Suggested Answers for Check Questions

Raising is a type of movement that occurs with certain types of verbs. The subject of the lower clause is moved out to the subject position of the higher clause. The moved element must originate in the subject position of the lower clause which must be a non-finite clause. There is no raising out of finite clauses or object positions. The properties of verbs that may occur in a raising structure include lacking a light verb that can assign a theta-role to the subject and case-mark it. Lacking a light verb implies having a subject position available and vacant. Another property of verbs that can be part of raising structures is that they take a propositional (clausal) complement, which can be finite or non-finite. In raising structures the light verb cannot case-mark the subject of the lower clause and when the lower clause is non-finite there is no potential case-assigner within that clause either, hence the subject must move to a position where it can get case. Thus, raising is another type of case-motivated movement. The subject can move across any number of clauses as long as they are non-finite or contain a raising predicate and have an available subject position.