Russian Dative Subjects, Case, and Control

It is generally agreed that subjects of infinitival clauses in Russian are marked with dative case, based on evidence from two areas of Russian grammar: (i) apparent dative subjects of main-clause infinitivals and (ii) the case marking phenomenon known as the “second dative.” Here I argue that the first type of evidence has been misanalyzed in much of the syntactic literature, and that only the second type of evidence supports the existence of dative subjects of infinitives. The correct generalization is that subjects of Russian infinitival clauses are marked with dative case, but that PRO is the only element that may occupy this position. This result is consonant with recent developments in the theories of case and DP licensing and the distribution of PRO, which readily countenance morphological case marking of PRO and tie PRO’s occurrence to the presence of [−T] and/or [−Agr] features on I. This paper provides both a needed update to the syntactic description of Russian and a contribution to the theories of DP licensing and control.