den Dikken, Marcel

English

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‘What would you rather me say?’Marcel Den DikkenAbstractIn varieties of English, the combination of would and rather (also:sooner/as soon/as well) can be followed not just by a bare inﬁnitive(as in they would rather leave) or by a ﬁnite clause (they would rather(that) I (would) leave), but alsobyan inﬁnitivewithanaccusative sub-ject (as in they would rather me leave), which can even be coreferentwith thematrix subject (Iwould ratherme leave). This short paper fo-cuses on this AcI-inﬁnitival construction. It shows that the inﬁnitivalclause is a fully clausal complement of rather, capable of harbouringsentential negation and constituting a local binding domain for itssubject, whose accusative is not an assigned case. The paper closeson some remarks about the evolution of this construction, againstthe background of the form and distribution of the subjunctive.Sentences of the type in (1) feature a degree-modiﬁed dispositional adjective oradverb (rather, sooner, as soon, as well) followed by a bare inﬁnitival clause withan accusative subject.1(1) a. they would rather me leaveb. they would sooner me leavec. they would just as soonme leaved. they would just as well me leave1Though this construction seems particularly commonwithme (representing the speaker) asthe accusative subject of the inﬁnitive, it is not restricted to me, as witness sentences such as Iwould rather him/her/us//them be happy. Though the initial exempliﬁcations in (1) are made-upsentences to keep them simple and directly comparable, the bulk of the examples in this paperare attested sentences culled from the internet, and checked with native-speaker linguists. Inwhat follows, exempliﬁcation will generally be conﬁned to rather.99The inﬁnitival clause is transparent for extraction of its object (as in (2a)), its sub-ject (as in (2b)), and even a modiﬁer (as in (2c)).2(2) a. what would you rather me say?b. who would you rather kiss you like that?c. how would you rather me do this?The adjective cannot bewh-fronted, however, despite the fact that it can be in-tensiﬁed withmuch:(3) a. you would much rather me do thisb. *howmuch rather would youme do this?In precluding extraction of the adjective, the construction in (1) patterns like theone in (4), and unlike that in (5).(4) a. you would much rather that I do thisb. *howmuch rather would you that I do this?(5) a. you would much rather do thisb. howmuch rather would you do this?In (5a),much rather is a modiﬁer of the projection of do, which is the main verbof a single clause. In (4a), we are evidently dealing with a biclausal construction,with the that-clause serving as the complement of rather. This straightforwardlyexplains the contrast between (4b) and (5a) in the latter but not in the former,(how) much rather is a constituent. The fact that (3b) behaves the same way as(4b) suggests that in (3a) and (1), too, what follows rather is a clausal comple-ment:(6) [AP A=rather [ĈđĆĚĘĊ]]The clausality of what follows rather is perfectly apparent for variants of (1) inwhich the inﬁnitive is adorned with the inﬁnitival marker to, as in (7a), which,like (1), allows extraction, as shown in (7b).(7) a. you would rather me to do thisb. what would you rather me to do?2Again, the pattern is not limited to me: sentences such as what would you rather him say?(directly parallel to (2a)) andwhat would you rather him be to you? (with extraction of the predi-cate of a copular inﬁnitive) occur frequently as well.100But for the bare inﬁnitive in (1) as well, there are clear indications that it is aclausal constituent. Thus, sentential negation isgrammatical in thebare-inﬁnitivalclause, as shown by the fact that not in (8) licenses negative polarity items:(8) you would rather/sooner/just as soon/just as well me not do anythingSince sentential negation is by consensus (see Zanuttini 1997, references there,andwork in itswake)dependentonT, thebare inﬁnitive in (8)must at aminimumbe a TP – i.e., a full clause.The hypothesis that the bare-inﬁnitival constituent in (1) is a full clause helpsus explain the otherwise quite intractable fact that the subject of the bare inﬁni-tive can be a pronoun coreferential with the matrix subject:3(9) a. I would rather me leaveb. I would rather me die than youFor (9b), the acceptability of me could perhaps be ascribed to the fact that thispronoun is a contrastive focus (contrasted with you). But in (9a) the subject ofthe inﬁnitive is not contrastive. The fact that it allows itself to be coreferentialwith the matrix subject indicates that the bare-inﬁnitival constituent is a localdomain forbinding, just as in Iwould rather that I leave. Thepostulationof clausalstructure for the bare inﬁnitive contributes to making this understandable.By itself, however, the clausal (i.e., TP) status of the complement of ratherdoes not immediately facilitate a coreference relation between the matrix andembedded subjects: for bare AcI-inﬁnitives embedded under causative or per-ception verbs, the grammaticality of clausal negation (as in (10a)) suggests fullclausality; yet coreference of the pronominal subject of the inﬁnitive with thematrix subject is impossible, as (10b) shows.(10) a. I made/saw him not eat anythingb. *I made/sawme leaveThe diﬀerence between (1) and causative and perception verb constructions liesin the category of the selector of the bare AcI-inﬁnitive: an element of categoryA in the former and a verb in the latter. Thanks to the fact that in causative andperception verb constructions, the inﬁnitive’s selector is of the same categoryas the head of the inﬁnitival complement, the two domains engage in what is3Like (1) and (2), the pattern in (9) is attested with accusative pronouns other thanme, as inhe would rather him be dead or they would rather them do work around the house.101variably called ‘reanalysis’, ‘restructuring’ or ‘clause union’. In (1), where the cat-egories of the bare inﬁnitive and its selector are diﬀerent, such integration is im-possible. The inﬁnitival TP in (1) thus remains an independent binding domain,making (9b) grammatical.Though opaque for binding, the fact that the inﬁnitival clause in the comple-ment of rather is a selected constituent renders it transparent to extraction: wesaw this in (2) for disjoint reference cases; (11) shows that in coreference con-texts, though much rarer, wh-extraction is also possible — even for a predicatenominal (what in (11) is a predicate), which strongly resists extraction from is-lands (*what don’t you know whether to call these linguists? vs. ?which linguistsdon’t you know whether to call ‘generativists’?).