The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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.
Consider further the following contrasts between the expletive subject
construction and the TC (Chomsky 1977, 1981; Jones 1991, among others): If the
tough A is followed by the for-PP phrase, expletive subject construction is two-ways
ambiguous. The reason for the ambiguity is that the PP can be interpreted either as the
Experiencer argument of the tough A, the syntactic realization of which is optional
(50a), or as the subject of the embedded clause, introduced by the prepositional
complementizer for (50b):
(50) a. It is easy for the rich i [ CP [PRO i to do the hard work]]
b. It is easy (for some people) [ CP for [ IP the rich to do the hard work]].
No such ambiguity is associated with the TC. The only interpretation it has is the
one corresponding to (50a) with the coindexed PRO, as shown in (51a):
(51) a. Hard work is easy for the rich i [PRO i to do] 36
b. *Hard work is easy (for some people) [for the rich to do]
On the clausal Op-movement analysis of the TC, the obligatory coreference in
(51a) will have to be interpreted as an instance of obligatory control of the PRO
subject by the Experiencer of the tough A. Notice that, even if obligatory control is at
play in the TC, it does not entail that the subject position of the embedded clause has
to be realized as PRO, as clear from (52):
(52) a. John i wanted PRO i to leave.
b. John wanted for Bill to leave.
Finally, a lexical subject disjoint in reference from the Experiencer can be
introduced in the expletive subject construction (53a). This is completely impossible
in the TC (53b). The noted contrast is accounted for, given that (i) the second PP is
necessarily the subject of the embedded clause, as the tough A can realize only one
36 I use PRO here only to illustrate the relevant interpretation. By assumption, the embedded
constituent in the TC does not have PRO.