14. Specified Subject Condition(SSC)
This condition blocks the movement of a nonsubject out of a clause S-bar or NP accord-
ing
to the schema in (119), and (119) can be restated for the sake of ease of exposition to
(120):
(119)
(120)
(121) seems [S’ John to like Bill ] <- underlying structure
(123) (a) *Bill seems John to like <- surface structure
(b) John seems to like Bill
(123) (a) *Bill seems John to like (123) (b) John seems to like Bill
* S S
NP VP NP VP
Bill V S’ John V S’
seems COMP S seems COMP S
[-WH] [-WH]
NP VP NP VP
John to V’ t to V’
V NP subject V NP
like t like Bill
nonsubject
SSC is violated SSC is not violated
Both (123) (a) and (123) (b) satisfy Subjacency Condition and Tensed S Condition
(121) seems [S’ John to like Bill ] <- underlying structure
(123) (a) *Bill seems John to like <- surface structure
(b) John seems to like Bill
NP-Movement can apply to move ‘John’ into the empty NP subject-position in seems-
clause,
giving (123)(b); this derivation violates neither the Subjacency Condition nor the Tensed S
Condition. But the extraction of the underlying nonsubject ‘Bill’ is not permitted as
in
(123)(a) although neither the Subjacency Condition nor Tensed S Condition is vio-
lated.
The impossibility of the movement of ‘Bill’ can be explained by Specified Subject
Condition(SSC) (119)-(120), whereby the movement of ‘Bill’ is blocked, since ‘Bill’ is a
nonsubject constituent of an S-bar which has the subject ‘John’. The movement of the
nonsubject ‘Bill’ across the subject ‘John’ violates the SSC. So (123)(a) is ungrammatical.
▶ NP-Movement in passive sentences is also subject to SSC:
(124) is expected [S’ John to help Mary ] <- underlying structure
(125) (a) John is expected to help Mary <- surface structure
(b) *Mary is expected John to help
Because a nonsubject constituent ‘Mary’ in the subordinate clause is moved out of
a clause with a subject ‘John’, (125)(b) is ungrammatical violating SSC.
▶ But SSC (120) wrongly predicts that ‘What will she say that she did?’ is ungrammatical,
even though the sentence is actually well-formed. So by adding the condition ‘where
Y is not in COMP’, the revised SSC is needed like (130), which accounts for that sen-
tence:
(130)
As a result, the revised SSC can be applied to only NP-Movement, not WH-
Movement.
(125) (a) John is expected to help Mary (b) *Mary is expected John to help
S S
NP VP NP VP
John Aux V’ Mary Aux V’
is V S’ is V S’
expected COMP S expected COMP S
[-WH] [-WH]
NP VP NP VP
t to V’ John to V’
V NP V NP
help Mary help t
SSC is not violated SSC is violated
Both (125) (a) and (125) (b) violate neither TSC nor Subjacency Condition.
