ABSTRACT

The analysis of Case phenomena presented in this paper is based on a theory of Case structure in generative grammar that has been developed over the past decade (see Chomsky 1986a for some general discussion and Chomsky 1981 for more technical details of the basic theory). Central to this theory of Case is the Case Filter (1), which plays a crucial role in determining the distribution of lexical (that is, phonetically realized) versus nonlexical NPs (trace1 and PRO) in sentences.