State immunity — Jurisdiction — Functional nature of immunity — Acta jure imperii and acta jure gestionis — Immunity confined to acta jure imperii — Failure of lower courts to take this limitation into account — The law of the Czech Republic

In this squib, I discuss the iterative marker in Cayuga (Northern Iroquoian) and how it helps us to understand VP structure and unaccusativity in that language. This discussion bears directly on the issue of configurationality and clausal structure (Hale 1983, Jelinek 1984, Baker 1996, Legate 2002). A fundamental question about discourse-configurational languages is whether they have a distinct VP node or a flat structure. I show that the iterative marker takes scope over objects but not over subjects, supporting the notion that a distinct VP node is present in this language. Furthermore, I show that the iterative marker also takes scope over the subjects of unaccusatives, thus distinguishing unaccusatives from unergatives.

A major controversy in syntactic theory concerns the nature of control verbs, verbs like try, which govern equi-NP-deletion in classical transformational grammar. For recent versions of the extended standard theory and, in particular, the government-binding theory, such verbs take a sentential complement with a PRO subject. (Cf. Chomsky 1980, 1981, 1982 and Koster & May 1982.) On an alternative analysis, originating in Bresnan (1971) and Brame (1975, 1976), and developed by Bresnan (1978, 1982), Gazdar (1982) and others, they take VP complements. A similar dispute arises over raising verbs, verbs like seem, which govern subject raising in classical transformational grammar.

In this paper, we consider two kinds of vP-fronting constructions in English and argue that they receive quite different analyses. First, we show that English vP-preposing does not have the properties that would be expected of a movement-derived dependency. Evidence for this conclusion is adduced from the licensing conditions on its occurrence, from the availability of morphological mismatches, and from reconstruction facts. By contrast, we show that English participle preposing is a well-behaved case of vP-movement, contrasting with vP-preposing with respect to reconstruction properties in particular. We propose that the differences between the two constructions follow from the interaction of two constraints: the excluded middle constraint (EMC), which rules out derivations involving spellout of linearly intermediate copies only, and the N-only constraint, which restricts movement to occurring where the trace position would license a nominal. The EMC rules out deriving vP-fronting by true movement and instead necessitates a base-generation analysis, while the N-only constraint ensures that participle preposing is only possible in limited circumstances.

Previous functional analyses of American English inversion constructions (for example, Hartvigson & Jakobsen, 1974; Gary, 1976; Green, 1980, 1982) have recognized – either implicitly or explicitly – that inverted sentences and their canonical-word-order counterparts are semantically equivalent. None the less, in Ward & Birner (to appear), we describe a non-truth-conditional asymmetry between the interpretation of certain VP inversions and that of their canonical-word-order counterparts.2 Consider (1a) and (2b) in the following context:(1) Free elections were held yesterday in Czechoslovakia for the first time since the war.(a) The main opposition party was losing the election.(b) Losing the election was the main opposition party.(c) The main opposition party lost the election.

This paper argues that Danish verb-second clauses have two structural instantiations and that each structure is associated with distinct information-structural properties. Information-structurally undifferentiated V2 clauses are realized as TPs, whereas information-structurally differentiated V2 clauses are CPs. The evidence for this correlation comes from the behavior of the overt VP anaphor det, which exhibits a complex, but principled, positioning pattern in V2 clauses. I develop a feature-driven analysis of V2 clauses that accounts for previously unnoticed restrictions on the initial position in declarative V2 clauses.

In this paper, we consider Swedish Finite VP-Topicalization and Yiddish Finite-Verb Topicalization, which share certain interesting features that have implications for Germanic syntax and for syntactic theory in general. Although neither construction contains a gap, we argue that both are products of Movement, but with a lexically realized trace, and that this phenomenon is crucially related to Movement of finite verbs. The arguments are based on the distribution of aspectual types, lexical and phonological phenomena, the V/2 Constraint, Subjacency, and discourse phenomena.

The article discusses the placement of the VP anaphor det ‘it’ as a complement of verbs selecting VP complements in Danish. With verbs that only allow a VP complement, the VP anaphor must be in SpecCP regardless of its information structure properties. If SpecCP is occupied by an operator, the anaphor can be in situ, but it cannot shift. With verbs that allow its VP complement to alternate with an NP complement, the VP anaphor can be in SpecCP, shifted or in situ according to the information structural properties of the anaphor. Only if SpecCP is occupied by an operator, must a topical anaphor be in situ. The article argues that a shifted pronominal in Danish must be categorially licensed by the verb and extends this analysis to shifting locatives. An Optimality Theory analysis is proposed that accounts for the observed facts.