The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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b. bart hevi et ha-kelev ??le’alef/le-iluf 27
Bart brought Acc the-dog to+tame/to-taming
“Bart brought the dog to tame.”
.
Thus, le- in (37) (P pred ) is clearly distinguished from the infinitival le-, i.e. le’alef
(‘to+tame’) can be interpreted in Hebrew only as an infinitival verb. Following
Stowell (1982), infinitive is zero tense, rather than absence of tense. Thus Hebrew
infinitive verbs on a par with the finite ones combine obligatorily with the functional
head T forming clausal projections (Hazout 1995). A clausal projection (CP) differs
from the le NP in two respects; it is not predicative, and it does not have an unbound e
variable (in the clausal projections this variable is bound by the tense operator in T).
Note that although a CP can be rendered predicative (by Op-movement, see 5.2.2),
this does not suffice to make it on a par with the le NP, as the former will still lack the
e variable. With this in mind, let us turn to object gap constructions in English.
5.4 Externalization in English
The most familiar analysis of object gap constructions in English (and Romance)
is the Op (null operator)-movement analysis (39). Under this analysis the complement
of the main predicate (tough A, matrix verb) is fully clausal (CP), and the gap in the
object position of the embedded constituent is the trace of the Op (Chomsky 1977,
1981, 1982, 1986a, 1993; Browning 1987; Tellier 1991, among others): 28
(39) a. The book i is easy [ CP Op i [ IP PRO arb to read t i ]]
b. Dan brought the car i [ CP Op i [PRO to repair t i ]]
27 The infinitival is not completely impossible in the OPC, but it is much better with the P kedey (‘in
order’), and a resumptive pronoun:
(i) dan hevi et ha-kelev kedey le’alef oto
“Dan brought the dog in order to tame it.”
28 But see Cinque 1990, where it is argued that the Op in some constructions, among them the TC and
OPC, is base generated in the spec-CP and binds a pro.