A Minimalist Analysis of PRO in Persian: Merge Theory of Control

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran

10.22111/ijals.2025.47980.2428

Abstract

The control construction has attracted the attention of a considerable number of linguists since the early development of generative grammar. The present study examines the properties of PRO in Persian, adopting the syntactic approach developed in Kim’s (2003) theory of Merge Control within the minimalist framework. According to this theory, the control construction is fundamentally based on the theta-domain relation between PRO and its controller. The findings indicate that Kim’s theory of Merge Control addresses certain issues related to promise verbs, which challenge two key properties of PRO, namely, the locality and C-command conditions. Within this framework, there is no need to distinguish between obligatory and non-obligatory control; instead, the distinction should be made between complement and adjunct control clauses. Consequently, the violation of the proposed properties of PRO in Persian is resolved because the theory accounts for the objects of promise verbs in control constructions as adjuncts rather than complements. As a result, such objects are neither theta-marked by the promise verbs nor passivized, and they do not function as the controller of PRO.

Keywords

References

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Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies
Volume 17, Issue 2
October 2025
Pages 41-64

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