The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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Note that the options in (103) do not differ much one from the other. Both are
possible devices to check the Case of the nominal. Both suffer from a certain degree
of abstractness. The abstractness of (103a) stems from the absence of Dative
morphology in English; the abstractness of (103b) is due to the presence of an empty
P. There are, however, arguments which seem to favor the option in (103a) (i.e.
Dative Case) over the one in (103b) (i.e. empty P).
First, postulating an empty small P at this stage would be rather surprising. As
discussed in 3.3.3, there seems to be some kind of semantic compatibility between a
PP-verb and the small P it selects. This is reasonable if the prepositions are
phonetically overt.
Further, Dative and Accusative are morphologically indistinct in English.
Therefore, the claim that the [-c] cluster can be realized via Dative Case in English is
plausible. Moreover, although English does not distinguish morphologically between
Accusative and Dative Cases, it can be argued that they are distinguished in some
other fashion (i.e. V-DP adjacency: I gave [John Dat ] [the book Acc ] vs. *I gave [the
book Acc ] [John Dat ]).
Finally, if the [-c] argument is realized as a phonetically null PP, rather than a
Dative DP, one would expect that extraction out of this PP would pattern with
extraction out of a phonetically realized PP. This, however, is not the case. The
following extraction facts favor the Dative Case option.
Extraction out of a DP is rather difficult across languages, but it is possible in
varying degrees in some languages, among them English. Extraction out of a DP in
English is felicitous if P-stranding takes place, as shown in (104a) with a clearly
Accusative verb destroy. Furthermore, it is possible to extract out of a PP if the P can
be stranded (i.e. if the P can be reanalyzed with the V, following Hornstein and
Weinberg 1981), as shown in (104b). What seems to be rather ungrammatical even in
English is extraction out of a DP embedded in a PP (104c,d).
(104) a. Which president did you destroy [ DP visits of t] [-c-m] ?
b. Which president did you count [ PP on t] ?
c. ??Which president did you count [ PP on [ DP visits of t]] [-m] ?
d. ??Which president did you bet [ PP on [ DP a visit of t]] [-c] ?