(11) what would they rather them be named?With respect to extraction, (1) and (9) are similar to likely+inﬁnitive construc-tions, in which the inﬁnitival complement to the adjective likely is likewise trans-parent to argument and non-argument wh-extraction (what is he likely to say?,how is he likely to solve the problem?).What could be the source of the accusative case of the subject of the AcI-inﬁnitive? For causativeandperceptionverbconstructions, theanswer is straight-forward: thematrix clause contributes an accusative case feature, assignable tothe subject of the inﬁnitival clause. But in the construction in (1), the selector ofthe inﬁnitival clause is of categoryA, incapable of assigning structural case.4 Themorphological accusative case of the subject of the inﬁnitival clause in (1) can bedealtwith in eitherof twoways. Onewouldbe to treat it as amanifestationofde-fault case,which in English is indeed accusative. Alternatively, itmaybepossibleto invokeMarantz’s (1991) notion of dependent case: nominative case in thema-trix domain is already used up by thematrix subject, so the subject of the inﬁniti-val clause gets thedependent accusative instead. The feasibility of a dependent-case approach to the accusative in (1) will depend crucially on whether they andme in these sentences belong to the same local domain. Above, we saw that theinﬁnitival clause embedded under rather is an opaque domain for binding; yetat the same time it is a transparent domain for wh-extraction. If the inﬁnitive’scomplement status is suﬃcient to include it in same local domain as the matrixsubject for the purposes of dependent case assignment, it will be possible to get4Though I’d rather me than you occurs as a complete utterance, it is arguably always ellip-tical: the syntax features a clause with a pronominal subject rather than just a pronoun in thecomplement of rather.102dependent accusative case assigned to the subject of the inﬁnitive. In viewof thefact that passivisation (with concomitant promotion of the structural accusativeto subject) is independently impossible in the rather+inﬁnitive construction (be-causewould rather does not passivise), it is diﬃcult to ascertainwhether the caseof the subject of the inﬁnitive is structural (i.c., dependent) or default.In closing, Iwould like tomakea few speculative remarks about the evolutionand spread of the construction illustrated in (1). It seems to me likely that pairsof sentences such as the following play a major role in the development of therather+ĆĈĈ+Ďēċ construction:(12) a. you would rather (that) I were more seriousb. you would rather (that) I be more seriousIn (12a), we are dealing with a subjunctive subordinate clause, whence the nom-inative subject, I. On the surface (and perhaps also in a deeper sense), the sub-junctive form of the English verb is indistinct from the bare inﬁnitive. So for theversion of (12b) lacking the complementizer that, the complement clause is eas-ily reanalysed as an inﬁnitival clause. Such a reanalysis deprives the subject ofthat clause of its nominative case, and leads to a (default/dependent) accusativecase form, as in you would rather me be more serious – an instantiation of thepattern in (1).Though thenegationandpronominal coreference facts reviewedabovehaveledme to conclude that thebare inﬁnitive embeddedunder rather is fully clausal,a logical next step in the development of the construction type would be for theinﬁnitival constituent tobeanalysedas a small clause. Once this happens,weex-pect to be able to ﬁnd bare non-verbal predication structures with an accusativesubject in the complement ofwould rather. Indeed, this seems to have becomeareality, judging from the occurrence of sentences such as the ones in (13a)–(13c)(with disjoint reference, à la (1)) and (13d) (with coreference of the matrix andembedded subjects, as in (9)):(13) a. AirTran would rather me stinkyb. he would rather them deadc. I would rather him sick now than when he is in schoold. I would rather me sick than youThepreviousparagraphspaint apreliminarypictureofa construction typewhich,as far as I am aware, has not received detailed attention in the theoretical liter-ature to date. It goes without saying that much more could and should be said103about what would you rather me say? and its ilk. I hope that the honouree ofthis webschrift will say that what these initial notes say is well-said. But perhapsshe would rather me say just simply: Thank you very much, Liliane, for all thewonderful linguist(ic)s that you have given the world, for the innumerable waysin which you have contributed, empirically as well as theoretically, to the gene-rative enterprise, and for all the great fun we’ve had.ReferencesMarantz, A. 1991. Case and licensing. In G.F.Westphal, B. Ao&H.R. Chae (eds.),Proceedings of the 8th Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (ESCOL ’91).234–253. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University.Zanuttini, R. 1997. Negation and clausal structure: A comparative study of Ro-mance languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.104

What would you rather me say?

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What would you rather me say?

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