Video 15.2: Subject to Object Raising and Object Control

Andrew Carnie presents Syntax: A Generative Introduction 4E. Wiley Blackwell.
Video 15.2: Subject to Object Raising and Object Control
Subject to object raising (e.g. "I want Sarah to leave") is contrasted with Object control (e.g. "I persuaded Sarah to leave"). In the object control sentence "Sarah" appears to have two theta roles in violation of the theta criterion. An analysis is given where Object control sentences involve a PRO as the subject of the embedded clause and Subject to Object raising involves moving the embedded subject from the lower clause into the specifier of the AgrOP in the main clause. The idiom test is used to distinguish the two cases.

[@Leonard-Law]

Thank you so much!!! I wonder whether verbs that take bare infinitives can be analyzed and tested in a similar way. For example, do a) John let the sh*t hit the fan and b) John saw the sh*t hit the fan retain the idiomatic meaning? I'm not a native speaker so I am uncertain about my judgement🧐

[@CarnieSyntaxthEdition]

Unfortunately no, this won't work. They both allow the idiomatic meaning. That's entirely expected though, because neither let nor saw (in this context anyway - I'm only talking about the "saw" that takes a clausal complement, not simple transitive "saw") assign a theme theta role. So "shit" cannot be an underlying argument of either of these matrix verbs, so the idiomatic meaning is allowed.