed in Borsley (1983, 1984b). It looks, then, as if we have some interesting evidence here for these assumptions.