On subject reference and the cartography of clause types: A commentary on the paper by Biswas

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 115 - 135
• Main Author: McFadden, Thomas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.02.2014; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adjunct clauses; Anaphora; Asian languages; Bengali; Cartography; Clauses; Finiteness; Grammatical clauses; Grammatical tenses; Infinitives; Language; Linguistic complements; Linguistics; Natural language; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Philosophy of Language; Social Sciences; Syntactics; Syntax; Theoretical linguistics; Theory; Verbs; Cartography; Control; Bangla; Embedding; Clause-size; Finiteness; Subjects; Case
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1007/s11049-013-9218-4

In this commentary, I will critically discuss Priyanka Biswas' contribution to this volume (2013), in which she examines the properties of five types of clauses headed by participial verb forms in Bangla and proposes an account of their sometimes novel properties in terms of Landau (2004)' s theory of control. I will take Biswas' empirical analysis as a starting point for a broader discussion of finiteness and the relationship between different types of embedded clauses and the kinds of subjects they allow. I will argue that the theoretical treatment Biswas herself adopts does not allow a proper explanation of the connection, and will propose a distinct approach in terms of differential clause sizes. While this approach will remain highly speculative, I will argue that it at least allows us to formulate falsifiable hypotheses with testable predictions, and thus could serve as the foundation for a truly insightful theory of the distribution of subject types.