Basic English Syntax with Exercises

raising verb

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

This is a case of raising, as introduced in chapter 3. In (62a) the subject of the lower clause is raised into the subject position of the raising verb seem, demonstrating that this position must have been empty at D-structure. In (62b), however, the thematic subject of the lower clause does not move out of this clause. In this case the subject position is filled by another expletive element it. It would be ungrammatical for this position to be left empty, an indication that all English sentences must have subjects regardless of whether one is semantically demanded or not. We will return to this observation in the next chapter. Note however that this expletive subject differs from the one used in there constructions, though their function (to fill a vacant subject position) seems to be similar. It would be ungrammatical to use a there in raising structures and it in there constructions:

8.2.1 Raising

Another structure which bears a remarkable similarity to raising structures concerns the passive exceptional verb. From what we know about the properties of exceptional verbs and the process of passivisation, it can be predicted that they will behave very much like raising verbs. As we know, an exceptional verb can take a non-finite IP complement. Normally there will be an accompanying light verb and this will assign Case to the DP subject of the complement clause. When we passivise a verb, we replace the light verb with the passive morpheme, which neither assigns a Θ-role to the subject, nor a Case to the complement. This, then, is the same set of properties that raising verbs have. We can see that such verbs do indeed behave like raising verbs:

8.2.1 Raising

In this example, the subject starts off in the lowest clause as the subject of the adjective skilled. It then moves out of three clauses to the subject position of the raising verb. In principle, then, it might appear that there is no limit to how far a subject may raise. However, it is interesting that in order for this to happen, each predicate between the original clause and the final landing site of the raised subject must be either a raising predicate or a passive verb and moreover each intervening clause must be non-finite and have a vacant subject position. If any of these conditions is not upheld, the sentence is ungrammatical: