Moving subjects out of finite je-clauses in Bangla

A case of Hyperraising?

Abstract

In Bangla (Bengali; Eastern Indo-Aryan), an embedded subject from a finite complement clause can be moved out to the matrix clause which violates syntactic constraints like PIC, Activity Condition and Case theory. This phenomenon has been observed cross-linguistically and consequently named as hyper-raising (Ura 1994). Bangla exhibits an interesting case of this hyperraising constructions where the embedded subject can only move out when the finite post-verbal complement clause lacks an overt C head je (initial complementizer, Singh 1980; Bayer 1996, 1999, 2001; Bhattacharya 2001, 2002, 2015, among others). This paper examines whether or not this movement is actually an instance of true A-movement. Along with this, a possible solution is also presented for the puzzle of the Bangla hyper-raising which lacks an overt complementizer head. This is different from other instances of hyper-raising seen cross-linguistically. The proposed solution shows why all the previous analyses may not be a right fit to the type of hyper-raising seen in Bangla, but can be simply answered through drawing a parallel to the that-trace effect seen in English wh-movement. Following Obata (2018) to explain the that-trace effect seen in the A-movement of the (hyper)-raised NP, it is shown that not C deletion but it is rather the external merge of the C to T that captures the absence of the IC head je- in Bangla hyper-raising.