A-dependencies and the parametrization of raising constructions

Anton Zimmerling
Pushkin State Russian Language Institute / Institute of Linguistics RAS

Abstract: In the first part of my paper, I render the notions of argument raising and A-dependencies and show that case licensing in the upper clause is neither a necessary precondition of raising nor its universal trigger. There are languages with raising constructions, where case is licensed in the complement clause. Hyperraising, i.e. raising out of embedded complement clauses is widespread outside the languages of the Standard Average European type and is attested in some European languages including Bulgarian. In the second part of the paper, I offer a parametrization of six European languages with raising constructions and show that these languages are not uniform: some of them including English primarily encode the control versus raising distinction lexically, while other including Russian and Danish are mixed raising languages that developed productive raising constructions with added morphosyntactic markers.

Keywords: raising, control, A-dependencies, parametrization, Germanic languages, Slavic languages

For citation: Zimmerling A. A-dependencies and the parametrization of raising constructions. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2025. Vol. 8, iss. 2. Pp. 139–177. doi:10.37632/PI.2025.90.51.006