Acceso usuarios
The purpose of this study is to give an account of Spanish and Basque comparatives with Null Complement within the Government and Binding framework. After having discussed several hypothesis concerning the representation of Null Complement, we show how May's (1985) hypothesis, based on the existence of an empty category to be interpreted at LF, is more explicative for the specific domaín of comparatives than the alternative ones (the Deletion Hypothesis and the Base-Generated Analysis), For concreteness, it is shown that the, ill-formedness of several examples is due to the fact that the interpretation of the Null Complement Anaphora can give rise to violations of principles A, B and C of the Binding Theory, as well as to the non-fulfillment of the Theta-Criterion. Moreover, some examples of comparatives suggest that Preposition Stranding does exist in Spanish and Basque at LF. This discussion, together with the one related to the structure to be assigned to Comp in Spanish comparatives, where the process of pro identification will be crucial, give support to recent conjunctive formulations of ECP according to which the proper government requirement holds at PF.
