In this section I provide a description of the with-infinitive in the Wambeek dialect. This description will serve as the basis for the theoretical interpretation in §§3.3–3.5. Consider first the sentence in (14) (repeated from (1) above):
8The only other example that I am aware of is found in Brazilian Portuguese. Rizzi (2004), gives the
example in (i), in which an infinitive with a nominative subject is embedded under the prepositional complementiser pra:
(i) Ela me deu o livro pra eu ler. she me gave the book for I-NOM read-INF
I will come back to this construction in §3.2.
9The pronominal paradigm of standard Dutch lacks a morphological distinction between accusative and
(14) Mè zaai te werken moest-n-aai de gieln dag toisj blaaiven.
with she-NOM to work must-CL-he the whole day home stay
‘With her working, he had to stay home all day.’
The same construction occurs in West-Flemish.10 Examples are given in (15a-b);
note here that the subject of the with-infinitive can be lexical or pronominal:
(15) a. Met hele dagen die kinders door mijn vruchten te lopen,
with whole days that children through my fruits to walk
ligt de helft van ’t stik plat.
lies the half of the field flat
‘Because the children are walking through the fruit trees all day, half of the field has been trampled on.’
b. Met gij hier te komen wonen is ’t rap veranderd.
with you-NOM here to come live is it quickly changed
‘With you coming to live here, things have changed rapidly.’
The examples with a pronoun in (14) and (15b) show that subjects of with-infinitives (here zaai and gij) have nominative case. This is remarkable, since subjects in the absolutive normally have oblique case, for instance when they occur with a PP
predicate, as in (16a), or with an als-predicate, as in (16b):11
(16) a. Mè ou / *gou in de geul gomme zeker winn.
with you-OBL /you-NOM in the goal go-we certainly win
‘With you in the goal, we will certainly win.’
b. Mè ou / *gou as veerzitter guit de verguidering lang
With you-OBL you-NOM as chairman goes the meeting long
diern. last
‘With you as chairman, the meeting will take a long time.’
10I am grateful to Marga Devos for providing me with the West-Flemish examples. 11For some reason, Wambeek speakers tend to reject absolutives with an AP predicate:
(i) ?* a. Mè em zat gomme zeker verliezn. with he-OBL drunk go-we certainly lose ‘With him being drunk, we will certainly lose.’ * b. Mè aai zat gomme zeker verliezn. with he-NOM drunk go-we certainly lose ‘With him being drunk, we will certainly lose.’
However, the dialect still maintains a contrast between the oblique and nominative form of the subject here, which corroborates the point made here.
In the with-infinitive, (most) Wambeek speakers reject oblique subjects:12
(17) */?? Me ee te werken moest-n-aai de gieln dag toisj blaaiven.
with her-OBL to work must-CL-he the whole day home stay
‘With her working, he had to stay home all day.’
In Wambeek Dutch, subjects of infinitives (strong or weak) are realised either as an accusative/oblique NP or as a PRO-subject:
(18) a. Ik zien a de struit euversteken
I see you-WEAK ACC the street cross
‘I see you cross the street.’
b. Ik zien ou-STRONG ACC de struit euversteken
I see you the street cross ‘I see you cross the street.’
c. * Ik zie ge de struit euversteken
I see you-WEAK NOM the street cross
‘I see you cross the street.’
d. * Ik zie gou de struit euversteken
I see you-STRONG NOM de struit euversteken
‘I see you cross the street.’
e. Zaai ij geprobeed (van) PRO ‘t struit euver te steken
she has tried of the street over-PART to cross
f. * Zaai ij geprobeed (van) zaai ’t struit euver te steken.
She has tried of she the street over-PART to cross
In this respect, Wambeek Dutch is like standard Dutch:13
12The SAND database contains some examples that would seem to have oblique subjects, e.g. me hum te
gaan werke moestz heel den dag thuis blijve (Lier), me hem te gaa werkn moezezij geheel den dag thuis blijvn (Ronse). However, it should be noted that in western Belgian dialects the 3-SG pronoun hum/hem often occurs as the (strong) nominative pronoun (see e.g. DeVogelaer 2005). For the purpose of testing morphological case, the 1-SG pronoun is most reliable, but, unfortunately, the SAND database includes only test sentences with a 3-SG pronoun. According to Magda Devos (p.c.), oblique case is the exception and nominative case the rule. Furthermore, dialects with oblique forms appear to restrict these to 3-SG and 3-PL pronouns. In the northwestern part of West-Flanders, the nominative form hij (3-SG) is more common, although the oblique form hem is also accepted. In the Westhoek of southern Flanders, older people prefer the oblique form and younger people the nominative form, which suggests that the nominative subject is a later development. Hugo Ryckeboer (p.c.) notes that the with-infinitive also occurs in French-Flanders. In this thesis, I will limit my attention to the with-infinitive in the dialect of Wambeek, which only allows a nominative subject. I leave the occurrence of oblique subjects in the with- infinitive as a topic for further research.
