6.2.3 Tense and Agreement

A further problem with the analysis in (36) is the explanation of why the verb cannot move to the I position. We have seen that verbs are perfectly capable of moving, so why this is not possible to the inflection position is quite mysterious. Some, who accepted the ‘I-lowering’ (affix lowering) analysis, have suggested that the verb cannot escape the VP because of its Θ-assigning properties, pointing to the fact that aspectual auxiliaries and copular be, which do not assign Θ-roles, can appear in I (Pollock 1989).