Infinitival constructions in Chirag Dargwa: a theoretically informed empirical study of obligatory control

The project aims at an in-depth investigation of obligatory control in Chirag, a Dargwa language of the Nakh-Daghestanian family, with the focus on more typologically rare and more theoretically challenging phenomena. Chirag features a number of typologically unusual phenomena related to the expression of the controlled subject (obligatory gender–number agreement and overt pronouns) that can help us see the properties of the controlled subject in both exhaustive and partial control environments. Given the rich inventory of ways the embedded subject and its φ-features in complements of control verbs can be overtly expressed in Chirag, the main overarching question asked in this project is: What evidence can overt expression of the controlled infinitival subject and its φ-features provide about the nature of the infinitival subject? The starting point of this project is the hypothesis that the null subject in controlled complements is a pronoun endowed with valued φ-features from the beginning of derivation, contrary to competing proposals that it is Kratzer’s minimal pronoun or a movement trace. In order to check this initial hypothesis, the project will collect and analyze a substantial body of new empirical data from a less-studied language and therefore contribute to a better understanding of obligatory control.