13 The Wambeek dialect is also like Standard Dutch in that it lacks a morphological distinction between
In the generative tradition, starting with Vergnaud (1985), it is usually assumed that case is assigned in a local configuration. More specifically, Rizzi (1990) argues that heads and phrases interact locally in processes such as the licensing of case features and of special elements such as null pronominals. Rizzi assumes that there are three basic local configurations in which head–XP interaction is possible: (1) specifier/head, (2) head/complement, and (3) head/specifier-of-the-complement. Type (1) is involved in nominative case-marking. Type (2) involves among other things the licensing of inherent case by the theta-marking head. Type (3) is exemplified by the relation between a prepositional complementiser and the subject of an infinitive, as in the English example in (19):
(19) For [him to do that] would be a mistake.
In this example, the prepositional complementiser for assigns oblique case to the subject of the infinitive (i.e. him). The ungrammaticality of the example in (20) shows that this procedure requires a local configuration:
(20) * For tomorrow [him to do that] would be a mistake.
Rizzi (2004) notes that in Brazilian Portuguese a similar locality condition applies to an infinitive with an accusative subject that is embedded under the prepositional complementiser pra (see also fnt. 8 above):
(21) Ela me deu o livro pra (*amanha) [mim ler].
she me gave the book for tomorrow I-ACC read-INF
(Rizzi 2004:23)
This suggests, then, that in both English and Brazilian Portuguese the prepositional complementiser assigns case to the specifier of its complement.
However, unlike English, Brazilian Portuguese also has an infinitival construction in which the subject of the infinitive has nominative case. As can be seen in (22), this construction permits interpolation of an adverb between the preposition and the pronoun:
(22) Ela me deu o livro pra (amanha) [eu ler].
she me gave the book for tomorrow I-NOM to read
This suggests that pra does not assign case to the subject; rather, so Rizzi speculates, the subject is probably case-marked inside the infinitival clause.
The with-infinitive in the Wambeek dialect also lacks an adjacency requirement between the preposition and the nominative subject. The example in (23) indicates
that a temporal adverb such as gisteren can intervene between the preposition mè
and the subject zaai:14
(23) Mè gisteren zaai te werken moest-n-aai de gieln dag toisj
with yesterday she-NOM to work must-CL-he the whole day home
blaaiven. stay
‘With her working, he had to stay home all day.’
Examples of this kind suggest that nominative case in the Wambeek with-infinitive is not assigned in a head/specifier-of-the-complement configuration.
The Wambeek facts are all the more peculiar if one bears in mind that prepositions tend to assign accusative or oblique case rather than nominative case. This can be seen in languages with overt case-marking, such as German and Latin. Consider the German examples in (24), which contain the prepositions trotz (+genitive), nach and
aus (+dative), and durch (+accusative). Note here that morphological case-marking
appears on pronouns and determiners, and sometimes, as in (24a), on the DP itself: (24) a. Trotz seines Erfolgs ist er ein bescheidener Mensch.
despite his-GEN succes-GEN is he a modest man
‘Despite his succes, he has remained a modest man.’
b. Nach einer Stunde kamen sie wieder aus dem Wald
after one-DAT hour-DAT came they again out the-DAT forest-DAT
‘After one hour they came out of the forest again.’
c. Die Katze rannte durch das Zimmer.
the cat ran through the-ACC room-ACC
‘The cat ran through the room.’
From a typological perspective it is highly unlikely that the preposition mè assigns nominative case in the same way as (say) case is assigned by German prepositions, i.e. in a head/complement configuration.
Rather, the Wambeek facts are reminiscent of a special type of case-marking that occurs in West-Flemish. As Devos & Vandeweghe (2003) note, West-Flemish
14Magda Devos (p.c.) notes that adverbs occur more readily between met and lexical subjects, although
adverb interpolation preceding pronominals is certainly possible. For instance, the (attested) example in (i) has no fewer than two intervening temporal adverbs:
(i) En met toen kort na de oorlog die jeeps op te komen, peinsden de and with then shortly after the war those jeeps on to come thought the boeren dat ze geen paarden meer nodig hadden.
farmers that they no horses more needed
‘And when the jeeps became so popular shortly after the war, the farmers thought that they did not need their horses anymore.’
dialects may replace the oblique pronoun form by the nominative pronoun form in the complement position of a preposition:
(25) a. Kom maar mee met ikke.
Come MOD-PART with with I-NOM
‘Follow me.’
b. Ik ben kwaad op gij.
I am angry with you-NOM
‘I am angry with you.’
c. Wil je kaarten met wulder?
Want you play-cards with we-NOM
‘Do you want to play cards with us?’
However, closer inspection reveals that this is a unique property of West-Flemish. The ungrammaticality of (26a) indicates that this type of pronoun replacement is not found in Wambeek:
(26) a. * IJ gui me zaai nui de film.
he goes with she-NOM to the movie
‘He goes with her to the movies.’
b. IJ gui me ee nui de film.
he goes with her-OBL to the movie
‘ He goes with her to the movies.’
On the basis of these observations I conclude that nominative case assignment in the
with-infinitive construction of the Wambeek dialect differs from case assignment by for in English infinitives, and from the standard way in which prepositions assign
case to their complement. In the following section, I will consider the syntax of the Wambeek with-infinitive in more detail, paying particular attention to its structural content.